LASHIPA: History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas 9789491431609, 9491431609

Table of contents :
Preface
Introduction
The Organization of Pomor Hunting Expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th Century
Productivity and Profitability of Russian Spitsbergen Hunting in the Late 18th Century
Perceptions of Polar Resources: a Comparisonof the Animal Remains of the Russian Hunting Station Kokerineset and the Dutch Whaling Station Smeerenburg
In Search of Profit in the High Arctic. The Commercial Background ofthe Dutch Expedition to Spitsbergen in 1920
Spitsbergen-Imperialists beyond the British Empire. Winning Coal at 78 ̊ North: Mining, Contingency and the Chaîne Opératoire in Old Longyear CityBarentsburg:The Soviet Period in the History of the Mine
""The Essence of the Adventure"":Narratives of Arctic Work and Engineeringin the Early 20th Century
Heritage in Our Wake: A Review of Heritage Provisions Managing Svalbard's Industrial Past
A Science & Technology Studies (STS) Approach on the Evolution of the Modern Whaling Industry
The History of Exploration and Exploitation of the Atlantic Arctic and its Geopolitical Consequences.

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LASHIPA History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas

Circumpolar Studies Volume 8 Circumpolar Studies is a series on Dutch research in the Polar regions published by the University of Groningen, Arctic Centre, on a regular basis of one volume every two years. For the other publications in Circumpolar Studies, see the website of the publisher at www.barkhuis.nl or contact the University of Groningen, Arctic Centre: University of Groningen Arctic Centre P.O Box 716 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands www.arctic-centre.nl [email protected]

LASHIPA History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas Edited by

Louwrens Hacquebord

Barkhuis Publishing Groningen 2012

Cover photograph: Frigga Kruse Cover design: Coltsfoot Media, Noordwolde Book design: Barkhuis Publishing Print: Scholma Bedum ISBN 9789491431081 ISSN 1574-0374

The LASHIPA Project was financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the University of Groningen. This publication was made possible by the NWO.

© 2012 University of Groningen, Arctic Centre Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets van deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wijze, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van het Arctisch Centrum. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photcopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in written form from the Arctic Centre.

Table of contents

Preface

vii

Introduction

ix

Alexei Kraikovski, Yaroslava Alekseeva, Margarita Dadykina, and Julia Lajus The Organization of Pomor Hunting Expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th Century 1 Alexei V. Kraikovski Productivity and Profitability of Russian Spitsbergen Hunting in the Late 18th Century

17

Ypie I. Aalders Perceptions of Polar Resources: a Comparison of the Animal Remains of the Russian Hunting Station Kokerineset and the Dutch Whaling Station Smeerenburg

33

Hidde de Haas In Search of Profit in the High Arctic. The Commercial Background of the Dutch Expedition to Spitsbergen in 1920

47

Frigga Kruse Spitsbergen – Imperialists beyond the British Empire

61

Seth DePasqual Winning Coal at 78˚ North: Mining, Contingency and the Chaîne Opératoire in Old Longyear City

71

Alexandr Portsel Barentsburg: The Soviet Period in the History of the Mine

83

Dag Avango, Anders Houltz "The Essence of the Adventure": Narratives of Arctic Work and Engineering in the Early 20th Century

87

Cameron Hartnell Heritage in Our Wake: A Review of Heritage Provisions Managing Svalbard’s Industrial Past

105

Ulf I. Gustafsson A Science & Technology Studies (STS) Approach on the Evolution of the Modern Whaling Industry

113

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table of contents

Louwrens Hacquebord The History of Exploration and Exploitation of the Atlantic Arctic and its Geopolitical Consequences

127

Ronald E. Doel Cold Conflict: The Pentagon’s Fascination with the Arctic (and Climate Change) in the Early Cold War

