Arctic Views - Passages In Time

TyroneARCTIC MartinssonVIEWS PASSAGES IN TIME

Map published in Jan Huygen van Linschoten, 1599, Navigato ac itinerarium Iohannis Linschotani in orientalem siue Lusitanorum Indiam: descriptiones eiusdem terrae ac tractuum... Courtesy of National Library Spain.

The text on the map reads: “Description of the three navigations made by the Dutch to the North of Norway, Muscovy, Novaya Zemlya, and through the Waygats or Strait of Nassau as well as the part of Greenland at 80 degrees...

by Willem Barents of Amsterdam, the famous pilot.

Edited by Cornelis Claesz, engraved by Baptista à Doetechum. ao. 1598.”

Translation from F. C. Wieder, 1919.

PLATES 1

For Barentsz and his traveling companions it would probably mostly seem like an empty hall after a party, soiled with leftovers and with the occasional remaining guest who forgot to leave. Seen from today’s morningafter perspective, one can’t cease to be amazed at the human destructiveness.

Why has our species never learnt to adapt organically to its environment like other animals? What drives us with such relentless thoughtlessness to ruin our environment and play Russian roulette with the future?

—Gunnar Brusewitz‚ 1981

CONTENTS

Introduction 7 Plates I 17 Svalbard, Field Notes and Historical Accounts 49 Plates II 73 The Glaciers, Past and Present 105 Magdalenefjorden 108 Albertøya 115 Gjøavattnet, Amsterdamøya 117

Footnotes 123 Bibliography 127 Acknowledgements 134

Frambreen, Smeerenburgfjorden, 2012.

INTRODUCTION

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n 1671, friedrich martens, a surgeon from Hamburg, came to Spitsbergen on the whaling ship Jonas im Walfisch. He later produced one of the most influential travel accounts of Spitsbergen that served as a reference publication until the early nineteenth century. Martens provided a thorough description of his observations of the land and the flora and fauna, as well as the lively scenes of whaling with a large number of ships in the area around Smeerenburg in northwest Spitsbergen. He wrote down his impressions of the wild and rugged country he experienced in the far north:

The country (as is aforesaid) is stony, and quite through-out it are high Mountains and Rocks. Below, at the feet of the Mountains, stand the Hills of Ice very high, and reach to the tops of the Mountains; the Cliffs are filled up with Snow; wherefore the Snow-Mountains show very strange to those that never saw them before, they appear like dry Trees with Branches and Twigs, and when the snow falleth upon them they get Leaves as it were, which soon after melt, and others come in the room of them.1

I came to Spitsbergen for the fist time 330 years after Martens when I was commissioned to go to Svalbard in 2001 to photograph QuickTime VR panoramas for a special exhibition on Nils Strindberg, the photographer of Andrée’s polar expedition, for the opening of a newly built museum in Grenna. Some of Martens’s descriptions were still recognizable, the sharp pointed mountains, the stony ground, and “the hills of ice.”

Although the whales were gone and the lively fleet of whalers with them, the ice was still impressive at many sites although it often didn’t reach the top of the mountains any longer, nor were there walls of ice covering the valleys between the mountains making it difficult to find places to land as described by some travelers. From the Dutch discoverers of 1596 through the nineteenth century, the story of ice is a vital part of the story of Spitsbergen. Ice is part of the stories of the land and sea, the knowledge of place, observations and revisits and re-observations confirming previous observations and finding a relationship with previous travelers and visitors as the knowledge of the land in the north evolved and was communicated. Ice is a part of the construction of the history of Spitsbergen. Ice as a feature in the landscape appeared on maps in the 1650s.

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INTRODUCTION

Ice was and still is one of the main tourist attractions of the far north. The idea of a frozen north is based on a world of eternal ice. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, things started to change and by the 1950s great changes to the views of the land were evident, coinciding with the Great Acceleration; research charts depicting both earth-system trends and socio-economic trends accelerate around 1950 and human activity is now the defining force of change in earth’s system with direct correlation between the changes and our current global economic system. Martens would not recognize parts of the Spitsbergen he visited in 1671 if he were to return in the twenty-first century.

During the process of editing a sequence for a QuickTime movie from northeast Danskøya I was struck by one of the views in the images. I recognized it. It was almost exactly the same as the view taken by Vilhelm Swedenborg on July 11, 1897, when the Andrée expedition’s hydrogen balloon, the Eagle, sailed out towards the north. In a comparison between 2001 and 1897, the glacier Kennedybreen was almost gone from view. I began a review of Strindberg’s landscape images and also began to search the work of other photographers and expeditions and look in archives and collections for environmental images from northwest Svalbard. It has become extensive research in archives, libraries, and collections to find photographs, drawings, paintings, written descriptions, and maps. This book is about a research journey into archives and out in the field and back where photography has been the central tool. It is a story about a small but historically complex corner of the Arctic that is partly a micro-example of

Left: Magdalenefjorden, tourists approaching Gullybreen c.a. 1937, photo

by Carl Müller & Sohn.

Courtesy of Andreas Hoenhe.

Right: View of Gullybreen from Gravneset 2012.

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the development of European culture through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution into modernity – our journey into the Anthropocene – and partly a story of transformation of place and the impact of our unsustainable global economic system on the natural world. Photographs as visual data, both documents and artistic representations, analyzed, sequenced in timelines correspond to conclusions in science, and visual knowledge can be added to the charts of the Great Acceleration mentioned above, where conclusions of visual studies of change in the landscape of Spitsbergen show the same patterns: change is accelerating since 1950.

Norvest-Spitsbergen Nasjonalpark is a place that has been transformed from an area of whaling and hunting to a national park with thriving ecotourism. However, despite measures to maintain and protect this rich natural and cultural historical area it is highly affected and threatened by our modern society. The melting of land and sea ice that we see in the Arctic due to global warming is the “collateral damage” of our culture of growth and consumption and the indirect impact of its production ideologies with disastrous consequences to one of earth’s most fragile ecosystems.

Photography as a visual technology follows the development of modernity.

Photographs as visual sources function as testimonies to what a place once looked like and comparison of historical photographs and contemporary photographs of the same places make changes over time clear and easy to see. In rephotography, photography is in dialogue with time, history, and memory. In terms of variables such as global warming and climate effects photography can serve as a tool for comparative studies in which photographs showing clear evidence of change over time in combination with data from science can be used to address politicians, policy makers, and the public. If successfully used in communication about environmental issues and arguments for conservation values of natural areas, it can influence the regulation of human destructive behavior in our relationship to nature.

Photography was born in a time of revolutionary social development and expansive industrialism and its rich cultural heritage serves as a witness to the history of human cultural evolution from the 1830s onwards – the early stages of mankind’s entry into the Anthropocene. Before photography we have a rich visual history and literary tradition that expands the potential of the photographic image and can be used to track longer timelines, and create visual mappings of the world as we know it today that can contribute additional information to help us make decisions regarding the path we choose to take into the future.

The Arctic’s ecosystem is often mentioned as the canary in the 9

INTRODUCTION

This page. Top: Magdalenefjorden, view of the “hanging glacier,” 1891, taken in Trinityhamna on Henri de Bourbon’s expedition with the ship Fleur de Lys, photographer unknown.

Courtesy of the Norwegian Polar Institute. Bottom: View of the slope where the “hanging glacier” once lay, taken in Trinityhamna from MS Stockholm in 2011.

Opposite page. Top: Magdalenefjorden, view of the “hanging glacier,” 1896,

by Nils Strindberg, taken from Gravneset. Courtesy of Grenna Museum. Bottom: View of the slope where the “hanging glacier” once lay, taken from Gravneset in 2012.

coalmine of global warming due to its direct responses to environmental changes. The Arctic environment is changing more rapidly than most other areas on earth and its state is becoming more critical, increasingly close to an ecological disaster. For the people living in the Arctic the change has long been a fact and will have widespread consequences. In order to halt the changes in the Arctic, to preserve the living conditions for cultures of the north, and to preserve wild places and a healthy relationship with nature, we need to begin making lasting changes to our lifestyle and the modern industrialized economy has to transition into a truly sustainable society. We cannot escape our responsibility, a responsibility that is about the living conditions we pass on to future generations.

Mattias Klum and Johan Rockström argue with sharp precision and clear facts in their book The Human Quest: Prospering within Planetary Boundaries, emphasizing our responsibility for maintaining livable conditions for humans on earth and the impossibility of denying the situation we have created for the future. They point to the requirements of change for maintaining the quality of life and standard of living we have created.

They note that until the 1950s, you could maybe accept that people could ignore the overconsumption of the earth’s resources and the environmental problems our societies generated with the earth’s population then only one third of today’s. Today there are no such mitigating arguments.

We’ve had a population increase which is huge and that depletes the earth’s resources as never before. We have a clear knowledge of what is happening to our finite planet as a result of our actions.2 Acceptance of the concept of the Anthropocene and its consequences is the most serious challenge facing humanity ever. The stable condition of the earth in the Holocene has been the foundation for developments of modern man and the foundation for our species’ prosperity and conquering of the earth.

Leaving that and entering a condition of the earth that we as a species have no experience of and are ill-prepared for is a rather frightening thought. We need to act now to prepare for a different future to come and prepare for the changes to our living conditions as we have known them for generations. What is required is a fundamental transformation of our societies but also our attitude towards life on earth. The question is whether we have the capacity to change ourselves?

hall after a party, soiled with leftovers and with the occasional remaining guest who forgot to leave. Seen from today’s morning-after perspective, one can’t cease to be amazed at the human destructiveness. Why has our species never learnt to adapt organically to its environment like other animals? What drives us with such relentless thoughtlessness to ruin our environment and play Russian roulette with the future? Since the year 1600 it is estimated that three hundred species of mammals and birds have been eradicated from the earth’s surface by man. What a mind-boggling lack of respect for life.3

In 2001 I had the privilege of traveling in the same company as the artist Gunnar Brusewitz when he and his wife Ingrid returned to Svalbard twenty years after his visit with the expedition Ymer 80. His notes from our trip resulted in a beautiful diary with his amazing and distinctive watercolors and drawings. Brusewitz was always observant of the nature he encountered. The above quote is taken from the book of the Ymer expedition, a book that can be added to a long tradition of books and artist-based documentation of scientific trips. Brusewitz was not just an accompanying artist, he was a participating member of the research community onboard Ymer 80 and what he accomplished was a good example of what artists and humanists can contribute to the research community’s pursuit of knowledge. The knowledge Brusewitz contributed always reflected his firm base as a writer and artist. His knowledge of nature, birds and mammals, and ecosystems but also cultures and people was extensive and he gladly shared it with others in a humble and exceptionally responsive manner. When I prepared for fieldwork in Spitsbergen in 2012 I returned to the book Arktisk sommar: med Ymer genom Ishavet, and the paragraph above from the chapter titled, “Paradise Lost,” was one that we bore with us when we set off into the Arctic.

Svalbard was discovered in a time of revolutionary scientific development in an expanding Europe where increasing population and industrial development was to create an inexhaustible need for natural resources.

Unlike many other areas in the Arctic that were “discovered” and “explored” by European mariners in this era, Spitsbergen had no indigenous population and came to be a place where people from many different nations came for various reasons; from hunting to science or in search of minerals, and later tourists for the experience of something extraordinary. Svalbard’s coasts are literally covered with traces of human activity. It is impossible not to reflect on how different eras and its

The deceptive impression of life and wealth comes from a lack of a frame of reference – we find it hard to imagine how it really was once. For Barentsz and his traveling companions it would probably mostly seem like an empty 10

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INTRODUCTION

Opposite page: Views south into Bjørnfjorden across Smeerenburgfjorden.

Glaciers from left to right: Sällströmbreen, Smeerenburgbreen, and Scheibreen.

Top panorama: Gerard De Geer 1899, taken from Kapp Pike northeast Danskøya.

Courtesy of Stockholm University. Below: Similar view, July 18, 2012 from the cross at Albertøya.

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actors have valued Spitsbergen. Through the historical sources, we get clues to how the landscape was perceived, its political position and the interests held by different nations in the area. The early visual history of Spitsbergen consists mainly of how the map of the new land in the north is emerging. The development of the knowledge of Spitsbergen in the form of maps has also had a political significance and by following the development of the charts we get a picture of the layers of cultural history building up over four hundred years that we today can see traces of along much of Svalbard’s melting coastlines. The maps from the early seventeenth century into the first decades of the twentieth century are not only interesting because of their geographical, topographical, political, and cultural aspects but also as aesthetic objects. They represent a wonderful craftsmanship and tell a lot about how knowledge of the northern regions was mediated and represented. As for the early mapping of Svalbard, there are some studies that are rich in information and a fundamental basis for further work – two of them are Martin Conway’s No Man’s Land: A History of Spitsbergen from its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country (1906) and Frederik C. Wieder’s The Dutch Discovery and Mapping of Spitsbergen (1596–1829) of 1919.

They have guided my searches and work in today’s digital archives. What Conway and Wieder accomplished is deeply impressive given their extensive and thorough work visiting and cataloguing archives and collections relevant to their studies. Today we save an enormous amount of time by getting much of the work that previously required many long trips done in front of the computer. I have in this work had an unprecedented advantage of fantastic online archives and collections that have been digitized and made available to researchers and the public worldwide. The very valuable work of digitizing has been carried out by a wide range of institutions. Digital collections create access to archives and collections in a way never before experienced by any culture. We are very good at organizing memory and structuring remembrance and critically judging and analyzing it. We are not as good, if not really bad, at trying to prepare for the future and make decisions that are for the future by the present. The best and possibly only way of trying to prepare for the future is to learn from the experiences of history. Therefore, in order not to write just another chapter in the Western culture’s obsession with collecting and preserving its own history, we must ask ourselves what we will do with the digitized material, how do we maintain living archives and connect their contents to our own time? My way of addressing that ARCTIC

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issue is to create a dialogue with history through stories of place and journeys through time, connecting the archives and collections with the places that produced them.

