in the wake of Willem Barentsz

with a historical epilogue by Diederik Veerman

Jeroen Toirkens

Petra Sjouwerman

with a historical epilogue by Diederik Veerman

Jeroen Toirkens

Petra Sjouwerman

6 7

6 7

36 37

36 37

82 83

82 83

110 111

110 111

149148

Willem Barentsz’ revolutionary Arctic map,

published after his death in 1598 by Cornelis

Claesz in Amsterdam.

It is highly probable that Barentsz put down

many of the new discoveries on paper during

the overwintering on Nova Zembla, before

starting out on the tragic return journey.

De revolutionaire poolkaart van Willem

Barentsz, uitgegeven na zijn dood in 1598

door Cornelis Claesz in Amsterdam.

Naar alle waarschijnlijkheid heeft Barentsz

veel van de nieuwe ontdekkingen tijdens de

overwintering op Nova Zembla op papier

gezet, voor aanvang van de tragische terug-

reis.

149148

Willem Barentsz’ revolutionary Arctic map,

published after his death in 1598 by Cornelis

Claesz in Amsterdam.

It is highly probable that Barentsz put down

many of the new discoveries on paper during

the overwintering on Nova Zembla, before

starting out on the tragic return journey.

De revolutionaire poolkaart van Willem

Barentsz, uitgegeven na zijn dood in 1598

door Cornelis Claesz in Amsterdam.

Naar alle waarschijnlijkheid heeft Barentsz

veel van de nieuwe ontdekkingen tijdens de

overwintering op Nova Zembla op papier

gezet, voor aanvang van de tragische terug-

reis.

150

solitude – in the wake of willem barentsz

151

barentsz is dead, long live barentsz!

Barentsz is dead, long live Barentsz! historical and contemporary traces of a polar explorer

by diederik veerman

On 16 August 2012, the icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, sailed into Reykjavik harbour. This was the first time a Chinese vessel had successfully crossed the Arctic Ocean, but this unique event was barely mentioned in the Dutch media. Over a year later, Rotterdam harbour also welcomed a freight ship that had sailed from China via the Northern Sea Route. This time, there were a large number of journalists waiting on the quayside. The news was presented within the framework of global warming, but current events were given an extra boost from the past. Almost all articles alluded to Willem Barentsz1 (±1550-1597); the Frisian explorer who went off in search of a new route to Asia in the late sixteenth century. He tried to do this via the Arctic Ocean, which at the time had hardly even been mapped. A successful North East Passage would open up great opportunities for the Republic of the Netherlands. After all, the world’s well-known seas were dominated by the hostile countries of Spain and Portugal. Barentsz made three attempts to reach the lucrative Asia. However, at Nova Zembla, ice sheets and icebergs as far as the eye could see proved an insurmountable barrier. What Barentsz was trying to achieve from 1594, namely to sail from Holland via the North Pole to China, finally became reality in 2013, in the opposite direction.

Over a century ago, in around 1875, Barentsz was suddenly elevated to the status of national hero in the Netherlands. Poems, portraits and plays about his northern travels fed into the highly patriotic spirit of the times. A new sailing ship named after him was also constructed. The small ship’s most important task was to place commemorative stones in the Arctic. These would serve to remind the world of the part the Netherlands had played in the discoveries in the Far North. One of the stones was destined for Spitsbergen, the Arctic island group that Barentsz had discovered during his third and final voyage in 1596. Another commemorative stone would be placed on the north-east side of Nova Zembla, where a Norwegian walrus hunter had discovered the remains of The Saved House (Het Behouden Huys) in 1871.

The Saved House was the hut that Barentsz and sixteen others built in the autumn of 1596 of Siberian driftwood and Dutch ship’s timbers. Slow moving pack ice had cracked their ship like a walnut, forcing them to overwinter in Nova Zembla. The diary of crew member Gerrit de Veer gives us an in-sight into how the overwinterers survived in The Saved House. They showed their ingenuity in all kinds of ways. They fashioned warm hats from the fur of trapped foxes, a wine barrel served as a steam bath, and they sealed up the draughty cracks in the hut with tar and pieces of valuable linen: at the start of the journey, this fabric had optimistically been earmarked as a trading gift for the Chinese Emperor.

The fight against the cold is well illustrated by a fragment from De Veer’s diary: ‘We could not go out-side for three days, and inside it was so extremely cold that if we sat by a great fire so that the fronts of our shins were almost burning, but our backs would still be freezing.’ 2 Yet it was not all doom and gloom in the hut. Friendship and entertainment were crucial to the success of the over wintering.