147

Urban Wråkberg Euroarctic Strategies and Synergies

161

Preface

This book contains most of the papers presented at the final LASHIPA workshop in St Petersburg, Russia 2-4 November 2009. The workshop was organized to finalize the NWO-bilateral LASHIPA Russia-Netherlands project and to discuss possible future cooperation between the participants of the sub-project of the Eurocore Boreas project: Colony, empire, environment: a Comparative International History of twentieth Century arctic science (CEE) and the participants of the International Polar Year project large scale Historical exploitation of Polar areas (LASHIPA). The discussions turned out to be very fruitful and the scientific quality of the papers of the participants of the workshop was so good that we decided to publish them in this book to present to the reader the initial results of the two projects. The participants of the workshop were: Ypie Aalders (Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands), Dag Avango (Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands), Yaroslava Alekseeva (European University, St Petersburg affiliated Moscow, Russia), Magarita Dadykina (European University, St Petersburg, Russia), Seth DePasqual (Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, USA), Ronald Doel (Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA), Ulf Gustafsson (Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands), Hidde de Haas (Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands), Louwrens Hacquebord (Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands), Kristine Harper (Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA), Cameron Hartnell (Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, USA), Alexei Kraikovski (European University, St Petersburg, Russia), Frigga Kruse (Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands), Doubravka Olsakova (European Science Foundation, Strasbourg, France), Alexandr Portsel (Technological University, Murmansk, Russia), Vladimir Prokurnov (Archaeological Institute, Moscow, Russia), Vadim Starkov (Archaeological Institute, Moscow, Russia) and Urban Wråkberg (Barents Research Institute, Kirkeness, Norway). Most participants were PhD students at the moment of the workshop presenting their research results for the first time. This fact in combination with the great hospitality and the beautiful building of the European University made this workshop very successful. The editor likes to thank all contributors to this book for their hard work, Mrs Rosemary Harrison for all her language correction work and Mrs Nienke Boschman for her copyediting work. Without them this book would not have been possible. The editor Louwrens Hacquebord

Introduction

The main questions considered at the St Petersburg Workshop were: what did we do so far, where are we now and what are the possibilities for cooperation in the future?

What did we do so far? The LASHIPA project got under way in 2004 with fieldwork in Longyearbyen on Svalbard. The idea was born at an international conference in Barentsburg, Svalbard in 2003. At the beginning the LASHIPA project was more an educational than a scientific research project, with many students involved. The International Polar Year (2007-2008) offered possibilities for raising money and the Research Councils of Sweden, Russia and the Netherlands supported the project financially. The LASHIPA project started with four PhD-projects and one Postdoc-project at the University of Groningen and one PhD-project at Michigan Technological University. Fieldwork was done in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010 on Svalbard with two excavations in 2007 and 2008 at Kokerineset in Green Harbour, Spitsbergen. The excavations were carried out together with Russian colleagues from the Archaeological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and financed by the Dutch-Russian Cooperation Program. Archive research was done in several countries including Russia. The European University in St Petersburg carried out the archive research in Russia. In 2009 and 2010 the project was extended with archaeological surveys on South Georgia, the South Orkneys and the Antarctic Peninsula in the south. So far extended field reports from LASHIPA 1-7 (2004-2009) and LASHIPA 9 (2010) have been published.1 The LASHIPA 8 (2010) report is nearly finished. Substantial amounts of data have been collected in the field and are stored in a LASHIPA-database under the auspices of the Joint Committee of the International Polar Year.2

Where are we now? In 2009 the first PhD project was finished and the thesis has been defended by Cameron Hartnell at the Michigan Technological University in Houghton, USA.3 All the other PhD projects are in their critical phases now. Data have been collected and analysis has started. Introductory chapters have already been written and the writing phases of the PhD theses have started. 1 http://www.let.rug.nl/arctic/lashipa_web/ 2 http://classic.ipy.org/Subcommittees/final_ipy_data_policy.pdf 3 http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2009/december/story20829.html

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In the meantime results have been published in articles in peer reviewed journals such as the Polar Record, Journal of Northern Studies, Arctic Anthropology and the Heidelberg Journal of International Law. Most of the results were presented at the Oslo Open Science Conference on 8-12 June 2010 where LASHIPA participated in the session: Natural resource exploration and utilization and again at the IPY 2012 Conference in Montreal, Canada on 22-27 April 2012.4 The LASHIPA PhD students participated in the activities of APECS, the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists, where they learned to present their knowledge and to participate in international meetings.5 At the moment new research possibilities are being discussed and explored in international networks. New applications are being written to raise money for the continuation of this research.