Being a traveler in Svalbard is an experience of both wilderness and a fascinating cultural landscape in which cultural heritage is sometimes layered in the land. I have been inspired to use the definition of the concepts of heritage and cultural landscape by Per Kyrre Reymert and Thor B. Arlov in their book, Svalbard – en ferd i fortidens farvann. They argue that culture is anything that is not natural. But they are also careful to emphasize how difficult it is to ignore the contradictions of a culturally layered wilderness landscape, and how the view of the landscape is always defined by the visitor’s imagination. If you want to see an untouched wilderness landscape, it is a possible interpretation of Svalbard. If you want to see a cultural landscape framed by the sublimely beautiful wilderness scenery, this is also possible. Cultural remains in the landscape 13

INTRODUCTION

are traces of human activity in history. Svalbard is full of such traces in certain areas, especially along the coast. Maps function as hubs for stories about geographic locations. Maps are also changing documents and are updated and reassessed over time. They are historical political documents of where individuals and nations have manifested their presence in the geographical space through immaterial property markers in the form of place names.

Reymert and Arlov argued early on that cultural heritage can be immaterial in the form of, for example, geographical names on maps which then in an extension of their reasoning could be used in discussions of ideas tied to specific locations, or views, and be a basis for an argument that that view should be protected and, where possible, preserved. Immaterial cultural heritage then links the stories of geographical locations with the archives, libraries, and museums that become important for a conservation strategy that includes the collected artifacts of institutions and its links to physical locations in the landscape.4 Photographs are cultural heritage artifacts and potential carriers of an immaterial heritage. Within rephotography, historical documents meet physical locations. The American photographer Mark Klett, an artist and a pioneer within rephotography on aesthetic grounds, distinguishes between the camera position, a vantage point, and the view or viewpoint, where the first is easy to determine and with certainty can be located and even systematically calculated while the other is more delicate when it is about the photographer’s individual choices. The viewpoint is determined by many factors, such as cultural background, time, purpose of the photographer’s visit, technical limitations, and so on. This calls for an understanding of the conditions that prevailed when the photographer visited the place photographed. The archive-based research is therefore often both comprehensive and essential when working with the field method of rephotography. In photographic material, it is interesting to try to find a sequence forming a timeline to see if and when differences over time start becoming apparent. For example, during the nineteenth century Magdalenefjorden was visited by photographers from 1861 until 1896. During those thirty-five years, not much seems to have happened to the glaciers in the fjord. Until the 1930s, not much either, but then a process of change begins and since the 1960s it has been accelerating. Through rephotography and the processing of historical material we can create a visual narrative that shows, among other things, that particular shift when the changes in glaciers start becoming very clear.

Through photographs we get a clear picture of specific views in front of 14

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Opposite page: Abraham Storck, Walvisvangst bij de kust van Spitsbergen, 1690.

Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Note the similar mountainous background in Abraham Storck’s second painting of the Dutch Arctic whaling fleet Walvisvangst from 1708, see page 57.

This page. Top: Nordsyssel, 1960, photo Erling J. Nødtvedt. Courtesy Svalbard Museum. Bottom: MS Nordstjernen’s last visit to Magdalenefjorden on her final summer in Svalbard in 2012.

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the camera inviting us to engage with time. The changes in glaciers in the northwest corner of Spitsbergen since 1960 are severe. It was these changes that made me embark on the task of trying to create a visual story of the area where the Dutch explorers arrived in 1596 and that since has been part of the development of man’s presence on Svalbard.

Because of the accessibility of this area and the many tourist tours and scientific expeditions that visit, there is a considerable amount of data in the form of photographs from the nineteenth century and onwards. This forms a valuable basis for a more detailed visual timeline of changes over the last thirty, forty years. The photographic research archives created through fieldwork are a good basis for a continued monitoring over time to follow the changes of a specific area. Such work and its results contribute to the interdisciplinary knowledge collected and processed in order to understand the overall picture of global warming and climate change and not least to communicate this understanding and its consequences.

The experience of nature on Svalbard is a recurring part of this work. That’s part of what interests me in terms of stories about the Arctic. On the whole, the human relationship to nature is a central part

INTRODUCTION

of my work. During stays in the field, we always return to why humanity seems so unable to change the course of its destructive path. We are capable of incredible technological solutions to facilitate our lives and we have knowledge of ourselves and our living conditions that is as comprehensive as it is amazing. The strange thing is that we allowed ourselves to become a destructive force on earth reaching geological proportions. To exceed the planet’s sustainable limits and thus break the foundation of our existence is a remarkably strange choice by our intelligent species. Our society comes out of nature and has never left it. As culturally advanced as our time is, it is equally dependent on the functioning of nature and especially clean water, clean air, agricultural land, the supply of energy, and all the other resources our planet provides. The story of Spitsbergen is a micro example of the story of us, modern man. Brusewitz’s reflection on man’s “persistent indiscretion to destroy our environment” and “incomprehensible lack of respect for life” was formulated in a different way by the archaeologist Louwrens Hacquebord and cultural geographer Tialda Hartsen at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands at the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Spitsbergen: One of the characteristics of the Arctic region is its vulnerability to human activity. The low temperatures slow down the metabolic processes and the fragile ecological balance can be easily disturbed. Flora and fauna have managed to survive in this harsh environment. In fact, all creatures of the Arctic were adapted to their circumstances and lived in harmony with the polar environment. The discovery of several resources in Arctic regions by Western man changed the area from a living environment into a supply area of raw materials. It became a resource frontier region, whose resources were exploited as quickly and efficiently as possible to satisfy the needs of the industrialized countries, without considering the consequences for the natural environment.5

Henry David Thoreau said in one of his most famous quotes from his text “Walking” (1862), “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.”6 It has been a starting point for my work as a researcher and photographer for a long time, but it is also close to my heart and a worldview I agree with. In my work as a researcher I always think of whom I am doing this for. The answer is simple for me. It’s for my daughter and her generation and their future children and grandchildren. This is a call from the field for the beauty and appreciation of wild places and the preservation of the world.

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PLATES I

In cloudy or misty weather, when the hills are clothed with newly-fallen snow, nothing can be more dreary than the appearance of the shores of Spitzbergen; whereas, on the contrary, it is scarcely possible to conceive a more brilliant and lively effect than that which occurs on a fine day, when the sun shines forth and blends its rays with that peculiarly soft, bright atmosphere which overhangs a country deeply-bedded in snow; and with a pure sky, whose azure hue is so intense as to find no parallel in nature.

—William Beechey, 1843

Opposite page: Amsterdamøya, Hollendarberget, North Face with remains of Annabreen, 2012.

Pages 20–21: Elfsborgtoppen in midnight sun, view southeast from basecamp Danskeneset, 2012.

Pages 22–23: Smeerenburgbreen, 2012.

Page 24: Scheibukta, Scheibreen, 2012.

Page 25: Breaking midnight sun Danskeneset, 2012.

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Opposite page: Fuglefjorden, Larusbreen, 2011.

Pages 28–29: Bjørnfjorden, Marstrandbreen, 2012.

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Opposite page: Bjørnfjorden, Havhestbreen, 2012.

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Opposite page: Fuglefjorden, Svidtjodbreen east, 2011.

Pages 34–35: Bjørnfjorden, Smeerenburgbreen, 2012.

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Opposite page: Fuglefjorden, Svidtjodbreen #1, 2011.

Pages 38–39: Bjørnfjorden, Marstrandbukta with Marstrandbreen and trimlines, 2012.

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Opposite page: Amsterdamøya, Smeerenburg, 2012.

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Opposite page: Amsterdamøya, view of Frambreen from Smeerenburgsletta, 2012.

Pages 44–45: “Smålandsodden,” name given to landing site in south Bjørnfjorden, 2012.

Page 46: Amsterdamøya, polar bear on our path in Smeerenbukta close to Gjøaneset, 2012.

Page 47: Scheibukta, Scheibreen.

Peter and Thomas security check for bears, 2012.

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Opposite page: Amsterdamøya, Smeerenburg and Hollendarberget, 2012.

SVA LBA R D, FIELD NOTES A N D HISTOR ICA L ACCOU NTS

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n may 10, 1596, two ships left Amsterdam instructed to find a sea route eastward through the northern polar regions on an expedition financed by the merchants of the city of Amsterdam. The route was planned by the cartographer Petrus Plancius, the navigator for the expedition was Willem Barentsz, and the captain on Barentsz’s ship was Jacob Heemskerk. Captain of the other ship was Jan Cornelisz Rijp. This was the third trip into the Arctic to find the Northeast Passage that would facilitate the Dutch trade in the east. On June 9 they discovered Bjørnøya, where they remained for a few days before, according to Gerrit de Veer, sailing northwest on June 13. On June 17, according to Barentsz’s notes, they sited land after being forced back by pack ice. On June 21, they passed Klovningen which Barentsz took be a good landmark without naming the island. They spent a few days exploring some of the coast in the area of present-day Fuglefjorden and Smeerenburgfjorden before they sailed south along the west coast. In Barentsz’s notes from 1596 – as printed in Hessel Gerritsz’s Histoire du pays nommé Spitzberghe (1613) – we find the naming of Spitsbergen: ”June 17. The weather was calm up to noon. We were then in 80° 10 ” N. We were forced to tack to get out of the ice, moving S. for 6 leagues, with the wind E., until evening, and a depth of 90 fathonns. We moved on a quarter, with the wind S.E., and went S.S.E. 4 leagues. Then we saw land, and kept on still E.S.E., the land extending E. 1/4 N.E., and E. 1/4 S.E. a good 8 or 9 leagues. The land stood high up, all covered in snow, and at a point N.W. this land extended to another point. ¶ June 18. S.E. 1/4 E. 6 leagues, and there we were in 80’ N. ¶ We moved against the wind along the land, with the wind E. and N.E., up to noon on the 20th. The western cape of the land was about 5 leagues S.S.E. from us. We kept on S.S.E. and S.E. 1/4 S. for 5 leagues, and came to a large bay, which extended inland southwards, and another bay with an island in front, extending due south. ¶ We went away from the land, and kept on till evening N.E. 1/4 N. for 2 leagues, and came once more to the ice, which forced us to make for the south. ¶ June 21. There was a strong wind, with snow from the S.E., and we ran with the wind till evening, when we dropped anchor close to land not far from our consort, just in front of the entrance to the channel; sandy bottom at 18 fathoms. At the eastern

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extremity of the opening there was a rock, split from top to bottom, and a fine land-mark. [Klovningen] There was also an islet or rock, the third of a league from this eastern point. At the western point here was also a rock quite close. ¶ June 22. We took in seven boat-loads of pebbles for ballast, to trim our ship. A large bear appeared in the water near the ship, and we went after it in three boats, and killed it, its skin being 12 feet long. On the same day we went in a boat up the channel, to find a better harbour, which was badly wanted; and we found one further up, the land being all broken up, with some islands where the anchorage in parts was very good. ¶ June 23.

We took our time meridian by the astronomical circle, and we found the variation to be 11° before, and 16° after, noon, the needle turning towards N.E., so that the circle was incorrect. We left the bay, to see how far the coast extended, the weather being very clear. We could not see the end of the land, which extended S. 1/4 S.E. for 7 leagues, up to a precipitous peak, which stood out like an island. At mid- night we took the height of the sun, 13°, so that we were 79° 34” N. ¶ June 24. Before noon quite calm, wind S.E. The land along which we sailed was rugged for the most part, and steep, mostly mountains and jagged peaks, from which we gave it the name of Spitsbergen.7

Opposite page: From Hessel Gerritsz, 1613, Descriptio ac delineatio Geographica Detectionis Freti. Courtesy of National Library Spain. The map of Spitsbergen drawn by Gerritsz after Englishman John Daniel’s map.

This page: Joan Blaeu, 1662, Atlas Mior, Geographia qua est Cosmographiae Blavianae, Amsterdam. Courtesy of National Library Spain. Blaeu used Hessel Gerritsz’s 1613 walrus print as published in Descriptio... and Histoire du pays nommé Spitzberghe.

In 1598, Cornelis Claesz published Barentsz’s map of the northern Polar Regions where Svalbard is marked for the first time on a map in a very rough outline as “Het Nieuwe Land” – the new land. Gerritsz also produced an early map of Spitsbergen that was published in two publications in 1613, Historie du pays nommé Spitzberghe and Descriptio ac delineatio Geographica Detectionis Freti . . . Gerritsz wrote on the origins of his 1613 map of Spitsbergen: “The knowledge, therefore, that we have recently acquired of this land called Spitsbergen we have published in the map given above; and we have, for the greater part, followed the annotations of the English, taken from a map by John Daniel, compiled in London in the year 1612.”8 Gerritsz’s short publication Histoire du pays nommé Spitzberghe was a political text that argued for the Dutch discovery of Spitsbergen and is a record of the early struggle for control over Arctic natural resources.

Echoes of Gerritsz’s text can be found in the twenty-first century’s strategic games being played out through nations claiming land rights extending across the bottom of the sea into the Arctic Ocean and thus enabling arguments of rights to territorial boundaries and the possible exploitation of fossil natural resources. In Gerritsz’s days it was of course 50

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the valuable oil production of whaling that was the cause of troubles in the high Arctic waters around Spitsbergen. In an extract from a text by the Dutch cartographer Petrus Plancius in Gerritsz’s publication we find an example of the political tension between nations, stemming from their interests in the newly discovered land and waters rich in natural resources:

Jorus Carolus, map of Spitsbergen from 1614.

Courtesy of National Library Paris.

Replies made to the arguments and claims of the English that they command the fishery of the Island of Spitsbergen or Newfoundland To all intelligent men it is well known with what misunderstanding the English call the island of Spitsbergen Groenland (or green land), seeing that these countries are further situated from each other than Norway is distant from Scotland, and between which there is a large, wide sea. With regard to the second argument of the English, that all islands situated in the N. belong to their King, both those which have been discovered up to now, as well as those which may be discovered hereafter, that is futile and deserves no reply, especially with regard to this island of Spitsbergen, inasmuch as it neither touches nor approaches England in any way, in extent or situation, nor was it first discovered by the English. For why, then, should not the islands of Faroe, Iceland, and Friesland belong to His Majesty, and why not Greenland? The more so since these are situated much nearer Great Britain than the other; leaving out of the question that though some main-lands or islands might belong to someone, nevertheless the navigation of the sea and fishing are (according to the universal rights of all peoples) common to all and freely permitted.9

Another early map of Spitsbergen is Jorus Carolus’s map from 1614.

