About 320 kilometers north of Siberia, the 4-foot waves of the Barents Sea crashed into an expedition boat carrying author Andrea Pitzer, Russian sailors and Norwegian scientists.
The strength of the waves was similar to what Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew experienced when they ventured three times into the Arctic in the late 1500s. Barents was looking for a polar passage from the Northeast to open Europe’s trade to China.
Pitzer traveled to the Arctic three times to research his new book, “Icebound: Shipwrecked At the Edge of the World”. She used primary source material on her voyages, such as translations of the Barents ship’s logbook and someone else’s account of the first two voyages.
“Putting all these little elements together and then going there using all of that, I tried to paint a picture of their whole story,” she says.
Barents sailed north from Amsterdam, passing through Scandinavia and then east to the Barents Sea, which now bears his name.
In 1594, Barents set out on his first expedition until the ice north of the Russian coast forced him to return, says Pitzer. He tried the journey again the following year and did it a little further south before the ice made him turn again.
The first expedition also aimed to determine whether the islands of Nova Zembla were connected to an unknown polar continent, says Pitzer. During the final expedition in 1596, only one of the two ships made it to the long, narrow twin islands – where Barents and his team had to spend the winter.
When the ice capsized the ships, they sailed around it for days before realizing on September 11, 1596, that they would not be able to return home this time, she says. The lost crew carried their belongings to the coast and started thinking about building a cabin when the first major obstacle appeared: the only carpenter died.
Fighting polar bears while working, the 16-person crew built a cabin to call home while stranded in the Arctic for almost 10 months, she says. The crew fought scurvy by trapping foxes. They dragged sleds for miles to get logs to stay alive and lived with an inch of ice inside their hut.
“It was an incredibly tiring affair, and they were often their own worst enemies. They almost poisoned themselves by burning coal in their closed cabin. They ate polar bear liver at one point, and their skin ripped from head to toe. And three of them almost died, ”she says. “So it was really a day-to-day battle to live in this place that was not on any existing map at the time.”
On his journey north, Pitzer crossed the gravel beach that leads to the location of the Barents hut. Built on a small plateau, the hut was exposed to the wind on three sides, she says, and snow piled on the roof. A polar bear damaged the roof of the cabin while trying to enter.
Today, some logs remain that formed the rectangular base of the hut, she says. Most of the other remaining artifacts are in various museums, she says, although sometimes people still find small relics.
“It was very useful for me to be able to go and stay there and just look at the sea and see the view that would have just been filled with ice at the time,” she says, “that they would come the next day and realize how far they were From home. “
A concert for a walrus audience
In addition to finding polar bears, Barents and his team also spotted walruses. The crew had never seen walruses before, but they heard their prey was valuable, says Pitzer.
When the crew saw the walruses in a place called the Orange Islands, they jumped into the sea in a small boat and tried to kill as many of their prey as possible, she says.
People on the Pitzer ship did not share exactly the same reaction when they saw hundreds of walruses on the same beach that Barents witnessed centuries ago. The team watched in awe as the walruses looked directly at them, she says.
Then, one of the sailors started playing a Soviet-era waltz on the accordion. Transfixed by music, the walruses got together to listen to the concert – one of the “most incredible things” that Pitzer has ever witnessed.
Two weeks later, the dangerous animals sank a boat the same size as Pitzer’s, she says.
Barents’ expeditions resulted in the permanent opening of the high Arctic to Europeans. This resulted in a boom in the whaling industry in places like Svalbard, in northern Norway, in the mid-19th century, she says.
“You have European nations almost eliminating whale populations up there,” she says. “It is just that slaughter harvest that some whale populations have not yet recovered from and may never recover from.”
The lasting legacy of Barents’ discoveries
After Barents’ expeditions, Pitzer says it became clear that more countries would begin to explore as the whole world fell under the “boot heel of colonialism” – which would later trigger the Industrial Revolution and the climate change problems that the Arctic faces today.
Of his three trips, Pitzer says he has noticed many changes in the region. On his first expedition, a hundreds-year-old ice cave collapsed while it rained outside.
“We were a little stuck for a brief moment,” she says. “It was nothing too serious, but we all knew it shouldn’t rain in the Arctic in January.”
On his second trip, Pitzer saw plastic garbage across the Arctic coast. Then, on the third trip, she saw an island that humans did not know until three years ago, when a glacier retreated beyond it.
“These were really concrete forms, not just of temperature, but the results of these changes in temperature,” she says.