What are the possibilities for cooperation? The Workshop was used as well to communicate with the Russian colleagues, to exchange research information and to explore future cooperation possibilities. It was concluded with a discussion about the possibilities for cooperation with the Boreas sub-project CEE.6 In 2010 the LASHIPA project was rounded off with two large expeditions: one to the South Orkneys and the Antarctic Peninsula and one to the south point of Spitsbergen. At the moment discussions about cooperation between the CEE/Boreas team and the LASHIPA team are continuing.

Report of the workshop Alexei Kraikovski and Margarita Dadynika showed that new data have been found on the hunting activities of the inhabitants of northern Russia on Spitsbergen. Margarita Dadykina presented more data about the background of the Pomors, their skills, their kinship, their family ties, the settlements where most of the Pomor hunters who travelled to Spitsbergen came from and their position in the local communities. Based on archive research Alexei Kraikovski showed us that almost all products (blubber and skins of polar foxes, polar bears, bearded seal, walrus, reindeer, harp seal and ringed seal, whale bone, walrus tusks and eider down) were taken to northern Russia which means that the historical sources indicate that Pomors focused on products with a market value. There was no specialization in the Pomor hunt. Blubber was the most important product of marine mammal hunting in the summer and fox-skin in the winter. The outcome of this archive research is in contrast to the outcome of the archaeological research on Kokerineset which points in the direction of a specialization in walrus tusks. Vadim Starkov and Ypie Aalders gave an overview of

4 http://www.ipy2012montreal.ca/ 5 http://www.apecs.is/ 6 http://www.esf.org/activities/esf-meetings/humanities-sch.html

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the results of this research. Ypie Aalders showed that the excavations at Kokerineset produced only walrus and reindeer bones indicating that the Pomors did specialize as walrus and reindeer hunters. According to the documents polar fox and beluga also were important hunting game. However, almost no fox and no beluga bones were found in the excavation. Hidde de Haas presented new information about the coal mining activities of the Dutch merchants. He described two Dutch companies interested in coal mining on Spitsbergen: the NV Hollandsch-Noorsche Mijnbouw Maatschappij and the Nederlandse Spitsbergen Steenkool Compagnie. Only the last company was actually mining on Spitsbergen. They started mining on Bohemanflya in 1920 and moved after one year to Barentsburg. In 1932 the mine was sold to the Russian Trust Arktikugol. De Haas pointed out that contrary to what has been suggested in previous research, there were no political motives behind the activities of the Dutch entrepreneurs – they were in it for the money. Frigga Kruse analysed the networks and driving forces behind the prospecting activities of British entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs tried to convince the British government to claim Spitsbergen as part of the British Empire. Seth DePasqual went into the mining technology and its relation to the social and environmental systems. In Longyearbyen he has distinguished a Chaîne Opératoire (chain of operation) which in his opinion could be a usable model to analyse the developments.The approach can easily be harmonized with the theoretical approaches already used in the LASHIPA project. Alexandr Portsel gave us insight into the more recent history of Barentsburg. He showed the importance of this not so well known part of the history of this mining settlement. Dag Avango, Julia Lajus and Louwrens Hacquebord, each in their own way, showed the possibilities of using narratives to improve our understanding of the perception, ideas and mentality of the people involved in the exploitation of natural resources. The narratives offer a possibility to approach the people who were there at the moment when it happened and to dive into their brains to find out more about their impressions of the activity. The narratives session points the road forward according to Ron Doel. Cameron Hartnell discussed the significance of the cultural heritage in the Arctic and in his presentation he proposed to place the Arctic Coal Company remains under World Cultural Heritage protection. Ulf Gustafsson explained how the technology of modern whaling developed, by using the approach offered by Science and Technology Studies (STS). He challenged the popular notion of Svend Foyn being the sole inventor of whaling technology. There were many actors and innovations involved and Svend Foyn was more of a system builder. Gustafsson explained the mythology about Svend Foyn as a reflection of Norwegian nationalism. Ron Doel brought the role of scientific research in the Cold War into the discussion and focused on the US research activities in the high north during that period. Kris Harper gave us insight into the use of meteorology in the Cold War, by analysing attempts to control the weather and use it as a weapon.

