when did the pomors come to svalbard?
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When Did the Pomors Come toSvalbard?Tora HultgreenPublished online: 05 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Tora Hultgreen (2002) When Did the Pomors Come to Svalbard?,Acta Borealia: A Nordic Journal of Circumpolar Societies, 19:2, 125-145, DOI:10.1080/080038302321117551
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When Did the Pomors Come to Svalbard?
Tora Hultgreen
One of the characteristics of the cultural landscape of Svalbard is theabundance of remnants of Russian hunting stations, in the form of houseruins, graves, and large erected crosses. These are traces from Russian Pomorsfrom the areas along the White Sea, who were hunting here over a long periodof time / a period which the author will make an attempt to delimit in thisarticle. It is known that the last Russian hunting expeditions to Svalbard wereequipped from Archangel in 1851 /1852. Far more controversial is the issue ofthe actual start of hunting by Pomors in Svalbard. This issue has been hotlydebated among historians and archaeologists ever since the end of thenineteenth century.
The problem
Russian historians have claimed that the Pomors were hunting in Svalbard inancient times, long before the Dutch sailor Willem Barentsz discovered thisarchipelago on 17 June 1596. There is, however, no agreement on the exactstarting point of Russian hunting in Svalbard. Some have claimed that it was asearly as the twelfth century (SV idlovskij 1912), others have opted for thefifteenth century (Vize 1948; ObrucVev 1964). The sources that the Russianhistorians have based their theories on consist of an oral recount (the so-called‘‘Starostin legend’’) and, in addition, a number of sources from the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries that contain recounts of Russian activity on, or with somesort of relation to, Gromlanth , Gronland , or Grulanda (Greenland). Theircontention is that the term ‘‘Greenland’’ at that time referred to Svalbard and, asa consequence, these sources confirm that the Pomors were hunting there asearly as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Frumkin 1957; ObrucVev 1964;Belov 1977). West European historians, on the other hand, maintain that thesesources are unclear and ambiguous (Heintz 1966; Arlov 1988) and regard theperiod of Russian hunting in Svalbard as a relatively recent phenomenon. Thedominant view has been that Russian hunting did not start until after Barentsz’svisit to the archipelago, and according to most of these historians, even afterthe termination of land-based west European whaling in Svalbard, which lasted
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from 1611 to c. 1670 (Conway 1906: 234; Heintz 1966: 116 /117; Arlov 1988:140). One of the chief arguments in favour of this view is that there is nomention of Russian hunters in Svalbard in either Barentsz’s recounts or in thenumerous sixteenth century west European recounts of whaling. Neither dothese sources contain any observations of Russian hunting stations or crosses,which were frequently placed where they were easily visible from the sea. Thestrong polarization of views on the dating of Russian hunting in Svalbard led todemands by both Russian and Norwegian scholars for the intensification ofarchaeological excavations in Svalbard. It was expected that archaeologicalinvestigations would give a more definitive answer to the question of whodiscovered Svalbard, and when it happened (cf. Frumkin 1957; ObrucVev 1964;Heintz 1966).
Archaeological investigations
The Russian archaeologist Vadim F. Starkov must be considered to be thepioneer of the investigation of Russian hunting in Svalbard; since 1978 he hasbeen leading extensive excavations on the archipelago. In the course of the1980s, Norwegian and Polish archaeologists also started excavations of Russianhunting stations. As a result, by the year 2000 more than half of the 71registered Russian hunting stations had been excavated (Hultgreen 2000).Consequently, the archaeological material on Russian hunting is quiteextensive, and in the past decade three doctoral theses have appeared thatdiscuss the dating of the initiation of Russian hunting in Svalbard (Starkov 1991;Jasinski 1993; Hultgreen 2000). And still it appears that despite extensiveexcavations, the divergence in views on the age of these hunting stations ispractically parallel to the divergence among historians referred to above. WhileStarkov maintains that Russian hunting in the Arctic Ocean was initiated around1550 (if not earlier), i.e. well in advance of Barentsz’s discovery (Starkov 1991),Marek Jasinski argues that the first hunting was initiated around 1650 (Jasinski1993). My own doctoral thesis, however, which appeared in 2000, argues thatRussian hunting in Svalbard did not start until early in the eighteenth century,more precisely at some point between 1704 and 1710 (cf. Hultgreen 2000: 305 /
308). In what follows, the various reasons for the divergence in the dating ofRussian hunting in this region will be looked into.
The oldest Russian hunting stations
Vadim Starkov’s dating of Russian hunting stations is based on dendrochronol-ogy. On the basis of dating wooden material from 28 different hunting stations,
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he claims that six of them were built around 1550, four in the seventeenthcentury, but the majority were built in the eighteenth century. Because theRussian hunting huts were generally brought from the Russian mainland, thedendro-dating of the huts gives fairly accurate information on when they werebuilt (Starkov 1991: 22). On the basis of dendro-datings, Starkov claims that theconstruction of Russian hunting stations underwent a distinct development.The oldest stations consisted of small, solitary huts, characteristically situated ata very low altitude. There were no graves or crosses in the vicinity of the oldeststations. Gradually the stations developed into larger settlements, consisting ofsome fairly large huts and graves and crosses. The larger stations date from aperiod after 1750, and a common feature of these is that they were placed at ahigher altitude. Starkov attaches great importance to the altitude of the stations;in his view, low altitude is synonymous with high age and vice versa. It shouldbe noted that, according to Starkov, graves and crosses invariably date from theperiod after 1750 (Starkov 1991: 33). Starkov postulates the following model forthe development of Russian hunting in Svalbard: first, Pomor hunting inSvalbard was well established prior to Barentsz’s ‘‘rediscovery’’ of Svalbard in1596. In this period, hunting was limited to the southwestern areas ofSpitsbergen (the area between the Ice Fjord and South Cape). Starkov sees aconnection between the establishment of Russian hunting in Svalbard and thehunting on Novaya Zemlya by the Pomors from the White Sea area, and heemphasizes the fact that the Pomors established a trading centre in Siberia(Mangazeya) in the same period. In view of this, there would be nothing tostop the Pomors from sailing far out to sea in a northwestern direction in orderto hunt, i.e. to Svalbard. According to Starkov, the establishment of Russianhunting in Svalbard was simply a consequence of the fact that ‘‘their sphere ofactivity made it necessary for them to colonize the new territories both to theEast and to the North of the mainland’’ (Starkov 1991: 1).