On Twelfth Night for example, the men drunk extra wine, baked pancakes and played games, and would appear to forget their hardships and loneliness for a while. De Veer writes about this festive evening in his diary: ‘It did us a power of good. We imagined ourselves back in our home land with our friends, as if we were enjoying a delicious meal at home. We also passed around notes, and Lenaert Heijndrikcsz was king of Nova Zembla.’ 3 As soon as the sun began to peep up over the horizon again, the men played ice golf to restore the suppleness to their limbs. At that point, the group still comprised fifteen men: two of their company had not survived the winter. Three others, including Barentsz, would later die of scurvy and exhaustion on the journey home. Barentsz was buried at sea in the place that would later bear his name, the Barents Sea.

The sailing ship the Willem Barents, built in 1878, never reached Nova Zembla. Once again, an endless stretch of ice would thwart ambitious Dutch plans. While the initiators of the project had to abandon their patriotic ideals in 1885 due to a lack of funds, the heroic status accorded to the figure of Willem Barentsz remained undiminished, and the northern hardships endured by him and his crew were increasingly romanticised. Moreover, in the popular tales, from Isings’ famous 1951 school illustration to the first Dutch 3D film in 2011, the focus was always on that one iconic event: the overwintering on Nova Zembla. This has meant that other key parts of the expedition have had little exposure. One example of this is the return journey. After spending ten months in Nova Zembla, the men returned to the Arctic Sea in two open sloops. This was a hellish journey, during which the already exhausted crew had to search continually for the right wind, open water, and for the essential common scurvy grass that would protect them from scurvy. Partly thanks to the help of Russian fishermen and Sámi 4, the area’s indigenous population, they miraculously reached the Russian port town of Kola in just two and a half months. By variously sailing, rowing and clambering over the ice, they had covered a distance of 2,500 kilometres.

De Veer survived the sloop journey. As soon as the expedition arrived back home in Amsterdam, the diary he had kept of the expedition became an instant bestseller. His personal memories were absorbed into the collective memory that was embraced and unnecessarily whipped up in the patriotic fervour of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the Dutch were devouring the adventures of Barentsz and his crew, during the First World War the Russians founded the town of Murmansk for military logistical ends. This is right above Kola, De Veer’s last Russian stop in 1597. It was around Murmansk and Kola that an imposing, but also heavily polluting (war) industry was built up during the Soviet era. In the place that the two wooden sloops once arrived, nuclear submarines now depart for Asia.

Although Barentsz never reached Asia, his three polar expeditions should not be regarded as failures. Thanks to him and his colleagues such as Jacob van Heemskerck and Jan Huygen van Linschoten, the North Pole took on realistic proportions. In 1598, Barentsz’ polar map appeared posthumously. The map was revolutionary, and its value lies in the accuracy of Barentsz’ geographical calculations, made before the discovery of the chronometer. For the first time, the entire Arctic was mapped as a sea area, with the geographical North Pole within it. The traditional image of the most northerly point on earth had been a rock surrounded by four mountainous islands. Thanks to Barentsz, this idea was relegated to the realms of fantasy. On this new Arctic map, various myths were debunked, but others remained. Whales are still depicted as snow dragons with spines on their backs, and there are polar bears with huge tusks swimming around. And near the Norwegian Fleinvær islands, which are coincidentally where this book begins, Barentsz drew a giant ‘maelstrom’: a terrifying whirlpool.

150

solitude – in the wake of willem barentsz

151

barentsz is dead, long live barentsz!

Barentsz is dead, long live Barentsz! historical and contemporary traces of a polar explorer

by diederik veerman

On 16 August 2012, the icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, sailed into Reykjavik harbour. This was the first time a Chinese vessel had successfully crossed the Arctic Ocean, but this unique event was barely mentioned in the Dutch media. Over a year later, Rotterdam harbour also welcomed a freight ship that had sailed from China via the Northern Sea Route. This time, there were a large number of journalists waiting on the quayside. The news was presented within the framework of global warming, but current events were given an extra boost from the past. Almost all articles alluded to Willem Barentsz1 (±1550-1597); the Frisian explorer who went off in search of a new route to Asia in the late sixteenth century. He tried to do this via the Arctic Ocean, which at the time had hardly even been mapped. A successful North East Passage would open up great opportunities for the Republic of the Netherlands. After all, the world’s well-known seas were dominated by the hostile countries of Spain and Portugal. Barentsz made three attempts to reach the lucrative Asia. However, at Nova Zembla, ice sheets and icebergs as far as the eye could see proved an insurmountable barrier. What Barentsz was trying to achieve from 1594, namely to sail from Holland via the North Pole to China, finally became reality in 2013, in the opposite direction.