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Urban Wråkberg and Louwrens Hacquebord gave their views on the recent geopolitical developments in the north. They showed the possibilities for further research in this field and argued for new historical research to explain the present geopolitical situation. Under the leadership of Doubravka Olsakova a general discussion took place about future possibilities of cooperation between CEE/Boreas and the IPY LASHIPA. Olsakova advised LASHIPA and Boreas participants to cooperate much better by organizing conferences in the future. It is not very likely that the Euro Core program Boreas will continue with the help of European funding. However there are possibilities to get money for future cooperative conferences. With that in mind some questions were formulated about future plans, and future projects. The questions are: What are the common grounds we see? How can we use these common grounds to move forward? What specific ideas for proposals do we have? What are the major unanswered questions we wish to address? What specific collaborations can we imagine pursuing? How can we link historical research and insights into contemporary issues and conflicts? What patterns are crucial for our work? Beside these questions attention was paid to common strategies and the formulation of common future research themes. First of all LASHIPA should widen its geographical scope. It should enlarge its Arctic study area to Greenland and Nunavut in the western Arctic and to Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land in the eastern Arctic. In the Antarctic the Peri-Antarctic Islands Kerguelen, Heard Island and Macquarie Island should be included in the LASHIPA research as well. Thematic LASHIPA should extend its research to include the impact of climate change on industrial resource development and its spatial, socio-economic and geopolitical consequences. The project should extend its research into areas with a local community. So far the LASHIPA research was focused only on resource development in no-man’s land regions such as Svalbard (Spitsbergen) and Antarctica and this has to change by extending the research area to Greenland and Nunavut and to include questions such as: What is the impact of industrial resource development on local communities? How has technological transfer taken place and do Inuit or other local populations and their traditional knowledge become incorporated in the technological system of the mining industry? Is co-partnership or co-management possible? What do mining activities mean for indigenous people in their struggle for more independence in Greenland and Nunavut? Why are non-Arctic countries particularly interested in the North? Why are the national governments of Arctic countries interested in the north and what are the consequences of this renewed interest for the inhabitants of northern regions? Last but not least what narratives have emerged and what do they say about industrialisation? What stories are told about mining and hunting in the polar environment by both local peoples and newcomers? LASHIPA and CEE/Boreas are linked together by different fields of expertise. The common grounds of the two projects are the relation between industrial resource development and knowledge in an international perspective. Knowledge production and knowledge transfer from science to industry as well as between different national

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communities of resource users are very important in the Arctic as is transfer of legitimacy. All these fields might give opportunities for future research. The different contributions in this book try to answer some of these questions and as usual in scientific research each contribution raises more questions than answers. Louwrens Hacquebord

The organization of Pomor Hunting expeditions to spitsbergen in the 18th century

alexei kraikovski1, Yaroslava alekseeva2, Margarita dadykina1, and Julia Lajus1,3 1) Center for Environmental and Technological History, European University, St. Petersburg, Russia, (2) P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, (3) National Research University Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg, Russia

absTracT The paper is focused on the practical issues connected to the organization of Russian hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century including some administrative regulation of Spitsbergen shipping. Using the wide range of archival materials, the authors study the social status and geographical origin of organizers and participants of Spitsbergen hunting. The hunting expeditions were organized by both private persons and institutions, and the town-dwellers were the most numerous group of the organizers. Among the institutions the monopolistic trade companies established under Peter the Great rule for the colonization of the region. The organization of expedition required large investment and included a number of mandatory bureaucratic procedures. The core of the hunting teams consisted of professional hunters who mainly were born in several well-defined zones of the White Sea coastal area. The crew was usually recruited from the relatively small part of the population who for different reasons were excluded from the communal economy typical for the Pomor peasantry. From the archival sources it is calculated that the shipping to Spitsbergen was about only 1% of the total commercial shipping in the White and Barents Sea basins excluding foreign vessels.