Following the initial phase of the establishment of the hunting industry,there was, according to Starkov, a period of stagnation in Russian hunting inthe seventeenth century. There were two reasons for the decline: first, becauseof increased traffic of foreign merchant vessels along the coast of north Russia,the Tsar instigated a ban on navigation east of the White Sea (1619). Second, acolder climate (the beginning of ‘‘the Little Ice Age’’) made the ice conditionsand consequently navigation more difficult in the Barents Sea (Starkov 1993:105). In the eighteenth century, however, the hunting industry recovered,reaching its highpoint after 1750. In this period, Russian hunting stationspopped up practically all over Svalbard (Starkov 1993: 4). All in all, Starkov’smodel is based primarily on the results of the quantitative and qualitativedistribution of dendro-datings, and his archaeological investigations supportthe contention of Russian historians that the Pomors were hunting on Svalbard‘‘long before’’ Barentsz arrived in the archipelago.
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The results of the Russian investigations have been met with considerablescepticism by west European archaeologists and historians. Questions havebeen raised whether the building material of the huts could be drift timber, aphenomenon observed innumerable times in Norwegian investigations ofRussian hunting huts (cf. Simonsen 1955; Albrethsen and Arlov 1988). On thebasis of an analysis of finds from all the excavated Russian hunting stations inthe southernmost fjord in Svalbard, Hornsund, i.e. in precisely the area claimedby Starkov to be the area in which the Russians established their firstsettlements, the Polish /Norwegian archaeologist Marek Jasinski concludesthat the oldest Russian hunting stations here date from c. 1650. AlthoughJasinski agrees with the main tenets of Starkov’s model, he claims that theoldest Russian hunting stations (small solitary huts) were built of drift timber.This means that the dendro-datings were of the drift timber and consequentlythat they could give no indication of the date of the actual building of the huts.According to Jasinski, then, Starkov’s oldest hunting stations were actually builtin the middle of the seventeenth century; in Jasinski’s view, this is the mostprobable dating of the establishment of the Pomor hunting industry in Svalbard(Jasinski 1993). Jasinski argues that the reasons for the Pomor establishment inSvalbard around 1650 were that the Tsar had prohibited sailing eastwards toMangazeya, combined with a depletion of resources on Novaya Zemlyaresulting from over-taxation. Jasinski’s interpretation entails that the firstRussian hunters in Svalbard built their huts of drift timber found along thebeaches. It was not until they had been there for about half a century that theystarted bringing ready-made timber cabins to Svalbard (Jasinski 1995: 241).
The starting point of my re-analysis of the archaeological material from theRussian hunting stations is the apparent lack of any significant differencesbetween those hunting stations that Starkov and Jasinski date to the sixteenthand/or seventeenth century and the ones they date to the eighteenth century.The same applies to the question of the topographical positions of the huntingstations; albeit the hunting stations from the eighteenth century are generallysituated at a higher altitude than those dated to the sixteenth century byStarkov, there are numerous exceptions. One good example of eighteenthcentury solitary huts placed at a low altitude is Ingebriktsenbukta (IngebriktsenBay), which is only 2 m above sea level. Another example is Skoltneset whichhas a low altitude (3 m above sea level), and which is claimed by Starkov tohave been used only in the nineteenth century. There is also an instance of alarger station from the eighteenth century which is situated at a low altitude[Farmhamna (Farm Harbour), with two huts, and in addition graves andcrosses]. This station is only 2.4 m above sea level (see Fig. 1). A detailedsurvey of the topographical position of all Russian hunting stations has indeedrevealed that low altitude is not a feature restricted to hunting huts dated to thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Hultgreen 2000: 180 /193).
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Scrutiny of the inventory of objects from Russian hunting stations dendro-dated to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries bears out that there are noqualitative distinctions between these objects and objects from huts dendro-dated to the eighteenth century. Ceramic material as well as hunting andfishing equipment are generally of the same type. Starkov’s and Jasinski’sclassification of stations allegedly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesas a separate category is based almost solely on dendro-datings of buildingmaterial which is re-used older timber (Hultgreen 2000: 105). The mainproblem with Starkov’s method of dating is his apparent presupposition thatthere is a one- to-one relationship between dendro-datings and the period inwhich the stations were in use. He seems to regard every single dendro-datingas equivalent to the time when the station was in use; this presupposes that allbuilding material used in the hunting huts was brought from Russia and hadbeen cut shortly before being shipped to Svalbard.
Starkov does not discuss the problems related to the re-use of olderbuilding material, something which, in my opinion, is clearly asked for in viewof the fact that there is variation in the dendro-datings from one and the samestation. In my view, this is the most serious weakness with Starkov’schronological classification of the Russian hunting stations in Svalbard. Adetailed survey of the building material of the Russian hunting stations thathave been dendro-dated indicates that all the dendro-datings are based on re-used material in the form of old boat boards, or drift timber, used as ground
Fig. 1.