Carolus visited Spitsbergen in 1614 as part of the Dutch whaling company De Noordsche Compagnie that had been formed that year. Carolus work is exceptional and rare also because he, like Barentsz and some other geographers and cartographers of their time, actually ventured out into the field and visited the Arctic. This resulted in a unique map of its time made from experience, praised by both Wieder and Conway as one of the best and most beautiful early maps of Spitsbergen. Among the earliest maps of the west coast of Spitsbergen is also Robert Fotherby’s map from 1613 found in his journal of his voyage north that year.

The early days and beginning of whaling in Spitsbergen belong to the English. Gradually the Dutch, Danish, Basque, German, and French whalers entered the Arctic waters around Spitsbergen and territorial 52

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positioning along the coastlines of the islands increased over the years.

The bay whaling developed manned land stations as depicted in the unique and early drawings of whaling in Spitsbergen by Robert Fotherby in his journal from 1613. He had traveled there as part of a large English fleet also including William Baffin and Thomas Edge who all wrote accounts of Spitsbergen from that year. The journal is a valuable record of the beginning of whaling in Spistbergen and is a personal insight into the land and the practice of whaling and hunting of walrus. Fotherby speaks from experience and his drawings were possibly made on his ship in the Arctic. There are few early specific descriptions of the land except for animals and plants and the descriptions of how to hunt the whales.

When the bay whaling decreased in the second half of the seventeenth century, safe harbors and landing sites were still needed for protection and maintenances. Burial grounds abound on the shores of the islands.

Working in this environment was hard and dangerous and even if it paid well, the risks were considerable. Gravneset in Magdalenefjorden got its name from the graveyard on the tip of the peninsula. This is the piece of land in Magdalenefjorden that Barentsz and the discoverers of Svalbard visited in 1596. East of Gravneset is Trinityhamna, named by Fotherby in 1614. The political act that Fotherby describe in his text from that year published in Purchas Pilgrims reflects the territorial disputes noted by Hessel Gerritsz in his short 1613 history of Spitsbergen. Today Norway is the sovereign country of Svalbard and each summer park rangers are stationed in Trinityhamna monitoring the area. This is no longer done to protect important economical interests in the exploitation of natural resources but rather the opposite, to protect the fauna and flora and cultural history in the coastal zones of Northwest Spitsbergen National Park. It is a remarkable history of the 400 years between the beginning of whaling and European Arctic exploitation to protecting the area as a national park. It would have been a wonderful sight to see, standing in this place that day in June 1614 when the English landed at this site (imagine a photograph from that occasion!). Robert Fotherby wrote the following about his acts of territorial naming and annexation:

Opposite page: Robert Fotherby, Voyage to Greenland 1613, extracts from journal. Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society.

This page: Robert Fotherby, loose page map in Fortherby’s journal of his voyage 1613. Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society. This is perhaps the earliest detailed map of the west coast of Spitsbergen.

This next day in the afternoone we were thwart of Maudlen Sound, and the weather being faire and calme, we sent a shallop to the Northward, to see what alteration there was amongst the Ice, and to seeke out some good Harbour for a ship, and also to set up the Kings Armes at Hackluyts Headland, or some other convenient place. When Master Baffin was gone from 54

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This page. Top: Abraham Speeck, 1634. Courtesy of Skokloster Castle in Sweden.

Speeck’s painting of a Danish whaling station, probably in reference to the station in Robbe Bay (Kobbefjorden) at Danskøya, and seems to be combining features from Arctic whaling. In the 1630s whaling stations were well established in Jan Mayen and Spitsbergen. Middle: Joan Blaeu, 1662, Atlas Mior.

Courtesy of National Library Spain. The characteristic mountain Beerenbergh at Jan Mayen is depicted on Bleau’s map, first version published in 1623. The mountain appears in the remarkable painting by Speeck that in 1639 was copied by Dutch landscape painter Cornelis de Man and given the title Traankokerijen bij het dorp Smeerenburg (bottom). Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Opposite page: Abraham Storck, Walvisvangst 1708.

Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Note the similar mountainous background in Abraham Storck’s first painting of the Dutch Arctic whaling fleet, Walvisvangst bij de kust van Spitsbergen, from 1690. See page 14.

the ship in the foresaid shallop, I went presently into the other shallop into Maudlen Sound, there to set up the Kings Armes; and also to see if there were any Morses come ashoare; when I was within the Sound, I found no Beeches bare for Morses to come upon: for Ice and snow lay yet undissolved from the shoare side, but I went to the Harbour and there caused a Crosse to be set up, and the Kings Armes to bee nayled thereon; under which also I nayled a piece of sheet Lead, whereon I set the Moscovie Companies Marke, with the day of the moneth and yeere of our Lord. Then cutting up a piece of Earth, which afterward I carried aboard our ship, I tooke it into my hand and said, in the hearing of the men there present to this effect. ¶ I take this piece of Earth, as a signe of lawfull possession (of this Countrey of King James his New-land, and of this particular place, which I name Trinitie Harbour) taken on the behalfe of the Company of Merchants, called the Merchants of New Trades and Discoveries, for the use of our Sovereigne Lord James by the grace of God, King of great Brittaine, France, and Ireland, whose Royall Armes are here set up, to the end that all people who shall here arrive may take notice of his Majestie Right and Title to this Countrey, and to every part thereof. God save King James.10

The 1630s were the grand days of whaling in Spitsbergen, and the Dutch whaling station at Amsterdamøya, Smeerenburg, was at its peak.

Whaling stations were also well established in Jan Mayen. The characteristic mountain, Beerenbergh, at Jan Mayen is depicted on a Willem Janszoon Bleau map first published in 1623. The mountain appears in a remarkable painting from 1634, possibly by Abraham Speeck (the painting is currently located at Skokloster Castle in Sweden). Speeck’s painting depicts a Danish whaling station, probably referencing the Danish station in Robbe Bay at Danskøya, today’s Kobbefjorden, and seems to combine features from different locations of Arctic whaling.

Dutch landscape painter Cornelis de Man copied Speeck’s painting in 1639 and gave it the title: Traankokerijen bij het dorp Smeerenburg. In the late seventeenth century, another established Dutch painter, Abraham Storck, turned to the Arctic whaling fleet for a couple of paintings: Walvisvangst bij de kust van Spitsbergen, 1690, and Walvisvangst, 1708, it can be noted the similar mountainous background in both those paintings.

We arrived at our base-camp location in Sørgattet at southern Danskøya on July 12. We had been transported from Longyearbyen by Henningsen Transport on MS Farm with our Zodiak towed after the small ship. I was

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accompanied by two field assistants, Peter Johansson and Thomas Nydén – both ecologists working with river systems and very experienced in the outdoors, hunting and with boats. Our camp was a place selected based on two criteria: it was close to fresh water and had good visibility in all directions without being too exposed. Choosing a campsite on Svalbard can be a complex process that requires good planning and all permits in order. Above all, it required careful consideration of the possible historical remains present in the terrain since camp may not be established within a radius of one hundred meters from any kinds of relics, including cabins dated before 1946. In the historically dense area in northwestern Svalbard it is sometimes difficult to find a suitable place to camp. The Norwegian geologist Otto Salvigsen had confirmed southern Danskøya as a good site to camp, normally with plenty of freshwater pockets, which determined our choice. We established our camp in the southwestern corner of the peninsula, Danskeneset. The ground was stony but we found some good spots for our tents and we had clear visibility over the open terrain. After having arrived it only took some 20 minutes before Sysselman, the park rangers and Norwegian authorities arrived to inspect us and to welcome us to the island. They were camped in Magdalenefjorden half an hour south of us. They informed us that we had at least four polar bears as neighbors on the island. On the second night in camp Thomas woke us up – we had an approaching bear. The large animal walked easy and faster that you’d imagine through the difficult terrain but his goal was not our camp and he turned about 400 meters from us and walked west and we could later see him searching for food in a bird sanctuary on a neighboring island. One of us was always awake in camp so that the others could sleep without worrying about being woken up by exploding tripwire shots, knowing a bear had already entered camp. This was the only time that we knew of that we had a bear really close to camp.

On a number of trips on tourist ships in the area, not least with my mentor in the Arctic, Olle Melander, I have passed through Sørgattet and looked out over the barren rocky plains in south Danskøya and then been awestruck by the sublime vistas offered when the ship turns north, up into Smeerenburgfjorden with its glaciers, and Bjørnfjorden becomes visible aft with Smeerenburgbreen that covers the entire bottom of that fjord. The weather has for some odd reason always been grey and gloomy on these passages. Having the base camp in this area for a three-week stay was not the first choice. In retrospect, however, the site

Arriving at Danskøya, Danskeneset in Sørgattet, July 12, 2012.

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Opposite page: Magdalenefjorden, Gravneset, July 2012.

Camera position at the cabin: N 79° 33’30’’ E 11° 1’12’’.

View north over with mountains Alkekongen (right) and Høystakken (left) with visible glacier: Buchanbreen.

To the right Trinityhamna.

was excellent even though we were met by a northern wind and overcast skies in pretty cold weather. It turned out that the campsite was a good starting point for the boat trips required for the visiting of places we intended to work with.

Thomas, who stood out on deck during the journey into Sørgattet approaching Danskøya, was taken with the desolate rocks in the barren land framed by dark mountains and glacial ice and snowfields all surrounded by the cold polar sea. He went down to fetch Peter with the comment that he “must see this, as we have come to Mordor!” Thomas’s comment with reference to Tolkien’s landscape can be put into perspective with the description William Beechey provided in 1843 upon arriving at Spitsbergen via the same route as we did: In cloudy or misty weather, when the hills are clothed with newly-fallen snow, nothing can be more dreary than the appearance of the shores of Spitzbergen; whereas, on the contrary, it is scarcely possible to conceive a more brilliant and lively effect than that which occurs on a fine day, when the sun shines forth and blends its rays with that peculiarly soft, bright atmosphere which overhangs a country deeply-bedded in snow; and with a pure sky, whose azure hue is so intense as to find no parallel in nature. On such an occasion the winds, near the land at least, are very light, or entirely hushed, and the shores teem with living objects. All nature seems to acknowledge the glorious sunshine and the animated part of creation to set no bounds to its delight.11

As the midnight sun broke through, Thomas’s sense of unease about making a tent in the desolate and silent rock landscape eighteen hours by boat from Longyearbyen his home was humbly replaced with an appreciation of how privileged we were to have the opportunity of working in Svalbard’s wild nature. The silence of the Arctic is one of the sensations that fill your entire being when out there. Alone at night you sometimes hear only your own body then suddenly there is a mighty roar as if a thunderstorm is approaching and you realize that it is the sound of calving glaciers. Sounds are so clear that often we went to investigate something that we thought was very close and it turned out to be several hundred meters away. John Backström, a Swedish traveler to Svalbard in 1780, commented on the silence of the land:

distance, occasioned by huge fragments of ice and rocks rolling down from the immense steeps into the sea.12

The comments by Lord Dufferin in 1856 on arriving in Svalbard are even more elaborate as he struggles to express the very unfamiliar nature of the northern wilderness – not far from Thomas’s feeling of being in Mordor: It was at one o’clock in the morning of the 6th of August, 1856, that after having been eleven days at sea, we came to an anchor in the silent haven of English Bay, Spitzbergen. ¶ And now, how shall I give you an idea of the wonderful panorama in the midst of which we found ourselves? I think, perhaps, its most striking feature was the stillness – and deadness – and impassibility of this new world: ice, and rock, and water surrounded us; not a

The first thing that strikes a curious mind here is that solemn silence which reigns around; sometimes interrupted with a noise, like thunder heard at a 60

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sound of any kind interrupted the silence; the sea did not break upon the shore no bird or any living thing was visible; the midnight sun by this time muffled in a transparent mist-shed an awful, mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth’s vitality: a universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in England, there is always perceptible an under-tone of life thrilling through the atmosphere; and though — no breeze should stir a single leaf, yet — in default of motion – there is always a sense of growth but here not so much as a blade of grass was to be seen, on the sides of the bald excoriated hills. Primeval rocks – and eternal ice – constitute the landscape.13

R. Laurie & J. Whittle, 1796, A New Chart for the Whale Fishery and the ArchangelTraders or the Navigation in the Northern Seas from Great Britain and Ireland to Spitsbergen and the White Sea / Drawn from the most Accurate Surveys; Regulated by the latest Astronomical Observations. Note the inserted maps in left corner.

Top left is Phipps’s 1773 chart of the northwest corner of Spitsbergen published in his journal in 1774. The one beneath that is the first local map of Magdalenefjorden originally published in 1682 in Jan van Loon and Claes Jansz Vooght, De Nieuwe Groote Lichtende Zee-Fackel.

Bottom images are Beerenberg at Jan Mayen and a map of that island.

Thomas Edge, “the Muscovy Company’s map” of Spitsbergen (with the English name Greenland) and description of whaling and hunting. Print as published in 1625 by Samuel Purchas in his Pilgrims. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

William Baffin wrote of coming to Spitsbergen (Greenland) in 1613: The nature and condicon of this country of Greenland is verie much different from the name it hath; for I think ther is no place in the world, yett known and discouered, is lesse green than it. For when wee first arriued ther, which was on the 30th of Maye, the ground was all couered with snowe, both the mountaines and the lowe lands, saue onelie some few spotts that were full of flatt stones, wheron ther grewe a cerfcaine white mosse which, it seems, the deere doo feed upon at the first beginning of their sommer; for theise bare spotts wer verie full of their ordure; and besides, wee could not see anie other thing for them to feed upon.14

In Samuel Purchas’s Pilgrims (1625) Thomas Edge published the famous and often reproduced “Muscovy Company’s map” of Spitsbergen (with the English name Greenland) and a description of the whaling and hunting. Edge became one of the most experienced Spitsbergen mariners between 1608 and his death in 1624. He started out going to Bjørnøya as a sealer and walrus hunter. Edge wrote on Spitsbergen: Greenland is a place in Nature nothing like unto the Name : for certainly there is no place in the World, yet knowne and discovered that is lesse greene then it. ¶ It is covered with snow, both the Mountaines and the lower Lands, till about the beginning of June, being very Mountainous, and beareth neither grasse nor tree, save onely such as grow upon the Moores and heathie grounds, in the North parts of England, which we call Heath, or Ling. This groweth when the snow melteth, and when the ground beginneth to be 62

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uncovered. (…) This Countrey by all probabilities hath never been inhabited by any people ; notwithstanding, I thinke men might live there, carrying thither good store of provision of victuals, and other things necessary against the cold, which perhaps will be vehement in the Winter time, by the former reasons ; namely, because the Sunne remayneth so long under the Horizon.15

Friedrich Martens, 1694, English edition of “Voyage into Spitzbergen and Greenland,” in John Narborough et al An Account of several late Voyages & Discoveries to the South and North. Courtesy of National Library Spain.