InTroducTIon Descriptions of Russian hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in both academic and popular literature suffer from being described in too general terms. They are usually mentioned as “numerous”, and results of hunting are described as “very profitable”. However, most of them are not based on solid documentary evidence or quantitative estimations. In these publications figures are either not provided at all, or if provided references are unclear. Even figures on the number of ships involved show basic uncertainty and unreliable exaggerations. Too often references which look reliable stem from unreliable sources published at the end of the 19th or at the very beginning of the 20th century, a period when real history and the mythological

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Alexei Kraikovski, Yaroslava Alekseeva, Margarita Dadykina, and Julia Lajus

heroic past of Russian presence in the Arctic were interlinked and used as a tool in arguing for better economic development of the Russian North. There were almost no professional historians among the authors of these publications, but scientists, explorers, students of local lore or representatives of local authorities. A typical phrase from this literature is the following: “There is exact historical data on the fact that in the 17th – 18th centuries the [Russian] walrus hunting on Spitsbergen and Medvezhii (Bear Island) reached a large scale”.1 But no data were provided. Thus we fully agree with the diagnosis on “resilience of national historiographical traditions” made by the Norwegian historian Thor Arlov.2 We do not plan in this paper, which is fully devoted to the period of the 18th century, to discuss the hot question “When did the Pomors come to Svalbard?”3 In his classic paper on Russian walrus hunting, Nils Stora cautiously stated that Russian activities on Spitsbergen started “sometime before 1700”,4 while now the most conventional assumption is to place the Pomor period of Spitsbergen hunting to the 18th – first half of the 19th century.5 All the documents we have found fit well into this period. However, we also do not intend to discuss in this paper the decline of Pomor hunting in the first half of the 19th century. Although the 18th century is considered as “a heyday” of Pomor hunting on Spitsbergen,6 this period has never been thoroughly researched by historians. It is no easy task because there is no single overarching archival collection on that subject. To find information historians need to search in a large number of very diverse collections in several central and regional archives. In the framework of the IPY program LASHIPA and financially supported by the Dutch Research Council we got the opportunity to study the documents in the State Archives of the Arkhangelsk region (GAAO); State Archives of Ancient Statements (RGADA, Moscow); Archives of the St. Petersburg Institute for History, Russian Academy of Sciences. Most of them do not contain information on the process or results of Spitsbergen hunting. Instead they provided the names and social status of the people involved in this economy as organizers of the expeditions or members of hunting teams. The database prepared on the basis of archival sources includes information on about 150 hunters who visited Spitsbergen in the period from 1709 to 1800 and additionally about 50 people who participated in marine hunting but for whom it is not possible to confirm whether it was Spitsbergen or Novaya Zemlya. 1

2 3 4 5

6

Zhilinsky A.A., 1933. Promysel morskogo zveria v Belom more i Ledovitom okeane. Kratkii ocherk sovremennoi promyslovoi tekhniki i tekhnologii severnogo morskogo zveroboinogo promysla, Leningrad – Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe torgovoe izdatelstvo, 33. Arlov, Thor B., 2005. ‘The Discovery and Early Exploitation of Svalbard. Some Historiographical Notes’, Acta Borealia 2005, 22 (1), 15. Hultgreen, Tora, 2002. When Did the Pomors Come to Svalbard? Acta Borealia, 19 (2),:125-145. Stora, Nils, 1987. Russian Walrus Hunting in Spitsbergen, Etudes Inuit Studies, 11 (2), 119. Avango, Dag, Louwrens Hacquebord, Ypie Aalders, Hidde de Haas, Ulf Gustafson, Ulf, and Frigga Kruse, 2011. Between markets and geopolitics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day. Polar Record 47(1), 29-39. Starkov, V. F. 2007. Review of the Arctic pioneering. Vol. 1. Spitsbergen, Moscow: Scientific world, 83.