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beams and for reparation of the walls of the hunting huts (cf. Hultgreen 2000:48 /83). It goes without saying that there can be no direct correspondencebetween the dendro-dated age of re-used ship planks or drift timber and theperiod when the hunting stations were in use. The interval between the time ofthe cutting of the ship timber and the time when it was used in Russian huntinghuts remains unknown. The same applies to drift timber. It is difficult todetermine how long a plank had been lying on the beach before it was madeuse of as building material. Unfortunately, the relationship between thedendro-dated remnants of building material and the phase in which thehunting stations were in use remains an unanswered question both in Starkov’sand Jasinski’s chronological distribution of the Russian hunting stations inSvalbard. My investigation indicates that Starkov’s as well as Jasinski’s ‘‘olderphases of use’’ relate solely to some specific details in the construction, and thatthe earliest datings are of drift timber and ship planks re-used as buildingmaterial in the hunting huts. In addition, I have some general doubts about thedendrochronological method applied in connection with the excavations inSvalbard (Hultgreen 2000: 153 /154). When this is related to the strikingsimilarity of the Russian hunting stations, in terms of structure as well ascontents, the question arises whether the hunting huts were more parallel intime than claimed by Starkov and Jasinski. The variation found in size andstructure of the hunting stations, and in the presence or absence of graves andcrosses, is not the result of a difference in age, but most probably of the factthat the stations had different functions (cf. Hultgreen 2000: 234 /237).
One central conclusion in my re-analysis of the archaeological materialfrom the Russian hunting stations is that all of it could very well belong to theeighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. Then it follows that theoldest Russian hunting stations are, in my view, considerably younger thanclaimed by Starkov and Jasinski. It can be concluded, then, that after decadesof excavations and research there is still a divergence of several centuries in thedating of the establishment of Russian hunting in Svalbard; Anatol Heintz’shopes that archaeology would solve the problem of ‘‘when and whodiscovered Svalbard’’ (Heintz 1966: 117) has clearly not been fulfilled. Againstthis background, it seems to me that a systematic re-evaluation of the historicalsource material is called for.
The written sources
I will first discuss the most important sources used by Russian historians toargue that the Pomors had discovered Svalbard and hunted there prior toBarentsz’s famous voyage in 1596. There are some sources from the end of thefifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century in which the word Greenland
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is mentioned, as Gromlanth, Gronland, Gronlanda, etc., and in which theRussians or the Pomors have some connection to this geographical area. Thesehistorians maintain that Greenland is identical to Svalbard (SV idlovskij 1912: 1 /
2). Apart from one of these sources, one which is very concrete (the letter fromthe Danish /Norwegian King Fredrik II to Commander Ludvig Munk atVardøhus Fortress in 1576) and which I will return to later, the content ofthe sources reflect a dim notion in certain Russian circles of a land bridge fromGreenland proper, stretching eastwards north of Russia. Most of this informa-tion is rather vague, or is of a rather mythical nature, as for instance theinformation that Greenland had a big population; that the Greenlanders usedto travel to Russia; that they were able to travel there over the ice, etc. Thesesources cannot contribute very much in a specific discussion of the history ofthe discovery of Svalbard (cf. Hultgreen 2000: 240 /244).
One other controversial source is the so-called ‘‘Starostin legend’’. InIstorija otkrytija i osvoenija Severnogo Morskogo Puti (‘‘The history of thediscovery and opening up of The Northern Sea Route’’) the Russian polarhistorian M.I. Belov refers to the Vologda farmer Anton Starostin’s recount of1871 about his ancestors’ Grumant expeditions, which were alleged to havestarted ‘‘long before the foundation of the Solovetsky monastery’’, i.e. before1425. This source has served as ‘‘evidence’’ for the early hunting expeditions toSvalbard. Belov attaches great importance to the Starostin legend, but inaccordance with another prominent Soviet polar historian, V.Ju. Vize, heemphasizes that Starostin cannot be expected to have been able to give anexact dating of the first expeditions of his ancestors to Spitsbergen (Vize 1948:79 /82; Belov 1956: 67). He therefore regards this source as too unreliable to beof any importance in the dating of the earliest Russian hunting expeditions.
More interesting is the letter from the Danish King to Ludvig Munk atVardøhus Fortress, with information on the Pomor Paulus Nischetz (PavelNikitich?). The letter is from 1576, and in it Fredrik II asks the commander ofVardøhus, Ludvig Munk, to contact the Russian steersman from Malmis (Kolatown), Paulus Nischetz, who was supposed to know the way to Greenland, aterritory the Danish government had long since lost contact with. According tothe Russian steersman himself, he usually sailed to ‘‘Greenland’’ every year. Heusually started out on Bartholomeus Day (11 June)(Filippov 1901). As Nischetzcould hardly have meant Greenland proper, what he had in mind might havebeen Svalbard / or some northern or Arctic territory belonging to Muscovy. Itis well known that the Pomors from the beginning of the eighteenth century(possibly even earlier) called Svalbard Grumant. But as this word as adenomination for Svalbard is most probably a corruption of the Dutch wordGroenlant, ‘‘Greenland’’ (Lunden 1980: 145), it is unlikely that it is older thanthe seventeenth century. Also the question must be asked whether the Russianscould possibly have engaged in any form of regular hunting in Svalbard as
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early as the second half of the sixteenth century departing from Malmis, i.e.Kola.
Kola town did not emerge as a Russian settlement until the middle of thesixteenth century (UsVakov 1997, I: 77). The emergence of this settlement was aresult of seasonal fishing for cod off the Murman coast by the Pomors between1525 and 1550 (UsVakov 1997, I: 68). Pomors from the southern coast of theKola peninsula and the west coast of the White Sea built fishing stations on theMurman coast, and an increasing number of them started travelling across theKola peninsula in the spring to participate in the Murman fisheries. Thefishermen returned to their homestead when the fisheries ended, but thesettlement in Kola town, which initially was rather small, was permanent incharacter. The Danish King’s envoy, Simon von Salingen, who visited Kolatown in 1565, found no more than three households (UsVakov 1997, I: 77 /78).In the following decade, however, Kola town had considerable growth;according to the tax census of 1574, the town already had 44 households,seven of which belonged to out-of- town merchants and hunters. It is estimatedthat the population at the beginning of the 1580s was well above 400 (UsVakov1997, I: 79). In view of the fact that it was precisely from this town that PaulusNischetz came, it must be considered whether it is possible that the Pomorscould have hunted in Svalbard on a regular basis in the second half of thesixteenth century, with Kola town as their base.
