Ossian Sars Nature Reserve is located at the inner-most part of Kongsfjorden

Kongsfjorden

thumb|Kongsfjorden as seen from [[Blomstrandhalvøya]]Kongsfjorden is an inlet on the west coast of Spitsbergen, an island which is part of the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The inlet is long and ranges in width from 6 to 14 km...

 on Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

 in Svalbard

Svalbard

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. It was created on 26 September 2003 to preserve the mountain Ossian Sarsfjellet and the surrounding vegetation. The nature reserve

Nature reserve

A nature reserve is a protected area of importance for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research...

 covers 12.139 square kilometres (4.7 sq mi). Hiking is permitted, but tenting is not.

The mountain and reserve are named after biologist Georg Ossian Sars.