Friedrich Martens arrived in Smeerenburg where close to thirty ships were at anchor in July 1671, and he described the site of the old whaling station: Then you come to Schmeremburg, so named from Schmer, which signifieth grease; there are still Houses standing, formerly built by the Dutch, where they once used to boil their Train-Oil. Some Dutchmen once attempted to stay there all the Winter, but they all perish: in the Cut C it is marked with k. It is observable that a dead Carkase doth not easily rot or consume; for it has been found, that a man buried ten years before, still remained in his perfect shape and dress, and they could see by the Cross that was stuck upon his Grave, how long he had been buried. These houses are now from year to year destroyed and burnt. This year were yet standing several Houses, like a little Village, some whereof were then burnt. ¶ (…) ¶ Over against Schmerenburg were also several Houses standing, and a Kettle or Boyler; they call that place the Cookery of Harlem. This year four Houses remained, whereof two were Ware-houses, in the others they dwelt.16

Likholmen (Deadman’s Island), a small island in today’s Danskegattet, was described by Martens in 1671 and marked i in his print of a view into the bay in Simon de Vries’s 1685 Dutch version and Narborough’s 1694 English version of Martens’s book from 1675. This was according to Martens the burial ground for the dead from the Dutch whaling station Harlinger Kocherey (1675) or Cookery of Harlem (1694), located in today’s Virgohamna; In the middle of this Harbour is an island in the Cut C marked with i, which is called the Dead-man’s Island, because they bury the dead men there after this manner; They are put into a Coffin, and covered with a heap of large stones, and notwithstanding all this, they are sometimes eaten by the white Bears.

Martens wrote of the polar bear: They feed upon the Carcasses of Whales, and near them we killed the most: They also eat Men alive when they have an opportunity to master them: They 64

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This page: Jan Luyken, title page of Simon de Vries et al, 1685, De Noordsche Wereld, published in Amsterdam by Aart Dirscksz Oossaan. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Opposite page: Likholmen (Dead-man’s Island, Martens: 1694), Danskegattet.

Bottom panorama: Nils Strindberg, 1896. Top panorama: Thomas in 2012 in a view of the characteristic rock on the island. The old burial ground was a haunting place with bones all over the ground, that made us all think of the men who had worked and died up here under harsh conditions. The place grew even more gloomy with Marten’s description of the bears plundering fresh graves in our minds. Who were these whalers buried in shallow Arctic graves and what were their stories?

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remove or roll away the Stones of the burying places, open the Coffins, and eat the dead Men, which many have seen, and we can also conclude it from hence, because we find the dead Mens Bones lye by the Coffins that are opened. They also eat Birds and Eggs.17

Constantine John Phipps and his expedition arrived at Smeerenburg in July 1773. Several versions of the journal and accounts of the expedition are available. Skiffington Lutwidge, one of Phipps’s captains published one book on the expedition in 1774. He wrote a description of the land, as he perceived it arriving in the area of Smeerenburg: Tuesday 13 [July], the weather being clear and calm, and a strong easterly current setting in, at eight in the evening they came to with their stream anchors and hausers in forty fathoms water; but at nine a breeze springing up from the eastward, they weighed, and next day came to an anchor in Smearingburgh Harbour. Cloven Cliff east one half south one mile. Weft point of Voogle land north- north- weft one half weft, distant one mile and a half; soundings fifteen fathom sandy bottom. Here they remained between five and six days to take in fresh water, during which time our journalist was employed in surveying the country, which to a stranger had a very awful and romantic appearance. ¶ The country is stoney, and as far as can be seen full of mountains, precipices and rocks. Between these are hills of ice, generated, as it should seem, by the torrents that flow from the melting of the snow on the fides of whole towering elevations, which being once congealed, are continually increased by the snow in winter, and the rain in summer, which often freezes as soon as it falls. By looking on these hills, a stranger may fancy a thousand different shapes of trees, castles, churches, ruins, ships, whales, monsters, and all the various forms that fill the universe. Of the ice-hills there are seven, that more particularly attract the notice of a stranger. These are known by the name of the seven ice-burgs, and are thought to be the highest of its kind in that country. When the air is clear, and the sun shines full upon these mountains, the prospect is inconceivably brilliant. They sometimes put on the bright glow of the evening rays of the setting sun, when reflected upon glass, at his going down sometimes they appear of a bright blue like sapphire, and sometimes like the variably colours of a prism, exceeding in lustre the richest gems in the world, disposed in shapes wonderful to behold, all glittering with a lustre that dazzles the eye, and fills the air with astonishing brightness, Smearingburgh harbour, where they landed, was first discovered by the Dutch. Here they erected beds and ARCTIC

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conveniences for boiling the oil from the fat of the whales, instead of barrelling it up to be boiled at home. Here also, allured by the hope of gain, they built a village, and endeavoured to fix a colony : but the first fettlers all perished in the ensuing winter. The remains of the village may be traced to this day; and their stoves, kettles, kardels, troughs, ovens, and other implements, remained in the shape of solid ice long after the utensils themselves were decayed. Our voyagers were told, that the Ruffians have lately attempted the fame thing, and that ten out of fifteen perished last winter in this second attempt. ¶ Where every object is new, it is not easy for a stranger to fix which first to admire. The rocks are striking objects: before a storm they exhibit a fiery appearance, and the sun looks pale upon them, the snow giving the air a bright reflexion. Their summits are almost always involved in clouds, so that it is but just possible to see the tops of them.

Some of these rocks are but one stone from bottom to top, appearing like an old decayed ruin.18

by their snowy surfaces; the gloomy shade pre-sented by the adjoining or intermixed mountains and rocks, perpetually “ covered with a mourning veil of black lichens,” with the sudden transitions into a robe of purest white, where patches or beds of snow occur, present a variety and extent of contrast altogether peculiar; which, when enlightened by the occasional ethereal brilliancy of the Polar sky, and harmonized in its serenity with the calmness of the ocean, constitute a picture both novel and magnificent.

There is, indeed, a kind of majesty, not to be conveyed in words, in these extraordinary accumulations of snow and ice in the valleys, and in the rocks above rocks, and peaks above peaks, in the mountain groups, seen rising above the ordinary elevation of the clouds, and terminating occasionally in crests of everlasting snow, especially when you approach the shore under shelter of the impenetrable density of a summer fog; in which case the fog sometimes disperses like the drawing of a curtain, when the strong contrast of light and shade, heightened by a cloudless atmosphere and powerful sun, bursts on the senses in a brilliant exhibition, resembling the production of magic.19

When the camp was put in order, the surrounding views of mountains and ice on the other side of the fjord were illuminated by the midnight sun. It is almost impossible to do justice in words or even photographs to the beauty of this area with the jagged peaks of its tall black mountains contrasting with the shifting colors of glaciers and snow in the changing light of the midnight sun. In those nights of midnight sun we enjoyed every hour of being on bear watch. In 1820, William Scoresby described the mountainous landscape of Spitsbergen in his important and now classic text on the Arctic, An Account Of The Arctic Regions, With A History And Description Of The Northern Whale-Fishery:

The location of our base camp was north of Scheibukta where we could look out over the beautiful glacier Scheibreen. The place was historically known as English Bay, which was sometimes a name applied to maps of a wider range of Sørgattet and Bjørnfjorden (not the English Bay that Dufferin anchored in as that is English Bay in Vorlandsundet). The area had been part of the earlier whaling and had been mentioned by Martens. Not far south from our camp we found a double grave that was probably from the seventeenth century. Often our discussions around a campfire on the beach or in our working tent in the evenings were about historical events and the stories of those who have come here throughout history. A recurring theme was overwintering in Spitsbergen. We had all the modern high tech equipment and clothing and could not imagine being forced to overwinter. One of the stories that come to mind is of course the first overwinterings. In 1630, an involuntary overwintering in Spitsbergen took place in Bellsund. This was the first overwintering in Svalbard. Eight English whalers were forgotten and left behind by their ship. When spring came and ships returned they were all found alive. An account of their ordeals was published by the sailor Edward Pellham, titled Gods Power and Provi- dence: Shewed, In the Miracvlous Preservation and Deliverance of Eight Englishmen, Left by Mischance In Green-land Anno 1630… published in London in 1631 by John Partridge. It became very popular

Spitzbergen and its islands, with some other countries within the Arctic circle, exhibit a kind of scenery which is altogether novel. The principal objects which strike the eye, arc innumerable mountainous peaks, ridges, precipices, or needles, rising immediately out of the sea, to an elevation of 3000 or 4000 feet, the colour of which, at a moderate distance, appears to be blackish shades of brown, green, grey and purple; snow or ice in stripe or patches, occupying the various clefts and hollows in the sides of the hills, capping some of the mountain summits, and filling with extended beds the most considerable valleys; and ice of the glacier form, occurring at intervals all along the coast, in particular situations as already described, in prodigious accumulations. The glistening or vitreous appearance of the iceberg precipices; the purity, whiteness, and beauty of the sloping expanse, formed 68

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van der Brugge were successful and made it through the winter. They stayed in a hut at Smeerenburg in what was then known as Mauritius Bay (or also on the charts Hollandsche Bay) from August 30, 1633, to May 27, 1634. They prepared themselves well by hunting, making sure they had meat in storage and on the slopes of today’s Holländarberget they also picked “salad,” which might have been scurvy grass (Cochlearia officinalis) and perhaps mountain sorrel (Oxyria digyna), in an attempt to keep from being affected by the feared scurvy. Further they made sure to keep themselves busy throughout the dark and cold Arctic winter. The cold proved a dangerous enemy, though, exemplified in the journal description of trying to secure a dead whale found on September 14. The weather being calm, foggy, and cold with occasional clearing and sun, later, however, again foggy and cold and the day after, frost, fog, and drift-snow. This damp and foggy weather with wind is really cold in Spitsbergen. They worked very hard on the wale and were exposed to the wet cold and Brugge gives a horrific account of the frozen hands of the crewman Jan Kunst. Brugge had to act as doctor based on written instructions that had been obtained from various surgeons. They did not have a professional medical doctor in their overwintering group:

Opposite page: Marten’s panorama of Danskegattet in De Noordsche Wereld, 1685.

Print by Cornelis Decker and Jacobus Harrewijn.

This image was copied and printed in the 1694 English version of Martens journey to Spitsbergen. Marked I in this print is Dead-man’s Island. According to Martens, the burial ground for the dead from the Dutch whaling station (Harlinger Kocherey, 1675) Cookery of Harlem (1694) located in today’s Virgohamna.

“In the middle of this Harbour is an island in the Cut C marked with i , which is called the Dead-man’s Island, because they bury the dead men there after this man- ner; They are put into a Coffin, and covered with a heap if large stones, and notwithstanding all this, they are sometimes eaten by the white Bears.’’ [Martens, 24:1694].

This page: Pieter Goos, 1657, “Spitzberga” in De Lichtende Columne ofte Zee-Spiegel originally published by Jan Jansz, Amsterdam 1651. Courtesy of National Library Spain.

On the 20th, there was a strong N.E. wind, with cold weather and frost. On the same day the cold manifested itself in the fingers of one of our comrades (named Jan Kunst), which we considered to have been caused by our last journey to the whale. We poulticed the fingers with sap of trees, and washed them with water and vinegar in equal quantities; also with olive oil and No. 4 oil—all according to the list given us by various surgeons. The said Kunst also got a great blood-sore on each arm, so that his arms became thickly swollen, and gave him great pain. I employed our list as before. We prayed that God would grant him a happy issue, and preserve us from graver ills. (...)

On the 22nd, the wind N.E., with fog and drift-snow Since we found that in melting the snow for cooking-water, refreshment, and other purposes, we used about two and a-half quarters of coal per week, whilst we had been allowed no more than thirty quarters for nine months, we were com- pelled to look for more coal in the other tents; and in the event of our not having found any, we should have been compelled to strip our tents betimes and set to work. But according to what was already apparent, it was not advis- able to wait until the time we should require the coal in the dark, cold winter, since it could not then be done without great danger and trouble. On the same day, I found that most of Jan Kunst’s fingers began to fester, some of which I

reading in its time. This success story of overwintering helped in the decision three years later of eight Dutch whalers to volunteer to overwinter in the Arctic to protect equipment and huts at the Noordsche Company whaling stations at Jan Mayen Island and Smeerenburg in Spitsbergen.

This was initiated in reaction to the Dutch station in Jan Mayen being plundered by Danish and Basque whalers led by Johannes Braem and Jean Vrolicq in 1632 due to a dispute over whaling rights in Smeerenburg.

Two groups were therefore left to overwinter in 1633, seven men on Spitsbergen and seven men on Jan Mayen. The overwinterers on Jan Mayen all died. The group on Spitsbergen led by captain Jacob Segersz 70

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opened somewhat with my penknife, and pressed the dirty matter out from under the nails; so that the said Kunst, through all the straining both in his fingers and arms, nearly swooned with pain. In the night the wind rose high, with snow. (...) On the 25th, the weather and wind as before. We found that, by reason of the N. wind, that had now been blowing some days, divers pieces of ice had made their ap- pearance near the mouth of the North Bay. Early in the night I was awakened from my sleep by the said Kunst, who was suffering insupportable pain in his fingers. At his request, I opened them with my penknife, for want of other instruments, from the first joint to the tips, and found some matter at the bone; from which I presumed it to be whitlow, and employed remedies according to our list.20

Eventually Kunst recovered and they managed to stay healthy and without further major injuries. Unfortunately this successful winter was followed by tragedy when the Noordsche Company employed another group of men for the winter of 1634/1635, who all died of scurvy. After that, the idea of colonizing Spitsbergen by four-season establishments was abandoned. Brugge’s journal was first published in 1634 in Amsterdam by Gillis Joosten Saeghman as: Journael, of dagh-register, gehouden by de seven matroosen, in haer overwitneren op Spitsbergen in Maurits Bay : gelegen in Groenlandt…

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There are seven large Ice-Mountains in a Line in these Countries, that lye between the high Rocks, which look a glorious blew colour, as also is the Ice, with a great many cracks and Holes in them; they are hollowed out, melted away, and cut in Groves by the rain and snow-water that runs down; they are increased greatly by the Snow, as the other Ice that swimmeth in the Sea is also: they are augmented likewise by the melted Snow from the Rocks, and from the Rain that falls on them.