There are other sources that might indicate that people in Kola were reallydoing large- scale sea mammal hunting at this time. The British seafarer StephenBurrough, who visited ‘‘Kola River’’ (sometimes spelt ‘‘Kuloy River’’ in hisaccount) in 1556, met 30 Russian hunting vessels in this area, each of whichhad at least 24 men on board. They were all on their way eastwards to catchsalmon and walrus. This source indicates that hunting in the Arctic Sea wasalready established in Kola town, even though the vessels were not bound forSvalbard, but eastwards towards PecVora and Novaya Zemlya (cf. Sporer 1867:15). The information on Pavel Nischetz must also be assessed in light of apassage in the diary of the Dutch, Th. Claesz, who as a member of the crew onJan v. Rijp’s ship took part in Rijp’s and Barentsz’s discovery of Svalbard in1596. Claesz writes that he and his shipmates in a place along the coast ofSvalbard noticed some walrus without heads floating in the water: ‘‘We wereastonished seeing these walruses without their heads as the Russian use tomake train-oil out of the fat, just as those from Cap Verd do out of the hugeturtles. . .’’ (Wieder 1919: 18 /19). The headless walruses have been used byRussian historians as an important argument in favour of the view that thePomors were indeed hunting in Svalbard prior to 1596.
When both Burrough’s and Claesz’s recounts are seen in light of theinformation on Paulus Nischetz’s yearly voyages to ‘‘Greenland’’, the theory ofRussian hunting in Svalbard in the sixteenth century may indeed seem to be
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corroborated by evidence. However, a closer look at Burrough’s and Claesz’srecounts may also produce counter arguments. The greatest problem withBurrough’s recount is that his information is not in line with what is knownfrom other sources about Kola town at this time. The large number of vesselsand hunters that Burrough met (at least 30 vessels with at least 24 men, i.e. aminimum of 720 men) does not fit in with the dimensions of Kola town in 1556.Recall that, even 9 years later, Simon von Salingen found no more than threehouseholds there. If Burrough’s ‘‘Kola River’’ actually was the Kola River whichempties itself into the Kola bay, sea mammal hunting would undoubtedly havebeen an important industry in this area in the sixteenth century. A piscovajakniga , or census book, from 1574 that deals with industries in Kola, as well aswith taxation of the various industries, mentions fishing of cod, halibut, andGreenland shark, and even pearl fishing in the Kola River. There is, however,no mention of sea mammals (UsVakov 1997, I: 85 /88). The historian I.F.UsVakov, the foremost expert in the ancient history of Kola, does not mentionhunting in the Arctic Sea as a source of income for the population of Kola in thesixteenth or seventeenth centuries (UsVakov 1997, I: 80 /86). Significantly,recent research has revealed that it was not the Kola River that StephenBurrough visited in 1556, but the mouth of the Kuloj River in Mezen, a gooddistance east of Archangel (CV hesnokov 1989).
But then, what is to be made of the headless walruses that Claesz observedin 1596? Would they not indicate that Russian hunting off Spitsbergen wasestablished before Barentsz? Anatol Heintz once claimed that the context ofClaesz’s information gives reason to believe that this observation was not madein Svalbard, but some other place in the Russian north (cf. Heintz 1966).Because this source has been central in the argumentation of Russian/Soviethistorians, a closer look at Claesz’s diary is required.
Claesz was aboard Rijp’s ship, which after having split up from Barentsz atBear Island made a new voyage northwards towards Spitsbergen. Claesz wrotethat they were keeping a northbound course of up to 81 degrees and that theyfinally reached ‘‘Greenland’’ (‘‘Groenlandt’’), ‘‘which country was never beforevisited by any man as we and it is to be feared that after our visit nobody willever come there. . .’’ (Wieder 1919: 18 /19). Due to problems caused by strongwinds, the Dutchmen anchored at the mouth of a river. In this place they wereapproached by many walruses, which they killed, in addition to a polar bearthat came too close. Then Claesz continued: ‘‘On the coast I also found twoteeth of a walrus which the Russians sell at high prices, for sometimes they cutthe head of a walrus and throw the body into the sea again as they merely wantthe teeth. In Muscovy these teeth are considered to be as much worth as silverand they think the ivory of these teeth of a better quality and whiter as the ivoryof elephant’s teeth though the latter are of much larger dimensions. We saw
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some walruses without their heads floating and also a few dead whales. Wewere astonished seeing these walruses without their heads as the Russians useto make train-oil out of the fat, just as those from Cap Verd do out of the hugeturtles, is an excellent clear train-oil which is sent from there to Brasil in pipeswith iron hoops which train-oil is used in the lamps. . .’’ (Wieder 1919: 18 /19).
According to Heintz, from the sentence starting with ‘‘In Muscovy. . .’’ andonwards Claesz no longer recounts what he had observed in Svalbard, but ofsomething he had observed at an earlier date (Heintz 1966: 110). At first glanceit is not obvious that Heintz is right, but on second thought I tend to agree withhim. The phrase ‘‘In Muscovy. . .’’ clearly introduces a longer digression basedon Claesz’s previous experiences with Russian walrus hunting (in addition toturtle hunting in the Cap Verde Islands). If the formulations in this section ofClaesz’s recount are scrutinized, it is found that this is of relevance for thesequence of observations: apparently, he first finds two walrus teeth on thebeach (observation A) / and then afterwards the headless walruses in the sea(observation B). However, the most plausible interpretation is that the headlesswalruses (observation B) were something he had observed at an earlieroccasion. It is significant that he and his fellow travellers were astonished atseeing this, as the Russians normally took care to make use of the blubber ofthe walrus. But when seeing the two walrus teeth on the beach in Svalbard(observation A), Claesz immediately concluded that the Russians sometimesmerely cut the head off the walrus and threw the bodies back into the sea ‘‘asthey merely want the teeth’’. This means that his previous knowledge in thisfield (that the Russians normally took care of the blubber) had been corrected.If Claesz and his mates discovered the headless walruses after observation A,there would be no reason for them to be astonished. All things considered,observation B had probably been made during a previous expedition.
