Overview

Willem Barents' wintering on Novaya Zemlya in 1596-1597 is associated with the blossoming of Dutch commerce and culture and the dawning of the Golden Age. The exploration of the Arctic frontier and search for the Northeast Passage to China and Japan, with experimental navigational instruments and the cosmographic theory of that age, were chronicled by Barents' shipmate Gerrit de Veer between 1594 and 1597. The wintering of the shipwrecked crew in the 'Saved House' was the first successful wintering of Europeans in the High Arctic. Into the Ice Sea presents a synthesis of four summers in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago between 1992 and 2001. The expeditions were designed to gain further insight into the motives, strategies, and tools of the sixteenth-century explorers. The Saved House held a commercial sample of the booming European cultures. It was an extraordinary winter camp, with linens, pewter tableware, a variety of Renaissance prints by Hendrick Goltzius and Jacob de Gheyn, and eighty-year old Gothic clock, wax candles, leather-bound books, and ornately decorated Venetian chalices. Archeologists connected with the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, keeper of objects recovered from the wintering cabin since 1872, searched Novaya Zemlya's inaccessible northeastern coast for traces of the wintering, including Barents' shipwreck and grave. Ship and camp remains and the objects recovered from the Saved House provide the material link between the diary and its historical context. By retracing the original voyage with De Veer's journal in hand, the authors present a view of the Arctic through the eyes of a sixteenth-century explorer.

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