Close to the airfield Jan Mayens Field, is the meteorologists gathered
in their quarters, 'Metten'. They are only four, but they are noticed.
They do their work there, observations and letting their transmitter leave
by balloon at specified times of the day and night. The crew live in
Olonkin City but have all the facilities to stay at their own station for
several days. You will in fact find 'Metten' very cozy and we were always
welcome to make a visit. May be you even will get a cup of coffee and
something to eat, I did.
Once in a while the weather is so bad that it is not recommended to try to drive the three km home to Olonkin City. Not even with a weasel, and it is very comforting for the crew at both stations to know that everyone is safe indoors.
I have little knowledge of the routines of 'Metten', but I know that they make their observations of the seas wave heights, height of the clouds, atmospheric conditions and sends out their balloons equipped with measuring devises. The results from these balloons are transmitted back to 'Metten' where they are processed and forwarded to the mainland where they use them to predict the weather.
The leader of this unit has his or her assistants to help him with the work and until recently he/she was also assisted by the only dog at the island, Sondre. At the moment there is no dog at the island, I belive it would be comforting for the crew to have a dog close to the 'Metten' as it would have alerted them of an ice bear came visiting.
Sondre was not that interested in people and preferred to stray in winter. He would surely have done that in summer too, but due to all the birds that are nesting at Jan Mayen, he had to be chained up then. And when a plane is scheduled to come, he also had to be tied up or at least far away or else he could make difficulties by running at the airfield during landing and take-off. It was not an easy task to tie him up as he seemed to have an alarm that told him to get away when time had come to catch him.
When the people of JM celebrates Norway's National day on May 17th., they use to go to Metten for a visit. There the natives would furnish their visitors with wafers, cakes, coffee and may be something to help keeping the cold away for the trip home. By the way, transportation was done by help of a tractor and an open trailer.
I could probably have written more about Metten, but I am confident that you will find more at the homepages of Vidar Teigen. He has been working there several times and even run the unit.