An assessment of the totality of sources used to argue that Russian huntingin Svalbard began in the sixteenth and/or seventeenth century gives nounequivocal evidence for such a theory. The exception is the Danish King’sletter to Ludvig Munk from 1576, but there is ample reason for doubting thatPaulus Nischetz really had Svalbard in mind. Perhaps he was merely boastingto Norwegian merchants he met in Vardø that he knew the way to ‘‘Green-land’’. As mentioned above, there is nothing that indicates that hunting inSvalbard was one of the industries in Kola at the time when this letter waswritten. On the basis of this review, it seems reasonable to suggest that voyagesfrom Kola town to Svalbard may have taken place in the late sixteenth century,but there is no evidence that hunting in Svalbard was an established industry inKola town at this time. And as pointed out above, the archaeological materialdoes not give any reason to believe that the hunting grounds in Svalbard wereput to use by Russian hunters at such an early stage.
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Written sources from the seventeenth century
According to the polar historian Belov, the Pomors visited Svalbard in thesixteenth century, but regular hunting on a permanent basis did not start untilearly in the seventeenth century (Belov 1956: 66 /70). He admits that thesixteenth century sources are inconclusive and also refers to ‘‘the rather strangefact’’ that Russian documents lack any data on hunting expeditions to Grumantin the seventeenth century, even though these expeditions, according to Belov,must have been ‘‘common and numerous’’ (Belov 1956: 69).
Belov’s explanation for the non-existence of sources dealing with Russianhunting in Spitsbergen in the seventeenth century is that many archives innorth Russia have been lost in the course of time. The only surviving sourcesthat can shed light on the hunting in the Arctic Sea are material from thecustoms offices. It appears, however, that the material from the customs officesexclusively contain information on hunting expeditions to Novaya Zemlya.
According to Belov, the reason for this is that the customs officers were notinterested in the exact travel routes of the hunters, and as a consequence, wecannot expect them to have said something about a possible voyage onwardsfrom Novaya Zemlya to Spitsbergen (see Belov 1956: 69). Belov himself isconvinced that it must have been customary at this time to use the route alongthe edge of the pack ice via Novaya Zemlya towards Svalbard. In other words,travellers to Grumant first sailed to Novaya Zemlya, and from there they wentalong the edge of the ice pack northwestwards to Svalbard. This route waspreferable to sailing across the open sea, sheltering the sailors from winds andstorms (Belov 1956: 69). Belov makes no effort to give a dating for the timewhen the Pomors started using this route, but he maintains that it cannot havebeen later than the beginning of the seventeenth century. His most importantargument relates to the development of Russian hunting in Novaya Zemlya.Because hunting in Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya were parallel phenomena /
at least in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries / and to a large extent wereperformed by the same Russian suppliers and crews, there is, no doubt, lots ofvaluable information to be gathered from a comparative investigation of thehunting industry in the two archipelagos. And, likewise, the source material onRussian hunting in Novaya Zemlya may shed light on chronological problemsrelating to hunting in Svalbard. Nonetheless, hunting in Svalbard and huntingin Novaya Zemlya have not always been parallel industries.
Belov is correct in claiming that hunting in Novaya Zemlya was establishedas early as in the sixteenth century (Belov 1956: 51). This is well documented insources. Western seafarers on several occasions met Russian hunters whorecounted yearly hunting expeditions to Novaya Zemlya, and some seafarersobserved Russian hunting stations on both Novaya Zemlya and the Russianmainland (Burrough 1965: 311 /331; Armstrong 1984: 431; De Veer 1997: 30).
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However, there is no mention of this type of hunting expedition in Russiansources until 1619, when a large group of hunters from Pomoria told theVoyevoda of Mangazeya that they used to go hunting on the coast of NovayaZemlya. Not only did they visit the southern island, but also the northern part,and occasionally they went as far as to Maksimkov stanovisVcVe which is situateda little north of MatocVkin SVar, the strait which divides Novaya Zemlya into anorthern and a southern part. They usually arrived there in the second half ofAugust. ‘‘Due to large amounts of unpenetrable ice’’, they were unable to gofurther (Minkin 1962: 168).
One specific source from 1647 says that hunters ‘‘from Pomoria, fromMezen. . . go to Novaya Zemlya’’. Another source from the same year says thatin the previous years there used to arrive many vessels with walrus fromNovaya Zemlya to Kholmogory and the Dvina district (cf. Minkin 1962: 168). Inthe customs book from Mezen customs house, there is, for instance,information from 1673 that F.S. Inkov had sent an expedition to NovayaZemlya in the summer. The Mezens are reputed to have dominated the huntingindustry in Novaya Zemlya since far back in time, but there is also ampleinformation that people from other parts of Pomoria participated (Minkin 1962:168). In the spring of 1682, for instance, farmers from Pinega, Kuzonema, theKholmogory area, and Archangel went hunting in Novaya Zemlya. Some ofthem returned as soon as the middle of August (Belov 1956: 53). According toKholmogory customs house, approximately 10 vessels from Novaya Zemlyawere registered this year (Belov 1956: 54). In this case, the registered vesselswere all vessels that continued southwards from Archangel to Kholmogory.The total number of vessels hunting in Novaya Zemlya may consequently havebeen considerably larger.