—Friedrich Martens, 1671

Opposite page: Danskeneset, Approximate camera position: N 79° 39’57’’ E 11° 02’57’’.

View east, southeast from the cairn close to the expedition base camp in 2012.Reference image by Gerard De Geer, 1899, visible glaciers: Frambreen, Sellströmbreen, Brattekleivbreen, Gullmarbreen, Smeerenburgbreen.

Pages 76–77: Ice caves, Smeerenburgbreen, 2012.

Page 79: Magdalenefjorden, view south from north side of the bay 2012. Camera position: N 79° 34’59’’ E 10° 56’54’’.

Reference image: 1861 lithograph after photographs

by Axel Goës published in Karl Chydenius, 1865, Svenska Expeditionen till Spetsbergen år 1861 under ledning af Otto Torell, Stockholm. Glaciers from left to right: Waggonwaybreen, Brokebreen, “The Hanging Glacier,” Gullybreen, and Adambreen.

Pages 80–81: Amsterdamøya, Gjøavatnet, Annabreen. Top panorama: Nils Strindberg, August 12, 1896. Courtesy of Grenna Museum. Bottom panorama: September 10 2011.

Pages 82–83: Danskeneset, night view east from basecamp, July 2012.

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Opposite page: Magdalenefjorden, Waggonwaybreen and trimlines, 2012.

Pages 86–87: Scheibreen, landing site 2012.

Pages 88–89: Holmiabukta, image taken from Sallyhamna south towards Drottenfjellet and Holmiabreen, July, 2012.

Inserted image: Axel Enwall, August 21, 1872. Only faint traces remain of the glacier visible in Enwall’s image.

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Opposite page: Returning to Smeerenburg after a long hike and a polar bear encounter.

Meeting with tourists on the tourist cruiser Isbjรถrn II.

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Opposite page: Base camp at Danskeneset, Danskøya, 2012.

Pages 94–95: View south from the cross on Albertøya, 2012 (bottom).

Reference image: Nils Strindberg 1896.

Courtesy of Grenna Museum.

Pages 96–97: Magdalenefjorden, Buchanbreen, reference image: 1891, photographer unknown, image taken on Henri de Bourbon’s expedition with Fleur de Lys, 1891. Courtesy of the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Right image: 2011 from Trankollane Mountains with M/S Stockholm.

Page 98: Fuglefjorden, Svidtjodbreen southwest, 2011.

Page 99: Fuglefjorden, Svidtjodbreen #2, 2011.

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Opposite page: Smeerenburgbreen, southwest corner, 2012.

Pages 102–103: Svidtjodbreen, after the storm, July 2012. Reference image on page 102, 1875 foldout panorama based on photographs by Axel Enwall, from Kjellman’s book Svenska Polar-Expeditionen år 1872–1873 under ledning af A. E. Nordenskiöld. Reference panorama collage on page 103: Axel Enwall 1872.

Courtesy Stockholm University except inserted plate number three from the right courtesy of Swedish Royal Academy of Science.

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Opposite page: Amsterdamøya, view south across Smeerenburg, 2012.

Reference image: Gerard de Geer, 1899.

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eside our camp was a cairn. On a closer look at the views from the camp, I recognized the scenery from a number of images I had with me. It turned out that we were camped where the Swedish geologist Gerard De Geer photographed in 1899 during an expedition that belonged to the Swedish-Russian Arc-of-Meridian Expedition 1898–1902. De Geer had taken a panorama that was almost 360 degrees with the camera placed at the cairn (it is most likely that he built the cairn as it was common practice for the survey photography he did). I rephotographed the view towards the east and south. De Geer’s pictures feature the glaciers Frambreen, Sällströmbreen, Bratteklevbreen, Gullmarbreen, and the mighty Smeerenburgbreen. Today you do not see Frambreen or Sällströmbreen as they have retreated a good bit. Bratteklevbreen and Gullmarbreen have lost both volume and their contact with the sea and in the 2012 photograph of Smeerenburgbreen, trim lines shows clear traces in the landscape of how the glacier once lay, which becomes evident in comparison with De Geer’s images.

The first local map of Spitsbergen’s northwest whaling area including Amsterdamøya and Danskøya is according to my knowledge the 1642 watercolor version of the map of “Hollantsche Bay” that I found in a collection of “Vingboons-atlas” at the online Atlas of Mutual Heritage with directions to the Dutch National Archive. In the archive’s Leupe Catalogue the description of the map is: “Kaart voorstellende een ‘besonder teijckenge (sic) van de Hollansche baij, Noordergat, Middelgat, Robbebaij, Suijdergat’ bij het eiland Amsterdam en het Deensche eiland bij Spitsbergen. Met loodingen. 1642.” It is not entirely clear who made the 1642 map, as it is undated and a loose print in the collection of “Vingboons-atlas.”21 Jan Jansz. published an updated version of the map as his “De Hollantsche ofte Mourits-Bay,” an engraved map published in De Lichtende Columne ofte Zee-Spiegel in Amsterdam in 1651. This is the first printed version of a local map of the whaling area in northwest Spitsbergen. To identify the plate of the 1651 version of this map, the number 22 1/2 is printed in the lower right-hand corner. Jacob Aertsz Colom published a woodcut copy of Jan Jansz.’s 1651 map of “Hollantsche Bay.” It was published by Colom in his De Groote Lichtende ofte Vyerighe Colom over de zeecusten van ‘t Wester, Ooster, en Noorder Vaerwater in Amsterdam in 1652. Jansz.’s map seems to be the first where two glaciers are featured on

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Top: The 1642 watercolour version of the map of “Hollantsche Bay” from “Vingboon’s atlas.” Courtesy of the Dutch National Archive. Bottom: Jan Jansz, 1651, “De Hollantsche ofte Mourits-Bay,” engraved map published in De Lichtende Columne ofte Zee-Spiegel.

This version is from Wieder, 1919. This is the first printed local map of the whaling area in Northwest Spitsbergen.

It also seems to be the first map where two glaciers are each marked as “ysbergh.”

Judging from their positions, they are most likely today’s Kennedybreen (left) and Frambreen. On Vingboon’s map the glaciers are not marked and it lacks the detail of Jansz’s map.

the map, each marked as “ysbergh.” On the Vingboons map the glaciers are not marked and it lacks the detail of Jan Jansz.’s map of the bay.

Judging from the positions of the glaciers it is most likely today’s Kennedybreen and Frambreen. Jan Jansz.’s De Lichtende Columne ofte Zee-Spiegel was republished by Pieter Goos in 1657. I came across a copy of that edition in the National Library of Spain and on the map of Spitsbergen entitled “Spitzberga” the two ”ysberghen” are featured as on the local map from 1651, “De Hollantsche ofte Mourits-Bay,” and are most likely today’s Kennedybreen (north) and Frambreen. The two glaciers located on the east coast of Vasahalvøya across Smeerenburgfjorden as viewed from Smeerenburg on Amsterdamøya were drawn in 1773 on Phipps’s expedition. Philippe d’Auvergne was a young midshipman on Phipps’s expedition who made several drawings during the visit in Spitsbergen and this particular view of an iceberg is mentioned by Phipps in his book as having been made at the site where they arranged their scientific instruments on Amsterdamøya, as marked on the chart made

by Constantine Phipps:

or Frambreen. William Beechey writes in his 1843 book A Voyage Of Discovery Towards The North Pole, Performed In His Majesty’s Ships Dorothea And Trent, Under The Command Of Captain David Buchan, R.N.; 1818; To Which Is Added, A Summary Of All The Early Attempts To Reach The Pacific

By Way Of The Pole of this glacier as appearing the same when visited by Buchan in 1818, forty-five years after Phipps’s description.

John Clevely’s 1774 version of “View of an iceberg” in Spitsbergen. Courtesy of the British Museum. Clevely’s version of the glacier is based on a field sketch by Philippe d’Auvergne from the 1773 Phipps expedition.

The glacier is possibly either Kennedybreen or Frambreen, or more likely a combination of them.

The surface of this plane is occasionally rendered hard and crisp by frost, and is then capable of being traversed on foot, but in so doing it is necessary to guard against the danger of falling into the fissures, which are sometimes both numerous and of considerable depth. Like the southern glacier, streams of water from the thawing snow around fall in bold cascades into these fissures, and rush into the icy bowels of the berg, there to be converted anew into ice, or to find an exit at the face of the glacier. In the large iceberg at Dane’s Gat, one of these streams was in constant operation during the day, gushing out of the perpendicular face of the glacier and falling into the sea, while another was discharged at the head of a cavern at the surface of the sea(…) In Captain Phipps’ view of this glacier, taken in 1773, a cave and cascade are both represented.

Opposite to the place where the instruments stood, was one of the most remarkable Icebergs in this country. Icebergs are large bodies of ice filling the vallies between the high mountains ; the face towards the sea is nearly perpendicular, and of a very lively light green colour. That represented in the engraving, from a sketch taken by Mr.D’Auvergne upon the spot, was about three hundred feet high, with a cascade of water issuing out of it. The black mountains, white snow, and beautiful colour of the ice, make a very romantick and uncommon picture. Large pieces frequently break off from the Icebergs, and fall with great noise into the water : we observed one piece which had floated out into the bay, and grounded In twentyfour fathom; it was fifty feet high above the surface of the water, and of the same beautiful colour as the Iceberg.22

Beechey returned to the glacier and its position, also giving the location of Buchan’s anchor site in Smeerenburgfjorden outside of Amsterdamøya (positioned close to the 1896 anchor site of Fram as seen in Strindberg’s 1897 map of the area): Nearly opposite the anchorage of the ships, there was situated one of those stupendous formations of ice for which the island of Spitzbergen is remarkable. It occupied a deep valley, formed between black rocky mountains ; its face was about three hundred feet in height, and nearly perpendicular, and towards its southern extremity there was a stream of water gushing out of it.

Near its centre, according to the view given of it by Mr. D’Auvergne, who accompanied Captain Phipps, there was a deep cavern, which presented nearly the same appearance as it did when visited by Captain Buchan’s expedition, forty-five years afterwards. Large pieces of ice frequently broke away from the face of this glacier during the time the ships were at anchor, one of which grounded in 144 feet water, and reached 50 feet above the sea, making its whole length 194 feet.23

The view of the glacier is looking east across Smeerenburgfjorden from Smeerenburgsletta. The English painter John Clevely made a version of d’Auvergne’s glacier in 1774 (View of an Iceberg). A print by W. Byrne of View of an Iceberg based on the sketch by Philippe d’Auvergne was published in 1774 in Constantine John Phipps’s A voyage towards the North Pole, undertaken by His Majesty’s Command 1773. Phipps’s remark that the glacier is the one across from the location marked as the site for the scientific instruments leaves us with either Kennedybreen (see page 122) 106

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Opposite page: Magdalenefjorden, Gravneset, 2012.

Reference image: Lyngaas, 1939. Courtesy of the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Note the “hanging glacier” in the image from 1939.

particular glacier made in Spitsbergen. Neither Phipps nor d’Auvergne specify which of the glaciers in view from that position this is. A possible solution is that it is actually a combination of the two. In the north front of Kennedybreeen is Likneset, an earlier burial ground for the dead from Smeerenburg and one of the largest graveyards in Spitsbergen. That is depicted in the image. The background of jagged and rugged mountains and the way they are displayed in the image looks more like the background of Frambreen. Neither d’Auvergne nor Phipps name the two glaciers nor does Lutwidge identify them in his text more than as “one of the most remarkable Icebergs.”

tusks of morses, or sea-cows, which gave the bay its name of Tusk Bay [Magdalenefjorden]. We also found there a quantity of head of deer, and some wool like sheep’s wool. Just S. of the point there was a little cove, like a harbour.25

We came to Magdalenefjorden on July 15. The weather was calm with lightly clouded skies. The sea on the route down to the fjord from Danskeneset had been rougher than we’d imagined. We had been warned that we would face strong currents from different directions with difficult conditions for our Zodiak in the exit of Sørgattet and until we rounded Knattodden. Peter Johansson, our Zodiak driver, was not very concerned about the currents after having trained for many years in different weather conditions on the lake Vättern in Sweden. However, he was more aware of the heavy swells we got in the back at the entrance to the fjord. My second field assistant Thomas Nydén and I stayed low in the boat in silence. Peter did, however, manage to get us into the fjord and we landed on the north shore as planned. We had already agreed that the greatest risk to our fieldwork in Svalbard was the sea and not the polar bears. Martens describes the mountains in the fjord as follows:

MAGDALENEFJORDEN

Barentsz’s journal recorded June 25 as the day of the first visit to today’s Magdalenefjorden. The location of Gravneset was noted but not named

by Barentsz and a more detailed description of the fjord was not given, nor is it found in Gerrit de Veer’s 1598 version of the discovery of Svalbard. De Veer puts down the date of their visit to Magdalenefjorden as June 24, staying anchored there for one day before sailing south.