Over a century ago, in around 1875, Barentsz was suddenly elevated to the status of national hero in the Netherlands. Poems, portraits and plays about his northern travels fed into the highly patriotic spirit of the times. A new sailing ship named after him was also constructed. The small ship’s most important task was to place commemorative stones in the Arctic. These would serve to remind the world of the part the Netherlands had played in the discoveries in the Far North. One of the stones was destined for Spitsbergen, the Arctic island group that Barentsz had discovered during his third and final voyage in 1596. Another commemorative stone would be placed on the north-east side of Nova Zembla, where a Norwegian walrus hunter had discovered the remains of The Saved House (Het Behouden Huys) in 1871.

The Saved House was the hut that Barentsz and sixteen others built in the autumn of 1596 of Siberian driftwood and Dutch ship’s timbers. Slow moving pack ice had cracked their ship like a walnut, forcing them to overwinter in Nova Zembla. The diary of crew member Gerrit de Veer gives us an in-sight into how the overwinterers survived in The Saved House. They showed their ingenuity in all kinds of ways. They fashioned warm hats from the fur of trapped foxes, a wine barrel served as a steam bath, and they sealed up the draughty cracks in the hut with tar and pieces of valuable linen: at the start of the journey, this fabric had optimistically been earmarked as a trading gift for the Chinese Emperor.

The fight against the cold is well illustrated by a fragment from De Veer’s diary: ‘We could not go out-side for three days, and inside it was so extremely cold that if we sat by a great fire so that the fronts of our shins were almost burning, but our backs would still be freezing.’ 2 Yet it was not all doom and gloom in the hut. Friendship and entertainment were crucial to the success of the over wintering.

On Twelfth Night for example, the men drunk extra wine, baked pancakes and played games, and would appear to forget their hardships and loneliness for a while. De Veer writes about this festive evening in his diary: ‘It did us a power of good. We imagined ourselves back in our home land with our friends, as if we were enjoying a delicious meal at home. We also passed around notes, and Lenaert Heijndrikcsz was king of Nova Zembla.’ 3 As soon as the sun began to peep up over the horizon again, the men played ice golf to restore the suppleness to their limbs. At that point, the group still comprised fifteen men: two of their company had not survived the winter. Three others, including Barentsz, would later die of scurvy and exhaustion on the journey home. Barentsz was buried at sea in the place that would later bear his name, the Barents Sea.

The sailing ship the Willem Barents, built in 1878, never reached Nova Zembla. Once again, an endless stretch of ice would thwart ambitious Dutch plans. While the initiators of the project had to abandon their patriotic ideals in 1885 due to a lack of funds, the heroic status accorded to the figure of Willem Barentsz remained undiminished, and the northern hardships endured by him and his crew were increasingly romanticised. Moreover, in the popular tales, from Isings’ famous 1951 school illustration to the first Dutch 3D film in 2011, the focus was always on that one iconic event: the overwintering on Nova Zembla. This has meant that other key parts of the expedition have had little exposure. One example of this is the return journey. After spending ten months in Nova Zembla, the men returned to the Arctic Sea in two open sloops. This was a hellish journey, during which the already exhausted crew had to search continually for the right wind, open water, and for the essential common scurvy grass that would protect them from scurvy. Partly thanks to the help of Russian fishermen and Sámi 4, the area’s indigenous population, they miraculously reached the Russian port town of Kola in just two and a half months. By variously sailing, rowing and clambering over the ice, they had covered a distance of 2,500 kilometres.

De Veer survived the sloop journey. As soon as the expedition arrived back home in Amsterdam, the diary he had kept of the expedition became an instant bestseller. His personal memories were absorbed into the collective memory that was embraced and unnecessarily whipped up in the patriotic fervour of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the Dutch were devouring the adventures of Barentsz and his crew, during the First World War the Russians founded the town of Murmansk for military logistical ends. This is right above Kola, De Veer’s last Russian stop in 1597. It was around Murmansk and Kola that an imposing, but also heavily polluting (war) industry was built up during the Soviet era. In the place that the two wooden sloops once arrived, nuclear submarines now depart for Asia.

Although Barentsz never reached Asia, his three polar expeditions should not be regarded as failures. Thanks to him and his colleagues such as Jacob van Heemskerck and Jan Huygen van Linschoten, the North Pole took on realistic proportions. In 1598, Barentsz’ polar map appeared posthumously. The map was revolutionary, and its value lies in the accuracy of Barentsz’ geographical calculations, made before the discovery of the chronometer. For the first time, the entire Arctic was mapped as a sea area, with the geographical North Pole within it. The traditional image of the most northerly point on earth had been a rock surrounded by four mountainous islands. Thanks to Barentsz, this idea was relegated to the realms of fantasy. On this new Arctic map, various myths were debunked, but others remained. Whales are still depicted as snow dragons with spines on their backs, and there are polar bears with huge tusks swimming around. And near the Norwegian Fleinvær islands, which are coincidentally where this book begins, Barentsz drew a giant ‘maelstrom’: a terrifying whirlpool.

in the wake of Willem Barentsz