In the 1690s, the Archbishop of Kholmogory also started sending vessels toNovaya Zemlya. The crews of these vessels were made up of ordinary peasantsand cloister peasants, and also of monks. According to Belov, it was at this timethat the great monasteries were becoming interested in walrus hunting. This isreflected in the fact that there is a separate column in the income andexpenditure books of these ecclesiastical institutions, under the headline‘‘About the hunting trade in Novaya Zemlya’’ or some similar formulation.
The first expedition to Novaya Zemlya by the Antonij- Sij monastery wasorganized in 1692 (Belov 1956: 56). The Archbishopry of Kholmogory sent itsfirst two vessels in 1694, but both were lost on their way home. Nonetheless,the Archbishop sent three new vessels to Novaya Zemlya in 1696. One of thevessels was also lost this time. Hunting in Novaya Zemlya generally took placealong the coast of the southern island, and according to sources, the Pomorsonly rarely went to the northern island. First, walrus was more scarce there,and second, it was difficult for these vessels to sail north of MatocVkin SVar,because the ice could cause serious problems (Belov 1956: 56).
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It appears, then, that towards the end of the seventeenth century material inthe state archives and monastery archives about hunting in Novaya Zemlya isnot very scarce. This in itself weakens Belov’s argument that the reason whySvalbard is not mentioned is that so many archives and sources have been lost;when such an amount of material has been preserved about hunting in NovayaZemlya, and the data from some hunting areas are fairly detailed, it seems morethan a coincidence that Svalbard/Grumant is not mentioned, especially in viewof the fact that the same suppliers and hunters, allegedly, were in many caseshunting in Grumant as well as in Novaya Zemlya. There is, therefore, nospecific reason to believe that the Pomors were extending their huntinggrounds to Svalbard in this period. Naturally, the possibility of early voyagesalong the pack ice from Novaya Zemlya to Svalbard cannot be totally denied. Itis, however, rather conspicuous that there is no mention of Spitsbergen/Grumant whatsoever when the sources otherwise give a fairly detaileddescription of the hunting grounds in Novaya Zemlya.
In my view, repeated complaints by the hunters about the difficult iceconditions further north on Novaya Zemlya indicate that the theory ofconsiderably longer voyages northwards to Svalbard is not very probable. Ifit really was common to continue to Svalbard from Novaya Zemlya, sometraces of this would be expected in the written material, at least in a negativeway. If it had been common to continue further along the edge of the ice toGrumant, it would, in my view, have been natural for hunters who limited theirhunting to the area around Novaya Zemlya to sometimes emphasize that theywere not in the habit of going to Grumant (cf. the repeated mention of the iceproblems in the northern island of Novaya Zemlya and that the hunters rarelywent there).
It is probably more correct to regard Russian hunting in Novaya Zemlya inthe seventeenth century as part of a larger Russian hunting area, stretchingfrom Mezen and eastwards to the mouth of the Kara Sea, which includesPecVora, the Kanin Peninsula, Novaya Zemlya, VajgacV , and the straits leadinginto the Kara Sea. It appears that there was intensive hunting in this area in theseventeenth century. This is clearly revealed in a statement by the peasants inPustozersk (1673): ‘‘And in the summer people from Mezen and Pinega go tosea on big vessels to hunt walrus in the sea towards Novaya Zemlya and theislands in the sea of Jugorskij SVar and VajgacV , investigating all islands’’(Ovsjannikov 1988: 74).
It may be concluded, then, that Russian hunting in Svalbard is notmentioned at all in the Russian sources from the seventeenth century. Inview of the fact that the Russians have traditionally dated the Pomorexpeditions to Svalbard to some point in the period from the twelfth to thesixteenth century, this is a striking fact, but it is in line with the lack of mentionof Pomors/Russians in the numerous Dutch and English sources on whaling in
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Spitsbergen in the seventeenth century. In this connection, Thor Bjørn Arlovwrote:
. . . all the western coast of Spitsbergen was sailed and mapped by whalersat an early stage, the areas around Edge Island were well known as early asaround 1620, and most of the archipelago, with the exception ofNordaustlandet, was mapped around the middle of the seventeenthcentury. There is, however, no mention of Russian Pomors in the sourcesfrom this period. It seems highly improbable that the whalers should havefailed to notice hunting stations on the shore, or the characteristic Pomorlodges, and it is hard to grasp that a Russian presence in the area shouldhave failed to leave any traces whatsoever in the recounts from this period(Arlov 1988: 140).
The first mention of ‘‘Russians’’ in Svalbard?
The first mention of ‘‘Russians’’ in Svalbard is found in the book by the Dutchwhaler captain C.G. Zorgdrager, Bloeyende Opkomst der Aloude en Heden-daagsche Groenlandsche Visserij from 1720. The book was eventuallytranslated into German as well as English. Zorgdrager recounts in one passageof the book that the vessel he commanded towards the end of the huntingseason of 1697 was lying in Recherche Bay in Bellsund on the southwesterncoast of Svalbard. More than 200 vessels had gathered here in order to beescorted home by nine Dutch warships and two ships from Hamburg. Theseprecautions were required because the Netherlands was at war with France inthis period. In this connection Zorgdrager wrote (in Martin Conway’stranslation): ‘‘There also came in and joined us several Russian vessels, totake advantage of our convoy’’ (Conway 1906: 226). This is all the informationabout these ‘‘Russian vessels’’. Conway emphasizes that the Russian vessels arementioned ‘‘casually and not as a novelty’’, which in his opinion indicates thatthe Russians had already been hunting at Spitsbergen for some time and werewell known to the Dutch hunters (Conway 1906: 233). Incidentally, thisinformation has been used as documentation to support the contention thatRussian hunting in Svalbard was well established towards the end of theseventeenth century (cf. Vize 1948: 85; Belov 1956: 68). This source is alsocentral in Jasinski’s argumentation for the initiation of Pomor hunting inSvalbard around 1650 (Jasinski 1993, II: 22).