Gerrit de Veer, 1598: The 24 of June we had a south-west winde, and could not get above the island, and therefore wee sayled backe againe, and found a haven that lay foure [16] myles from the other haven, on the west side of the great haven, and there cast anchor at twelve fadome deepe. There wee rowed a great way in, and went on land; and there wee founde two sea-horses teeth that waighed sixe pound: wee also found many small teeth, and so rowed on board againe.24

At the Magdalen-Haven the Rocks lye in a round or semi-circle, at each side, by one another, stand two high Mountains that are hollow within, as if they were dug out: after the fashion of a Breast-work, with points and cracks at the top, like Battlements; at the bottom, within the Hill, stands a Snow-hill, that doth reach to the very top of the Mountain, like a Tree with branches and twigs; the other Rocks look rudely.26

In 1682 a very simple local map of Magdalenefjorden appeared in Jan van Loon and Claes Jansz Vooght’s De Nieuwe Groote Lichtende Zee Fackel published in Amsterdam by Johannes van Keulen, where Waggonwaybreen, Gullybreen, and Adambreen are marked as “ysberg” but not named. It is not until 1807 that Captain Philip Broke on HMS Shannon makes a first detailed mapping of the fjord with depth markings and creates charts where glaciers and surrounding mountains are named.

David Buchan’s Expedition in 1818 revised Broke’s work and made further mapping in the area around the fjord where also William Beechey and Charles C. Palmer made a series of drawings showing glaciers and the fjord’s character. The assignment from the British Admiralty for Buchan’s expedition noted in particular naval officer William Beechey’s

Willem Barentsz, 1596: ”We turned off E. and went S.E. ¼ S. for 8 leagues up to noon on the 25th.

Then we came near land, sailing with the wind N.N.E for 2 leagues. We dropped anchor behind a point, with sandy bottom as 18 fathoms, and it seemed to us that there was a flood and ebb, for we found, in twelve hours time, a current from the S.E and another from the N.E., strong enough to break the points of our anchors below the water. ¶ “This bay, where we were, went right in with a cove at the end. On the S. coast there was a low point, behind which one could navigate, entering near the N. coast, and lie there behind the point, sheltered from all winds. Our men found there 108

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Top: Barthélemy Lauvergne 1839, view from Gravneset made during the La Recherche Expedition.

Bottom: Gerhard von Yhlen 1861, view from Gravneset made during Otto Torell’s Expedition.

considerable skill as a draftsman, which meant that they did not see the need to send an artist with them: Artist on board William Beechey as to the instructions: And, although you are not to be drawn aside from the main object of the service on which you are employed, so long as you may be enabled to make any progress, yet, whenever you may be impeded by ice, or find it necessary to approach the coasts of the continent, or islands, you are to cause views of bays, harbours, headlands, &c, to be carefully taken, to illustrate and explain the track of the vessels, or such charts as you may be able to make; on which duty you will be assisted by Lieutenant Beechey, whose skill in drawing is represented to be so considerable, as to supersede the necessity of appointing a professional draughtsman.27

David Buchan, 1818 map of Magdalenefjorden. The Norwegian Polar Institute, digital map of Magdalenefjorden, 2012. Note the new bay on the south coast in 2012. This is the site of the retreating Gullybreen.

It was Beechey who in 1843 published the official account of the expedition. Beechey and Palmer came to Magdalenefjorden twenty years before photography and their written description is as close to a visual description of the landscape as possible, avoiding overly wordy aesthetic corrections of the observed views. Palmer was onboard Buchan’s ship HMS Dorothea and made a panoramic view of the fjord from the ship but it was not published in the 1843 book. Beechey wrote on their arrival in the bay:

In 1839, the French artist Barthélemy Lauvergne made a series of watercolor drawings in the area, working alongside the artists August Mayer and François-Auguste Biard who worked in the area for several weeks as part of the La Recherche Expedition. From the French expedition’s visit in the bay we have a rare account of early travel in Spitsbergen by a ARCTIC

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The approach to Magdalenefjorden is a narrow bottleneck, and the bay is surrounded on all sides by granite-mountains, from fifteen to eighteen hundred feet high. Glaciers are located between the mountains and becomes thicker and thicker every year, when a few short weeks in the summer is not able to overcome the large masses of snow that covers the entire Spitsbergen for months. It is anticipated that all the mountain tops, over time, are to disappear under the ice. In contrast to the alpine glaciers, which are concave, the glaciers on Spitsbergen have a convex surface. (...) ¶ One imagines always Spitsbergen as a barren and silent frozen world, but that is thoroughly wrong – nothing can be compared with the noise at spring thawing up here. Waves hitting the ice blocks and rocks, glaciers calves with deafening crashes, the mountains crack, ice floes are pressed against each other and triggers sounds like -musket volleys, the wind howls and swirls the snow. It is magnificent but frightening as a premonition of the world’s ending, never have I seen or heard anything the likes of what I experienced here, it passes ones wildest fantasies! It is like opening the door to an unreal confusing world that at the same time gives a sensation of fear and ecstasy.29

In their artistic approach the French artists have more in common with Swedish artist Gerhard von Yhlen, who visited the fjord in 1861 on Otto Torell’s Spitsbergen expedition, than the British naval officers on Buchan’s expedition. Torell’s expedition also included the young medical student Axel Goës with his camera. The 1861 expedition is an example of the groundbreaking time between the use of traditional visual techniques such as drawing and painting and the camera – from the relationship between hand and eye to where the relationship is between the eye and the instrumental recording of light through the camera lens. Gerhard von Yhlen’s beautiful lithographs from the expedition are characteristic of their time and make the landscape into a drama. It is difficult to use these images to more accurately say something about the change in the landscape because of the dramatic effects that the artist seasoned the pictures with. Axel Goës’s original negatives or copies of his photographs are missing. What exists is a foldout panorama in the 1865 publication about the expedition. The detailed lithographed panorama, stated to be made after photographs by Goës,

Magdalena Bay was the first port in which we had anchored in the Polar regions, and there were of course many objects to engage our attention.

We were particularly struck with the brilliancy of the atmosphere, the peaceful novelty of the scene, and the grandeur of the various objects with which Nature has stored these unfrequented regions. ¶ The anchorage is bounded by rugged mountains, which rise precipitously to the height of about three thousand feet. Deep valleys and glens occur between the ranges, the greater part of which are either filled with immense beds of snow, or with glaciers, sloping from the summits of the mountainous margin to the very edge of the sea.28

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woman, Léonie d’Aunet. She wrote a book on her experiences on the expedition published in 1854 and described her meeting with Spitsbergen:

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made it possible to find the camera position in the landscape and the precision of the images provides a good reference point for what the landscape looked like 150 years ago.

British Lieutenant Herbert C. Chermside photographed in Magdalenefjorden as part of Benjamin Lee Smith’s 1873 expedition to Svalbard.

Chermside photographed four glaciers in the fjord. He was positioned at Gravneset when taking the pictures of Waggonwaybreen, Buchanbreen, Gullybreen, and the “hanging glacier.” The latter was the most famous glacier in the area at the time of Chermside’s visit and is marked on both Broke’s and Buchan’s maps. Beechey describes the glacier as the most spectacular in the fjord and enters it also as a benchmark for safe navigation and anchoring in Trinityhamna the cove in the bay.

This page: Magdalenefjorden, William Beechey, 1818.

Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum London.

View west into the bay with glaciers from left to right: Waggonwaybreen, Brokebreen, “The Hanging Glacier,” Gullybreen, and Adambreen.

Opposite page: Magdalenefjorden, Waggonwaybreen a short history.

From top to bottom: Axel Goës, 1861, Herbert C. Chermside, 1872, photographer unknown on Henri de Bourbon’s expedition with Fleur de Lys, 1891 (courtesy of the Norwegian Polar Institute), Erling J. Nødtvedt, 1960 (courtesy of Svalbard Museum), and a panorama from 2012.

glacier at the head of the bay in one with the extremity of the low neck of land called the Burying Ground, and the hanging glacier in a line with and over the S.E. end of the second glacier. Here there are about eleven fathoms’ water ; and vessels must be cautious not to overshoot this spot, as the bottom is rocky in other places, and the water deepens suddenly, particularly towards the second glacier. In approaching this anchorage, care must also be taken to avoid Shannon Rock, which is just under water, and lies south, a quarter of a mile from a flat rock, which will be seen on the north side of the bay. ¶ (…) ¶ In Magdalena Bay there are, as already observed, four of these glaciers, two of which are situated on the southern shore, at the margin of the sea. The third, which I have mentioned ; is bearing the appropriate name of “the Hanging Iceberg,” appears to have accumulated without any lateral support, as though a stream of water had issued from a particular spot and become congealed as it descended ; thus forming a nucleus, which gradually increased, and rose as the stream poured its waters over its accumulating surface, until, in the course of ages, the mass has attained its present bulky dimensions.30

The bay is rendered conspicuous by four glaciers, of which the most remarkable, though the smallest in size, is situated, two hundred feet above the sea, on the slope of a mountain. This glacier, from its peculiar appearance, has been appropriately named the Hanging Iceberg. Its position is such, that it seems as if a very small matter would detach it from the mountain, and precipitate it into the sea. And, indeed, large portions of its front do occasionally break away, and fall with headlong impetuosity upon the beach, to the great hazard of any boat that may chance to be near. ¶ The most convenient anchorage in this bay is situated off the S.E. end of the first of those glaciers, the marks for which are the centre of the large

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We visited the place where the famous glacier had once been, on the steep slope between the Trankollane mountains above Gravneset.

The glacier is clearly marked on Goës’s panorama and Beechey’s drawings. Nils Strindberg, the photographer of Andrée’s polar expedition visited the fjord in 1896 and photographed the glacier from Gravneset. In images taken on tourist cruises between 1905 and 1938, one can see the glacier and then the remains of it slowly diminishing only to disappear completely some time towards the end of the 1950s, early 1960s. Today there is nothing to indicate where the glacier once lay.

On Goës’s panorama, Gullybreen’s powerful front in the fjord is also visible and Chermside photographed its ice wall along the south coast of the fjord’s hillsides. Gullybreen has been a popular tourist destination over the years with a now well-trodden path used to come close to the glacier. It is a glacier that is retreating quickly. The map image from 1818 shows a large glacier front where today’s maps show a new bay where the glacier has receded. The front of the glacier was drawn by Charles Palmer in 1818 on his panorama of the bay and is also marked by Beechey on his view over the bay. In Chermside’s images, the front of the glacier almost connects with Adambreen and the entire south side west of Gravneset appears to be an ice-covered coast. The tourist photographs we have from between 1926 and 1937 show a massive and 113

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Albertøya. Posing at the cross in 1896, Nils Ekholm (left) and Salomon August Andrée, photograph: Nils Strindberg, courtesy of Grenna Museum, and in 2012, Thomas Nydén (left) and Peter Johansson.

impressive glacier coming out into the bay and covering a large portion of the coastline. Today, trimlines bear witness on the volume of ice lost as the glacier retreated. Due to weather changes, we could not fully complete all the planned rephotographs of Gullybreen and we hope to return to be able to fully document one of the most dramatic changes in the area.

From Gravneset I also photographed Buchanbreen, which has lost both contact with the sea and its volume on the mountain, a glacier photographed by Chermside and featuring in a number of images from 1873 onwards. This glacier shares the same fate as the hanging glacier, both gone entirely from the mountain slopes closer to the sea and with their remains found melting away behind the steep ridges of the coastlines.

William Beechey described Waggonwaybreen, the largest of the glaciers in the bay, and gives us a picture of how the glaciers formed the impression of the bay:

perhaps by a sense of the personal danger to which so near an approach must expose the spectator; for large pieces have occasionally broken away from this berg, which have done considerable mischief. The soft blue tint of the a surface of the ice is here also clearly discerned, whilst the long, sparkling icicles pendant from the roofs of the caverns, and a variety of curious shapes, which may also be traced on the face of the glacier, serve greatly to increase the interest and admiration.31

We only have one picture of Waggonwaybreen from Chermside taken from Gravneset and with the expedition ship Diana at anchor in Trinityhamna in front of the glacier. That glacier went far out into the fjord and formed together with Miethebreen and Brokebreen a mighty bottom glacier that gave character to the fjord. Glacier coverage and the fjord’s nineteenth-century character appear partly in Goës’s panorama.

In the 1960s Waggonwaybreen was still relatively large but it has since lost touch with Brokebreen and Miethebreen and much of its volume can only be seen in trimlines on the hillsides. Waggonwaybreen is disappearing from the view on Gravneset. One hundred years after 1861, this mighty glacier had lost its front into the fjord and fifty years after that, the view is no longer comparable when you stand where Chermside or Goës took their pictures.

The fourth, and largest, occupies the head of the bay, and extends from two to three miles inland. Numerous large rents in its upper surface, occasioned, perhaps, either by its own motion or by the subsidence of its foundation, have caused it to be gratuitously named the “Waggon Way,” in accordance with the supposed resemblance which these fissures bear to the ruts left by a waggon. From the circumstance of the sea being of great depth immediately off these glaciers, they are prevented making an undue encroachment upon the bay, and, indeed, from filling it up, which, if the water were shallow, would, in the course of time, inevitably be the case, either by the grounding of the pieces which break away from the frontage, or by the berg finding a foundation to advance upon. At present the warmth of the sea prevents the accumulation of ice below a certain depth, and, during the summer, so far undermines the accumulation of the winter, that large masses fall off by their own superincumbent weight, and are carried out to sea ; so that the berg is thus kept within due bounds. ¶ The frontage of the Waggon Way presents a perpendicular surface of three hundred feet in height, by seven thousand feet in length. Nevertheless, upon so gigantic a scale is all nature around, that although of these stupendous dimensions, neither this glacier, nor any of the numerous and beautiful variety, creates much astonishment in the mind of the beholder until he approaches within the influence of the blink, or luminous haze, which is invariably radiated by large masses of ice. At this distance the wall of ice has an awfully-grand appearance, heightened 114

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ALBERTØYA

A landing on the island in July is associated with actively avoiding attacks

by Arctic terns. We chose the southern most part for landing because of its sheltered position from northern winds and its deep water into a fine gravel beach where it is easy to land the Zodiac and securing equipment.

We then walked along the western coastline of the island and managed to find a passage across to the little hill with the cross without disturbing the nesting birds. The cross was placed on the island in 1869 by visitors from Bremen on the steamer Albert and still remains as a historic marker.32 In 1896, Nils Strindberg used the cross as reference point for a 360° panorama in Smeerenburgfjorden. Axel Enwall, the medical doctor on Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s overwintering expedition in 1872/1873, photographed from a point just below the cross on the north side on July 18, 1873. He took a panorama across Smeerenburgfjorden of Vasahalvøya’s west coast with its glaciers. We came to this spot of Albertøya on the same date as Enwall, in July 2012 and made an effort to go down 115

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Opposite page: Albertøya, view across Smeerenburgfjorden, July 18, 2012, and Axel Enwall, July 18, 1873.