In August, Pitzer is returning to the Arctic once again. She has been studying Russian and diving in cold water to prepare to embark as a sailor.
In the coming years, she hopes to return with stories about the region’s past that convey the lasting impacts of legends like Barents – and teach that turning people into legends is not the healthiest way to see history.
“I just don’t think there’s a bigger story to tell than what’s going on there and what’s going on with the weather in the world right now,” she says.
Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
Excerpt from the book: ‘Icebound’
By Andrea Pitzer
As the expedition left the kingdoms of even indigenous peoples of the Arctic behind and advanced to lands unfit for human habitation, the calendar showed that William Barents and his men were six weeks out of Amsterdam. Haunted by the fog, they entered a fjord and noticed movement. They saw something they had never seen before. They recognized him as a bear, but he was a white bear. A huge white bear swimming in the water.
Barents and some sailors jumped from the ship to their small boat. They came up with the idea of trying to take the bear back to Holland with them and show it off as a foreign wonder. Carrying a musket, one of the sailors shot the bear right in the body. He reared and started swimming. The crew chased the animal, with several men rowing to shorten the distance while one managed to swing a noose and tie its neck. Dragging the creature back towards them, the men pulled it in its wake.
Barents had no previous experience with polar bears to prepare it. But he and his men would not be the only explorers to feel the urge to capture a bear and bend it at will. Even after the fierce nature and strength of polar bears were widely known across Europe, 20th century polar explorer Roald Amundsen asked the Hamburg Zoo director to turn polar bears into pack animals capable of pulling sleds on a polar expedition. Fellow explorer Fridtjof Nansen thought the plan was worth trying, but remained in doubt as to its viability. It seemed more likely that polar bears pulling real ice would soon feel their power in their home environment and revolt.
Any optimism that William Barents felt when he saw the first polar bear he saw had an even shorter life. The lacy animal roared and continued to fight, despite having shot himself in the body. Although the Dutch did not yet see all the danger, they quickly realized the creature’s power. Reviewing their previous fantasy, they decided that it would be safer to kill and skin the animal than to keep it as a pet. While the bear struggled to free itself, the sailors let the rope stretch to hasten the exhaustion of the prey.
From time to time, Barents nudged the bear with his boat hook. After a while, the animal paddled to the stern of the boat and grabbed the wood with its front legs. Thinking that the creature wanted a break in the fight, Barents drew the attention of the men, predicting: “She will rest there”.
The bear, perhaps sensing it was in its own element, did not rest on the edge. Instead, the animal rose and climbed halfway up the boat. The sailors fled to the other side of the vessel in terror. But the other end of the noose they put around the bear’s neck got under the helm and tied him in that vulnerable position, half in and half out of the boat, suffocating. The bear was trapped, not yet defenseless, but unable to close the gap with its attackers.
Realizing their luck, one of the sailors left the front of the boat and wounded the animal with a half spear. The bear collapsed in the water and dragged the boat for a while. As soon as the creature got tired, they beat him to death. Taking the animal to the boat, they started to skin it. The first polar bear that the Dutch encountered would eventually reach Amsterdam. The sailors baptized the Berenfort site for their conquest.
From there, they proceeded to the next piece of floating land in the tiny archipelago, where they left the ship once again. Taking their small boat to the shore, they walked through the cliffs and rocks up a hill to find a pair of large crosses at the top. After all, they had not yet crossed the boundaries of history – at least one ship was here before them. They christened the Cross Island site and moved on, mapping and naming as they went.
Going north, it would be the last sign of human life they would see. Going to the sea can be challenging enough with a plotted course and an end point in mind. Navigating day after day without a map in unfamiliar territory is a completely different experience. It is impossible to know what kind of coast or what animals, wind and climate may appear next. Any tomorrow could have brought Barents or his men in view of an open sea waving to China. Or they may have worked north, against ice and snow, month after month, until they reached the top of the world – the first humans to reach the North Pole. Or the sea may have risen and swallowed them whole. They had to continue without knowing their destination or how long it would take to get there.
The solstice that marked the longest day had passed, but the real darkness would not return for months, when the tables would reverse and the polar night would begin to creep. That summer in full sunlight, standing on the shores of New Zembla, William Barents had no reason yet to ponder the possibility that he could stay away from home long enough to discover what it was like when the light gave way to endless darkness .
Extracted from Andrea Pitzer’s book “Trapped in the ice: Shipwrecked at the edge of the world”, published in January 2021 by Scribner.