However, it is puzzling that Russian hunting vessels should wish to be partof a convoy of Dutch whaling vessels. After all, the convoy was bound forwestern Europe, and not eastbound towards the White Sea; consequently, thePomors could only benefit from the convoy over the short distance down to
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South Cape, or at best as far as to North Cape. What is more, Russia was not atthis time at war with France. Participation in a Dutch convoy then wouldpresumably expose the Pomors to greater dangers than sailing alone. In short,these things do not make sense. Thor Bjørn Arlov has gone to the trouble ofexamining the original source, namely the Dutch version of Zorgdrager’s book;it then appears that Zorgdrager does not mention ‘‘Russian vessels’’, butMoscovischvaarders, ‘‘Moscow-farers’’, probably Dutch vessels in merchantservice to Archangel (Arlov 1987: 85). On this background it is pretty obviousthat Zorgdrager’s book cannot be used as support of the theory that the Pomorswere hunting in Svalbard in the seventeenth century.
So the fact that there is no mention of Russian hunting in Spitsbergen inRussian sources from the seventeenth century parallels the fact that in neitherDutch nor English sources on whaling in Spitsbergen in this period is there anymention of it. Pomors were not observed in Svalbard, and neither were anyRussian hunting huts, shipwrecks or other traces in the terrain, e.g. easilyobservable crosses, whose function partly was to serve as landmarks for sailors,and which were among the first things the Russians erected in the places wherethey established hunting stations. In view of the fact that it was only natural towestern seafarers at the end of the sixteenth century to register and mentionRussian hunting in Novaya Zemlya, it appears all the more strange that thereare no similar observations from Svalbard. This double silence in both Russianand western sources suggests that there is little reason to assume that theGrumant travels of the Pomors started earlier than the eighteenth century.
It seems reasonable to conclude that the theory that Russian hunting inSvalbard was established around 1650 (Jasinski), or even earlier (Starkov) is notcorroborated by west European or Russian historical sources from theseventeenth century.
Sources from the eighteenth century
The first Russian source that expressly refers to Russian hunting in Svalbarddates no further back than to 1710. It is in a document that appeared in the1950s in connection with the extensive collection of sources for Belov’s greatwork The history of the discovery and opening up of The Northern Sea Route,the first volume of which was published in 1956. The document was stored inthe Leningrad section of The Soviet Academy of Sciences’ historical institute(today the St. Petersburg section of The Russian Academy of Science). In thisdocument it appears that the merchant Fedor BazVenin of VavcVuga sent amerchant vessel, ‘‘Sv. Ioann Zlatoust’’, to Spitsbergen on 28 June 1710 with 19men to hunt. On the same day the merchant Ivan Zvjagin of Archangel sent 14men in two boats to Grunt. On 22 July/3 August in the same year, Fedor
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BazVenin sent two more merchant vessels, ‘‘Paraskeva’’ and ‘‘Ekaterina’’ with 34hunters to Grulandskaja zemlja (‘‘the Gruland land’’).
These two merchants sent no less than five vessels to Svalbard in thesummer of 1710, which indicates that this hunting was well established andhad been going on for some years; it is difficult to determine exactly how long.The relatively large number of vessels taking part in the hunting in 1710 is notinconsistent with the possibility that the hunting grounds in Svalbard couldhave been only a few years old. At this time, the land-based hunting by Dutchhunters had come to an end, something which meant that the walruspopulation had not been hunted for a long time and had probably grown.As no mention of Russian activity in Svalbard has been found in the sourcematerial from the end of the seventeenth century, it seems reasonable toassume that this hunting started at some point between 1700 and 1710. As willbe shown below, there is particular reason to focus on the years 1703 /1704,when state decrees were issued from St. Petersburg with the purpose ofencouraging Russian activity at Grulandskaya zemlya (Svalbard).
One effect of Peter the Great’s plan of Europeanization of Russia was hisproject of developing Russian whaling in Svalbard on the west Europeanmodel. During his visit to the Netherlands in 1697 /1698, at a time when Dutchwhaling in Svalbard was flourishing, he was in direct contact with people whowere doing this kind of hunting. For instance, he visited the great whalingcentre in Zaandam, where they carried out an imitation of whaling in theharbour in his honour (Conway 1906: 227). During his stay in the Netherlands,Peter the Great was acquainted with Captain Nebel, who was the skipper of awhaling vessel, and Nebel was persuaded to go into Russian service. Peter theGreat had made up his mind that Russia too should develop into a whalingnation on a par with, e.g. the Netherlands, and participate in the profitablehunting in Groenland, i.e. Svalbard (Webermann 1914).
In 1698, Captain Nebel presented to the Tsar a project to develop Russianhunting of sea mammals, in particular whaling. Nebel advised the Tsar toestablish commercial companies that would be under state protection. Fishingand hunting in the Arctic Sea had previously not been subject to anyrestrictions for the inhabitants of Pomoria, but the Tsar adopted Nebel’srecommendations to reserve whaling, sealing, and hunting walrus, and evenfishing, to a monopoly led by prominent noblemen. In 1703 and 1704 he issueda decree that gave Count MensVikov, the brothers SVafirov and some others themonopoly of developing whaling, hunting and fishing in north Russia(Webermann 1914: 27 /31).
In the quest for the factors that led the Pomors to seek hunting grounds inSvalbard, it may be rewarding to take a closer look at the largest of the twosuppliers mentioned in the source from 1710, namely the Pomor FedorBazVenin, who was a well known and frequently mentioned ship builder and
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shipyard owner in north Russia at the beginning of the eighteenth century.Belov did not care to connect the information about BazVenin as a Grumant shipowner with the information about other aspects of his activities. The reason isprobably that Belov did not consider the document from 1710 to be ofparticular importance, as in his view Russian hunting in Svalbard had alreadybeen going on for at least one century. According to Belov, BazVenin was farfrom the first one to send vessels to Svalbard. If, however, the starting point isthat this hunting started at the beginning of the eighteenth century, FedorBazVenin will be perceived as a pioneer, and it becomes all the more importantto study his role.