Courtesy of Grenna Museum.

We came to work at Albertøya on the same date as Enwall and snow conditions were similar. Visible glaciers: Kennedybreen (left in Enwall’s image but not visible from this position in 2012) and Frambreen (right).

Camera position is from below the cross on the north east coast of the island.

Arctic terns stopped all attempts at working more in detail with rephotographing Enwall’s images.

This page: Amsterdamøya, Thomas Nydén at Gjøavtnet.

We were rewarded with great fly-fishing of Arctic char.

GJØAVATNET, AMSTERDAMØYA

The coast off Gjøavatnet is exposed from the north, usually with severe swells rolling in towards the rocky shore. After three attempts to make a landing there by boat, we decided to go on foot to Gjøavatnet from Smeerenburg. The terrain closer to the sea is quite easy to walk. The boulder-covered terrain on the sloping hills of the island, however, requires that one keep an eye out for bears. We had almost come all the way to Gjøaneset, with the lake just on the other side of a low mountain ridge, when we became aware of a yellowish stain in the landscape.

While we used binoculars to confirm that it was a bear, it noticed us too and rose, looking a little surprised, trying to get its bearings on what was coming towards it. Both parties decided to turn around and go in different directions. We went back to Smeerenburg to the boat. The sea was now completely calm and we decided to make one last attempt to get to the lake via the sea. This time we succeeded. The primary goal of our visit was to rephotograph Annabreen. However, there was a further reason for our efforts to take us into the small lake. It has a good population of Arctic char. While we were photographing on the site we could see fish rising to the surface of the lake, which raised our expectations of the most northern fly-fishing experience for all of us. Especially my two field assistants, who are dedicated fly fishermen, enjoyed the opportunity to relax a little with a fly rod in hand. Furthermore, fishing for Arctic char with floating line and nymph on Svalbard was an unforgettable experience that could be added to all the amazing moments that the privilege of working in the field in the Arctic wilderness gave us. The fish was a welcome fresh addition to our provisions. The catch was enjoyed later that evening with Sysselman in Magdalenefjorden. For me Gjøavatnet is special in many ways. It is a beautiful place with its exposed location and dramatic backdrop of mountains that rise around the lake.

The place was visited in 1861 by Otto Torell’s expedition that described the glacier that spread out from Hollendarberget and one of the streams of ice coming down the slope into the lake, which with its remarkable barrier against the sea puzzled visitors and not least geologist Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand.

from the high point and the cross to take pictures from Enwall’s position but this proved more difficult than we had imagined. Suddenly we were surrounded by an increasing number of Arctic terns that attacked us. I took a quick series of images sheltered by my field assistants. Then we retreated back to the cross and everyone was happy. From the cross I took a 360° panorama after Strindberg’s pictures. The view out over Smeerenburgfjorden and the glaciers on the other side of the fjord has changed a lot since Enwall and Strindberg were there. We also went by boat along the coast of Vasahalvøya in Smeerenburgfjorden, starting in Bjørnfjorden and up to Likneset for closer monitoring of glacier fronts. Trimlines and comparative pictures speak for themselves in terms of the retreating ice masses. One wonders constantly what the landscape looked like in the seventeenth century when Friedrich Martens came to Spitsbergen?

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During a short stop at Amsterdam Eiland’s north side in the vicinity of a large glacier, Dunér undertook a mountaineering excursion, in which he was seemingly threatened by great danger, as a large rock at the top of a pile of 117

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stones came loose from its position and with a tremendous crash rolled down the steep bank a few moments after he had passed the same spot.

Through a thick haze of fine drizzle the trip continued, until another landing was undertaken, in order to, as far as the fog allowed, take a closer look at the interesting glacier. Since several ice streams have united into one, this meets a steep rock wall and a wall of ice is formed upon it. It then collects again and plunges once more down a rock wall, whereupon it flows with a slow slope into the lake. However, it did not end in the open sea but in an entirely different lake that was separated from it through a narrow strip thence, and which was so deep that blocks of ice that had detached from the glacier and that lay, according to an approximate calculation, thirty-six feet below the water surface, floated about quite freely. How this basin was formed is difficult to explain. Blomstrand assumes that a shallow existed in the sea bay estuary from the beginning and the detached pieces of ice from the glacier over it eventually deposed rocks and gravel, which they brought with them.33

might be told about in future versions of the book Place names of Svalbard or introduced on maps as former glacial sites, but they are more likely to be forgotten. I visited the place for the first time in September 2011, along with my good friend and colleague the glaciologist Pelle Holmlund from Stockholm University. Since I am a photographer and researcher based in the history of photography I have benefitted tremendously from interdisciplinary collaborations in order to understand and communicate what is happening with the landscape in northwestern Svalbard. Pelle could confirm that Annabreen is an almost extreme example of a glacier that will soon be gone. The ice still left where the glacier once spread out on the hillside is melting quickly. The entire glacier has shrunk away up on the mountain and Retziusbreen does not even reach half way to the sea today. The Arctic silence is amplified by the sound from the melting glacier that are literally disappearing while we watch.

Our most northern glaciers to rephotograph were Larusbreen and Svitjodbreen in Fuglefjorden. When the weather seemed stable on July 22 we set off on the longest journey we dared to do in our small boat.

Smeerenburgfjorden was calm and the sun was shining from a clear sky and warmed wonderfully. Not good photo weather but good conditions for successfully taking us to Fuglefjorden. I had located the island from which Axel Enwall had probably photographed and that was our destination. In the Arctic it is nature that determines what is possible, and when we got to the entrance of Fuglefjorden we encountered extensive streams of ice from the large Svitjodbreen at the end of the bay. We therefore had to change our plans and land on Fugleholmane’s southernmost island. This was northwest of Enwall’s position, but we chose that island as it offered a way out of the fjord should ice conditions worsen.

Enwall visited the fjord on August 30, 1872, in the company of several other members of the Nordenskiöld expedition including F. R. Kjellman, who described Enwall’s work in the following way:

Opposite page: Amsterdamøya, northeast coast, 2012. In the background remains of Annabreen on the slopes of Hollendarberget can be seen.

This page: “Karta Öfver Amsterdamön med Omgifningar” (map of Amsterdamøya and surroundings), made by Nils Strindberg in 1897.

Back in 1861 the glacier was a wall of ice entering the north end of the lake. When Nils Strindberg photographed this place in August 1896 during his mapmaking, the glacier still presented a wall of ice into the lake. The photographs of the site resulted in one of the finest panoramas of his work and he also named the glacier Anna’s Glacier after his fiancée.

She who was to wait for him for more than ten years, after he had vanished into the frozen north with Andrée’s expedition balloon in 1897, before marrying an Englishman and moving to Devon. She happened to be in Stockholm in 1930 when Strindberg was found together with the rest of the expedition on Kvitøya northeast of Svalbard and his remains were brought back to Sweden. She died in 1949 and, as agreed with her husband, her heart was removed and on September 4, Strindberg’s birthday, buried beside him in Stockholm. Perhaps the most remarkable love story in the history of polar exploration. The glacier front, mirrored in the water, in Strindberg’s photograph is gone. The volume of the glacier is sunken into the mountainside and the valley it once filled. The ice streams described in 1861 are gone. This glacier facing the shores of the Polar Sea will soon to be completely gone. It is a dramatic change in the landscape. The mountains and the rocky ground are soon to be the only things left mirrored in the lake. The story of Anna and Nils is literally fading away from the desolate Arctic landscape, as it will make no sense to have glaciers that no longer exist on future maps. Their sites 118

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One view after another is illustrated in his camera, different from each other and, as you’d think, each surpassing the other in magnificent wildness and impressive grandeur. Some of these are selected and engraved on the glass plate immersed in a silver bath, fixed in the dark tent and preserved.34

The image Enwall takes of Larusbreen (named by Gerard de Geer in 1913) is one of the more famous pictures from that expedition and was used for example as an engraving of an Arctic landscape from “Foul Bay, 119

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Opposite page: Fuglefjorden, Larusbreen, July 31, 2012.

Images taken from Sysselman’s boat as we passed Fuglefjorden in the morning after the storm that destroyed our camp.

Spitzbergen” in Élisée Reclus’s 1882 edition of The Earth and its Inhabitants. The image appears in different versions in different editions. Enwall also takes an impressive panorama of Svitjodbreen. Unfortunately, the conditions for rephotographing the panorama were too poor to succeed during our visit. A 2012 version of Svitjodbreen was instead made when we took up Sysselman’s field inspectors Frede Lamo and Anders Voss Thingnes on their offer to spend the last days of our time in the field with them in the historic hunting cabin of Sallyhamna. The offer was welcomed and the hut felt like a luxury hotel after weeks in a tent on Danskeneset. We were also lucky when nature showed its full strength on our last night before MS Farm was scheduled to pick us up. What was predicted as a harder gale in the weather projections became a storm that came in from the southwest and hit our camp with full force. We felt the storm in the hut of Sallyhamna but without any discomfort. The day after the storm we passed Fuglefjorden and took some pictures including a panorama of Svitjodbreen in dramatic light that rendered the fjord in almost graphically blue-grey to black tones with fresh snow on the peaks and mountain slopes. An incredibly beautiful version of Spitsbergen which may well be described as “magnificent wildness” to quote Kjellman. When we later arrived in Danskeneset we could already see from a distance that our camp was gone. The devastation was massive and all our tents were scattered hundreds of meters away. Equipment was spread around the campsite and a fireworks of tripwires must have exploded at the camp when the storm passed. The rest of the day was devoted to gathering the remains of the camp and drying as much as possible of everything that was soaked at a great fire. In the calm after the storm the weather was as beautiful as you could wish for. When Farm came and picked us up, the sea was dead calm and we had a return trip to Longyearbyen under the midnight sun where we could follow the west coast and get an unusual view of the “seven ice-mountains” down to Prince Charles’s Vorland.

Martens wrote of the same journey and views when passing in 1671: There are seven large Ice-Mountains in a Line in these Countries, that lye between the high Rocks, which look a glorious blew colour, as also is the Ice, with a great many cracks and Holes in them; they are hollowed out, melted away, and cut in Groves by the rain and snow-water that runs down; they are increased greatly by the Snow, as the other Ice that swimmeth in the Sea is also: they are augmented likewise by the melted Snow from the Rocks, and

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Phipps’ view east across Smeerenburgfjorden, Kennedybreen (left) and Frambreen. Top panorama

by Anders Beer Wilse 1908.

Courtesy of Norsk Folkemuseum. Below: 2012 view in the same calm weather conditions.

FOOTNOTES 1

Friedrich Martens, “Voyage into Spitsbergen and Greenland,” in John Narborough,

Jasmen Tasman, John Wood, and Frederick Marten (sic), An Account of several late Voyages & Discoveries to the South and North: Towards The Streights of Magelan, the South Seas, the vast Tracts of Land beyond Hollandia Nova, &c. Also Towards Nova Zembla, Greenland or Spitsberg, Groynland or Engrondland, &c. (London: Royal Society, 1694), 18–19. I have used this English version of Martens’s account of his travels to Spitsbergen. It is available in the digital archive of the National Library of Spain in a high-resolution version (http://www.bne.es). Illustrations are similar but not from the same plates and sometimes of better quality in “Gedenckwaerdige Reys Van Frederick Martens, Hamburger, Gedaen, met d’aldernauwkeurighste Opmerckingh, nae Spitsbergen, of Groenland; In’t Jaer 1671” in Simon De Vries, De Noordsche Wereld (Amsterdam: Aert Dircksz, 1685), and the two complement each other well (available at https://archive.org). Martens’s important publication on Spitsbergen was originally published in 1675 as Spitzbergische oder Groenlandische Reise Beschreibung, gethan im

from the Rain that falls on them. ¶ These seven Mountains of Ice are esteemed to be the highest in the Country; indeed they shewed very high as we sailed by them, underneath: the Snow look’d dark from the shades of the Skies, which shewed very neat and curious, with blew cracks where the Ice was broken off. About the middle of the Mountains some foggy Clouds hovered over; above these the Snow was very bright. The true Rocks look’t fiery, and the Sun shin’d pale upon them, the Snow giving the Air a bright reflection. They were covered with Clouds, so that you could scarce see the tops of them. Some of these Rocks are but one stone from the bottom to the top, appearing like an old decayed Wall; they smell very sweet, as the green Fields do in our Country in the Spring when it rains. See c c in the Plate C.35

Jahr 1671. Aus eigner Erfahrunge beschrieben, die dazu erforderte Figuren nach dem Leben selbst abgerissen, (so hierbey in Kupffer zu sehen) und jetzo durch den Druck mitgetheilet, (Hamburg: Gottfried Schultze, 1675) (available at http://data.onb.ac.at).

2

See: Mattias Klum and Johan Rockström The Human Quest: Prospering within

Planetary Boundaries (Stockholm: Langenskiöld, 2012). There is a vast number of scientific articles and books published on the subject of the stress on the planet.

Examples are Will Steffen et al., “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship,” (Ambio, 2011, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280–011– 0185–x), a comprehensive overview of the history of human progress leading up to our current situation and a good explanation of issues connected to the Great Acceleration.

A discussion on the history of human relationships with the environment and the seriousness of the current unprecedented situation in human history is provided in

Contemplating the views of the glaciers in the sun made us think of what this land looked like when the Dutch sailed down this route in 1596 or when Martens watched the views from his ship or Chermside and Enwall passing in 1873 or Strindberg and De Geer in 1896. The famous views of the seven ice hills are nothing like the old descriptions.

One wonders what this land will look like to the coming travelers of our grandchildren’s generation compared to the views we record today?

“The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,” Will Steffen et al.

(The Royal Society, 2011, http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org). Jan Zalasiewicz et al.

