Page Sec1:15 - Labyrint 2013 - English Edition

Under the command of Jacob van der
Brugge, the group prepared for the winter
of 1633 in what turned out to be just the
right way.
“They gathered scurvy weed before the
snow came and ate it raw. If you cook it,
you destroy the vitamins. They set out on
long trips by rowboat a few times during
the winter to obtain fresh reindeer meat,
and when the cook was ill, he was ordered
to eat fox meat,” says Nævestad.
Thewhales disappear
The tactic worked, and all seven came
safely home after a hard winter. The seven
who stayed on Jan Mayen were less lucky
and all perished. The Dutch concluded
that the winter climate on Svalbard might
be easier to tolerate and abandoned the
overwintering project at Jan Mayen for the
foreseeable future.
The following winter, the Dutch dis-
patched seven new daring men to brave
the dark winter months on Svalbard, but
they failed to gather scurvy weed before
the snow came. They also failed to catch
any fresh meat, and by February they had
all died.
By 1650, the ruthless exploitation of
whales had made it almost impossible
to find any animals along the coast, and
whaling moved to the open sea, right up to
the edge of the ice. Anyone who died dur-
ing these hunts was kept aboard the ship
and buried on Svalbard on the way home.
“If you were buried on Svalbard during
those days, your wife and children would
never be able to visit your grave. It was just
a forgotten place, without gravestones, not
even buried in consecrated ground. It was
a pretty tough life back then,” Hultgreen
says.
Sources: W.MartinConway, Early Dutch and English
voyages to Spitsbergen in the 17th century (1904)Kristin
Prestvold,Smeerenburg Gravneset (2001)
Old cultural heritage objects on Svalbard are deliberately left as a part of the landscape in the cold, dry climate. In Sme-
erenburg, wood fragments are strewn along the beach, along with the remains of large copper kettles used to render the
blubber, the only things that remain from the busy whaling stations from centuries gone by. Photo: Linn Sollied Madsen..
University of Tromsø – Labyrint E/13 ••• 15