It appears that a lot of information is available on this merchant and hisbrothers, who played an important role in the development of Russianshipping and ship building in the period around 1700. The BazVenin brotherslived in VavcVuga, a village situated to the east of the River Dvina, right acrossKholmogory in the Archangel government. When Peter the Great was stayingin Archangel for the first time in 1693, he also visited the BazVenin brothers inVavcVuga, and he gave them the idea of building merchant vessels (Popov 1992:226). He met them in 1694 as well, when the Tsar was back in Archangel, andin 1702, when he visited the town for the last time (Bulatov 1997 /1999, 3: 208).In 1694, under pressure from the Tsar, building of big merchant vessels startedin the city of Archangel, and 2 years later the brothers Fedor and Osip BazVeninapplied to the Tsar for permission to start a shipyard in VavcVuga. Due to theTsar’s long stay in western Europe (1697 /1698), their application was notanswered until 1700. Special emphasis was placed on building sea- faringmerchant vessels that were capable of contributing to the development ofRussian foreign trade. The two first ships from BazVenin’s shipyard werelaunched in VavcVuga in 1702, and in the following year one of them sailed towestern Europe with a Russian diplomat (Ogorodnikov 1889: 125; Belov 1956:228 /229).
The BazVenin brothers were also central in connection with the govern-ment’s offensive to develop a Russian whaling industry; in 1723 they werecommissioned by the government to build three whaling vessels for the state-owned Kola Whaling Company (Kol ’skoe kitolovstvo). The vessels werefinished in 1725. Fedor BazVenin was also one of the two merchants who in1710 supplied hunting vessels for Spitsbergen. The vessels were probably builtat his own shipyard in VavcVuga. The crew (at least some of them), however,came from other places than Archangel. The names of two of BazVenin’s crewmembers, both OtkupcVikov, clearly indicate that they were recruited fromMezen; this may apply to all the crew members. It was probably convenient toselect the crew from Mezen as the Mezens, as mentioned already, had beeninvolved in extensive hunting in Novaya Zemlya in the seventeenth century.
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Among these people it was easy to find crew with great experience in huntingin the Arctic Sea.
Other documents also indicate that the Mezens were among the pioneers inGrumant. Upon orders from Peter the Great to the Vice Governor of Archangel,400 young sailors were selected in Kholmogory, Onega, and Mezen in 1714 toserve in the Baltic Sea fleet. This document is an excerpt from the recruit rollsfrom the Mezen district. The document contains information on the experienceof the individual sailors within shipping; it appears that nine men had servedon catching vessels in Novaya Zemlya and Grumant. This list of people havinghunted in Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen also mentions families from otherdistricts in Mezen who obviously had connections to the hunting industry,among which is the family OtkupcV ikov, i.e. the name of two crew members onone of BazVenin’s vessels in 1710 (Belov 1956: 68).
Conclusion
In the introductory sections of this article, I raised serious doubts on thecontention that parts of the archaeological material from the Russian huntingstations in Svalbard actually date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,as argued by V.F. Starkov. The homogeneity of the material indicates that all ofit probably represents the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Hultgreen2000). The question then arises whether hunting by the Pomors in Svalbardwas a much later phenomenon than claimed by many Russian archaeologistsand historians.
The idea of an accidental discovery along the edge of the ice, on which thetheory of the polar historian M.I. Belov is based, presupposes that the Pomorsfrom the area around the White Sea discovered Svalbard either before orshortly after Barentsz, i.e. before the existence of the island group had becomecommonly known in western Europe. If it is assumed, however, that thePomors did not start sailing to Svalbard until the early eighteenth century, itmust be presumed that they were familiar with the existence of this islandgroup and knew the sea route to the islands. In the seventeenth century therewas considerable traffic by west European ships to Arkhangelsk, and Dutch aswell as English merchants established business in this town (Veluwenkamp1995). In view of the great interest among Pomors in sea mammal hunting,particularly towards the end of the seventeenth century, it is hard to conceivethat information on the abundant resources of sea mammals available inSpitsbergen would not gradually spread, at least among merchants in theArchangel area, who were also the first ones to send ships to Svalbard.
However, it is a rather striking fact that the first Russian written sourcesmentioning Pomor hunting on Grumant (Svalbard) coincide chronologically
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with Peter the Great’s initiative to develop a Russian whaling industry,crystallized in the two state decrees in 1703 and 1704. These led to theestablishment of a Russian whaling company which on a western Europeanmodel was to do whaling off Svalbard. North Russian hunting of walrus, sealsand other sea mammals was also included in the whaling monopoly, in thesense that the owners of the whaling company were given a monopoly ofbuying and selling all products resulting from this hunting. There is reason tobelieve that this monopoly put pressure on the established hunting interests toextend their activity and exploit the resources in Svalbard. The aim of thisactivity was to do whaling, but catching walrus was perhaps the best theycould hope for in the initial phase, until the company was well established andable to purchase specially constructed whaling vessels.
The efforts to establish a Russian whaling industry in Svalbard were nevercrowned with success, and the monopoly was eventually abolished in 1768. Inthe next turn this led to better prices for products from the Arctic Ocean and aformidable boom period for Pomor hunting on the Svalbard archipelago in theyears c. 1770 /1800. All taken into consideration, I think that a theory whichviews the start of Russian hunting in Svalbard as a result of Peter the Great’sgrand initiative to establish Russian whaling in the Svalbard area seems to bemore in accordance with the source material available today than previoustheories.
Translated by Ella Haukenes
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Tora HultgreenTromsø Museum, UniversitetsmuseetUniversity of TromsøNO-9037 TromsøNorwayE-mail: [email protected]
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