“The New World of the Anthropocene,” (Environmental Science & Technology, 2010, http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es903118j) offers a perspective on the very unique position for humanity in entering and living a new geological epoch where we are able not only to observe the historical records of an epoch but actually being part of its development, literally living on the Anthropocene strata. In Zalasiewicz’s article, the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene is mentioned as possibly demanding the development of a concept of planetary boundaries offering to define a safe operating space for humanity as proposed by Johan Rockström et al. in “A safe operating

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space for humanity,” (Nature, 2009, http://www.nature.com) where Rockström

Travels, In All Parts Of The World; Many Of Which Are Now First Translated Into

discussed the proposed nine planetary boundaries that we need to respect and try to

English. Digested On A New Plan. Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Kimber and Conrad, 1810), 616.

keep within, for a future with reasonable stability in the Earth’s system as a necessary

(accessed at: https://archive.org) Reference to Backström is also found in C. R.

precondition for human life. See also, James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren:

Sundström, “Svenska upptäcktsresor i Polartrakterna,” Svea 1871 (Stockholm: Bonniers,

The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save

1871), 171–192 (accessed at: http://runeberg.org/svea/1871).

Humanity (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009).

13

3

In 1856, In The Schooner Yacht “Foam,” Iceland, Jan Mayen, And Spitzbergen (London:

Gunnar Brusewitz, Arktisk sommar: Med Ymer genom ishavet, (Nacka:

Lord Dufferin, Letters From High Latitudes; Being Some Account Of A Voyage,

Wahlström & Widstrand, 1981), 148. In 1999 Gunnar Brusewitsz returned to his work

John Murray, 1867), 192 (accessed at: https://archive.org).

from Ymer 80 in the limited edition publication Ishavskust, edited by Charlotte Brusewitsz.

14

4

Greenland’ with sixe English ships and a Pinasse, in the yeere 1613. Written by

Per Kyrre Reymert and Thor B. Arlov,, Svalbard – en ferd i fortidens farvann,

William Baffin, Second Recorded Voyage, “A Journall of the Voyage made to

(Trondheim: Tapir, 2001), 14–17.

Master William Baffin,” in The Voyages Of William Baffin, 1612–1622, ed. Clements E.

5

Markham (London: Hakluyt Society, 1881), 69–70, originally published in 1625

Louwrens Hacquebord and Tialda Haartsen, 400th anniversary of the discovery

of Spitsbergen by the Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz (Groningen: University of

(accessed at: https://archive.org).

Groningen, 1996), 38 (accessed at: https://www.rug.nl/research). For a discussion on

15

historical and contemporary issues of exploitations in the Arctic see: Louwrens

of killing them: Whereto is added the Description of Greenland” (1622), in Samuel

Hacquebord, ed., LASHIPA: History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas

Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Contayning a history of the

(Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing, 2012).

World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others, Vol. XIII (Glasgow:

6

J. Maclehose, 1905), 31, originally published in 1625 (accessed at: https://archive.org).

Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” in Atlantic Monthly, 9 (56), June (1862)

Thomas Edge “The Description of the severall sorts of Whales, with the manner

(accessed at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive). Published in Henry David

16

Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Vol. 5 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and

17

Ibid., 24, 102.

co., 1906) 224 (accessed at: https://archive.org/details/writingsof henryd05thorrich).

18

Skiffington Lutwidge, The Journal Of A Voyage Undertaken by Order of

7

His Present Majesty, For making Discoveries towards the North Pole By The Hon.

Hessel Gerritsz (1613), Histoire du pays nommé Spitzberghe, reprinted in Martin

Martens, “Voyage into Spitsbergen and Greenland,” 24–25.

Conway, Early Dutch and English Voyages to Spitsbergen in the Seventeenth Century,

Commodore Phipps, and Captain Lutwidge, In His Majesty’s Sloops Racehorse and

translated into English by Basil H. Soulsby (London: Hakluyt Society, 1902), 17–18

Carcase (London: F. Newbury, 1774), 43–45 (accessed at: https://archive.org).

(accessed at: https://archive.org).

19

8

Ibid., 21.

Description Of The Northern Whale-Fishery, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: A. Constable & co.,

9

Ibid., 37–38.

1820), 109–110 (accessed at: https://archive.org).

10

Robert Fotherby in Hakluytus Posthumus, Purchas His Pilgrimes Volume XIV

20

William Scoresby, An Account Of The Arctic Regions, With A History And

Segersz Jacob van der Brugge, “Journal Or Day-Book Seven Sailors During

Chap. IV, “A Voyage of Discoverie to Greenland, &c. Anno 1614” (London: Hakluyt

Their Wintering On Spitsbergen In Mauritius Bay, Situated In Greenland, From

Society, 1905), 65. Originally published in 1625 (accessed at: https://archive.org).

The Departure Of The Fishing Vessels Of The Chartered Northern Company, In The

11

Netherlands, On August 30, 1633, Until The Return Of The Aforesaid Vessels On May 27,

William Beechey, A Voyage Of Discovery Towards The North Pole, Performed

In His Majesty’s Ships Dorothea And Trent, Under The Command Of Captain David

1634,” in Martin Conway, Early Dutch and English Voyages to Spitsbergen in the

Buchan, R.N.; 1818; To Which Is Added, A Summary Of All The Early Attempts To

Seventeenth Century, translated into English by J. A. J. De Villiers (London: Hakluyt

Reach The Pacific By Way Of The Pole. By Captain F.W. Beechey, R.N., F.R.S. One Of

Society, 1902), 87–165 (accessed at: https://archive.org). First published in 1634 in

The Lieutenants Of The Expedition (London: Richard Bentley, 1843), 52 (accessed at:

Amsterdam by Gillis Joosten Saeghman as: Journael, of dagh-register, gehouden by

https://archive.org).

de seven matroosen, in haer overwitneren op Spitsbergen in Maurits Bay : gelegen in

12

Groenlandt, t’ zedert het vertreck van de Visschery-Schepen der Geoctroyeerde

John Backström “Account of a Voyage to Spitsbergen in the year 1780,

By S. Backstrom, M. D.” Communicated by the author (Phil. Mag. July 1799), in John

Noordtsche Compagnie, in Nederlandt, zijnde den 30. Augusty, 1633 tot de wederkomst

Pinkerton, A General Collection Of The Best And Most Interesting Voyages And

der vooriz. Schepen, den 27. May, anno 1634.

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21

Günther Schilder, “Development and Achievements of Dutch Northern and Arctic

BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Cartography in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Arctic, Vol. 37, No. 4 December (1984): 493–514, 509 (accessed at: http://www.tandfonline.com). Footnote no. 59 of Schilder’s text brought me to search in the Dutch National Archive for

Aunet, Léonie d’ (1968) En pariserinnes reise gjennom Norge til Spitsbergen anno 1838.

Vingboons’s collection “Vingboons-atlas” leading to the online archive “Atlas of Mutual

Translation into Norwegian by Geneviève Jul-Larsen. Oslo: Aschehoug. Originally

Heritage” that had the 1642 watercolor version of the map of “Hollantsche Bay” here

published in 1854 as Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg.

published. It is described as a loose print taken out of Vingboons-Atlas (accessed at:

Backström, John (1810) “Account of a Voyage to Spitsbergen in the year 1780,

http://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl).

By S. Backstrom, M. D.” Communicated by the author (Phil. Mag. July 1799) in John

22

Pinkerton, A General Collection Of The Best And Most Interesting Voyages And Travels,

Constantine John Phipps, A voyage towards the North Pole, undertaken by His

Majesty’s Command 1773 (London: J. Nourse, 1774), 70 (accessed at: https://archive.org).

In All Parts Of The World; Many Of Which Are Now First Translated Into English. Digested

23

Beechey, A Voyage Of Discovery Towards The North Pole, 153–154, 324.

On A New Plan. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: Kimber and Conrad. https://archive.org.

24

From Gerrit De Veer “A True Description Of Three Voyages Towards

Baffin, William (1881) Second Recorded Voyage, “A Journall of the Voyage made

The North-East China, And Cathay Undertaken By The Dutch In The Years 1594, 1595,

to Greenland’ with sixe English ships and a Pinasse, in the yeere 1613. Written by

And 1596,” ed. Charles T. Beke (London: Hakluyt Society, 1853), 84, originally published

Master William Baffin.” In Clements E. Markham (ed.), The Voyages Of William Baffin,

in Amsterdam in 1598 and translated into English by William Phillip in 1609.

1612–1622. London: Hakluyt Society. Originally published in 1625. https://archive.org.

25

From Willem Barentsz’s journal as printed in Hessel Gerritsz (1613), “Historie Du

Barentsz, Willem, in Hessel Gerritsz (1613) “Historie Du Pays Nommé Spitsberghe.”

Pays Nommé Spitsberghe,” in Early Dutch and English Voyages to Spitsbergen in the

Translated into English by Basil H. Soulsby, in Martin Conway (1902) Early Dutch and

Seventeenth Century, ed. Martin Conway, translated into English by Basil H. Soulsby

English Voyages to Spitsbergen in the Seventeenth Century. https://archive.org.

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26

Martens, “Voyage into Spitsbergen and Greenland,” 23.

His Majesty’s Ships Dorothea And Trent, Under The Command Of Captain David Buchan,

27

Beechey, A Voyage Of Discovery Towards The North Pole, 18–19.

R.N.; 1818; To Which Is Added, A Summary Of All The Early Attempts To Reach The Pacific

28

Ibid., 47–48.

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29

Léonie d’Aunet, En pariserinnes reise gjennom Norge til Spitsbergen anno 1838,

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30

126

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Beechey, A Voyage Of Discovery Towards The North Pole, 45–49.

31

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32

Arvid Moberg, Fångstmäns Land (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1959) 92–93.

33

Karl Chydenius, Svenska Expeditionen till Spetsbergen år 1861 under ledning af

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The Departure Of The Fishing Vessels Of The Chartered Northern Company, In

34

The Netherlands, On August 30, 1633, Until The Return Of The Aforesaid Vessels On

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35

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

the British Museum; the Scott Polar Research Institute; the University Library , Utrecht; the University Library, Helsinki; Harvard University Library; Stockholm University; the Swedish Royal Academy of Science; the University Library, the American Antiquarian Society; the Swedish Royal Library; Heritage Images, UK; the National Library of Austria; the National Library of Australia; Tekniska Museet, Sweden; the University Library, Gothenburg; the Dutch National Archives; the Hathi Trust Digital Library; the University of Columbia Library, and Uppsala University Library. I also want to express my sincere appreciation to the following private collections and people who have supported me in my work: Susan Barr, Andreas Hoehne, Anders Larsson, Tom BlochNakkerud, Pelle Holmlund, Håkan Joriksson, and Dan–Axel Hallbäck.

I also want to warmly acknowledge the skills and unbelievable capacity of the surgeons Jakob Gäbel and Mogens Bugge, and all the medical staff involved in saving my life when I suffered an aortic dissection in September 2013. This book would not have been made nor further research and fieldwork planned, had they not been successful and so skilled. They gave me a second chance in life and I am humbly grateful for that. My warmest thanks also go to my father-in-law Hans for his absolutely fantastic support which took us through the trauma of this chocking experience. Hans and Ann-Marie and my own parents were crucial for the fast initial recovery. This book was made possible thanks to all of them! A special note of gratitude goes to the publisher Anna Eriksson and to Bettina Schultz for her work on copy-editing and Martin Farran-Lee for his careful design.

ACK NOW LEDGEMENTS

I

n autumn 2010, I received funding from the Swedish Research Council to carry out a research project including a visual mapping and outline of a story of the northwestern corner of Spitsbergen. In spring 2011, I obtained funding from Gothenburg University to take a group of artists, scientists, and writers to Svalbard to jointly work on dialogues regarding how to portray the changing Arctic environment that is impacted by our problematic modern lifestyle and the concomitant global warming. The travel agency PolarQuest in Gothenburg generously contributed to our charter of M/S Stockholm for eleven days.

We went from Longyearbyen to Sjuøyane and back, following Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s overwintering expedition 1872/73. During this expedition I had the opportunity to do valuable preliminary studies in the northwestern corner of Spitsbergen. In the summer of 2012, three weeks of rephotography fieldwork was carried out within North West Spitsbergen National Park. This project would not have been possible without this fieldwork and successful fieldwork is teamwork – the professional contribution of my co-workers Peter Johansson and Thomas Nydén was essential to the results and success of the work in Svalbard in 2012. I also want to thank the Norwegian Polar Institute for their very generous collaboration and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat for their SIMO support that gave us the opportunity to communicate from the field and provided medical equipment as well as training. Thomas Schön and Petter Baggeryd provided valuable technical support at the University, and Academy Valand has supported the research project and its continuation with time and financial support for this publication.

On location we had great support from Sysselman and the professional services of Ingeniør G. Paulsen providing our rental Zodiak, and Henningsen Transport & Guiding for taking us to Danskøya and back.

I have used many sources – museums, libraries, and archives and I particularly want to give courtesy to the following institutions: Grenna Museum; Norsk Folkemuseum; Svalbard Museum; the Norwegian Polar Institute; the Hydrographic Office, UK; the National Archives, UK; the National Library of Spain; the National Library of Portugal; the National Library of France; Rijksmuseum Amsterdam; the National Maritime Museum, UK; the Maritime Museum, the Netherlands; Internet Archive; Zuiderzeemuseum, the Netherlands;

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Most of all, though, I owe my family – my wonderful wife Kristin and daughter Lydia who took me through the months of recovery in 2013 and with whom I share life and the beauty and wonders of the wild.

In wildness and love is the preservation of the world.

135

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Graphic design: Martin Farran-Lee | Specific Design Translation and copy-editing: Bettina Schultz Printing: Göteborgstryckeriet, Sweden 2015 Paper: Munken Pure Rough 150 g, Arctic Paper; MultiArt Silk 170 g, Papyrus; Invercote G 300 g, Antalis Fonts: Monotype Dante Pro; NarzissGrotesk © 2015 Art and Theory and the author No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publisher ISBN 978–91–88031–07–5

Published by: Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg and Art and Theory Publishing

Art and Theory Publishing Erstagatan 26 SE–116 36 Stockholm www.artandtheory.org Akademin Valand, Göteborgs universitet Box 132 SE–405 30 Göteborg www.akademinvaland.gu.se