The organization of Pomor hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century

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Figure 1. The Russian North of Pomorye.

Information included place of living, age, family relations, sometimes products of hunting, type and name of the vessel, number of people on the vessel etc. The distinct characteristic of the economy of the Russian North7 was its complexity. By the 18th century the Pomors had created a well-developed economic system. As a result of limited agriculture fisheries and hunting were an essential part of the Pomor economy. However, the relative share of these activities varied greatly in different corners of the Pomor world, where the Pomors constituted different ecotypes dependent on the combination of available resources: salmon and herring fisheries at the White Sea, seasonal long-line cod fisheries in the Barents Sea, walrus, seal and beluga whale hunting wherever possible, forest hunting etc. To sustain the harsh and unstable conditions the peasants needed to use fully all

7

The Russian North is a more historical and cultural definition than a geographical one. In a broader sense it is an area which includes the following regions: Karelia, Kola land, Arkhangelsk and Vologda provinces. Inside this vast territory the area adjacent to the White Sea coast is known as Pomorye. For details see the map: Moon, D., 2003. The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930. The World the Peasants Made, London, New York: Longman, 41.

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the possible natural resources.8 Sustainability and not profit was their primary goal.9 However, the economy also included a number of market products which the Pomors sold in exchange for grain and iron tools. This allowed them to live as a Slavic and not as an indigenous people. Distant Arctic expeditions to Pechora, Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen were essential for delivering marketable products,10 such as marine mammals blubber, walrus, seal, beluga whales and reindeer skins, walrus tusks, bird feather and fur of polar foxes and polar bears. Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya expeditions were usually organized by the same people, thus in many cases it is not possible to separate clearly these hunting activities.

The organization of Spitsbergen expeditions and bureaucracy The vessel was the first thing necessary for the expedition, and usually the owner of the ship was its primary organizer. The Pomors had a long tradition of shipbuilding and several local types of vessels are known to have been used on distant travels. The Koch (or Kochmara) is one of the best known traditional Pomor vessels for travel in the ice.11 Another type of traditional Pomor vessel was the Lodia.12 In obedience to the will of Peter the Great the inhabitants of the Russian North were forced to build ships on European models.

8

Free peasants formed the core of the population of the Russian North, because serfdom never existed here. The land formally belonged to the tsar and for that reason the peasants were forced to pay taxes. The northern peasants actively participated in different resourceuse, craft activities and trade. Like all Russian peasants, they formed rural communities (mir, volost) that regulated the use of land and adjacent waters which were considered as being in common use; however, the buildings with adjacent land as well as the right to get a share of the communal resources were inherited from one generation to another. 9 For a detailed description of Russian peasant strategies for sustaining economy see Moon, D. ibid, 143-146. 10 In most places around the White Sea this role traditionally was played by salmon, so the peasants from the places rich with salmon did not participate in distant marine expeditions. 11 The big Grumant Koch has been recently reconstructed, see Chernosvitov, P.Yu., 2006. The Pomor’s Grumant Koch reconstruction based on archaeological Spitsbergen materials. In: Starkov V.F. (Ed). Spitsbergen in the History Research Works, Moscow: Nauchnyi mir, 135–148. 12 ‘Vedomost o sudakh, zaregistrirovannyh arhangelogorodskim gorodovym magistratom v 1782 godu’, in Kuratov, A.A. (Ed.), 2004. Arkhangelskii sever v dokumentakh istorii (s drevneishih vremen do 1917 goda), Arkhangelsk: Izdatelstvo GAOO, 192–195. It is also mentioned in the sources as a means of transportation for the Pomor Spitsbergen expeditions: for example, in 1788 merchant Ivan Diakov sent to Spitsbergen two lodjas, and merchant Andrei Agapitov 1 lodja, see: State Archives of Arkhangelsk Region (GAAO), collection 51, inventory 6 (1), file 152, list 75.

The organization of Pomor hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century

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The person who wanted to build a ship had first of all to get permission to cut down trees.13 As soon as the ship was built the law required it to be registered. The details of this process are described in the report found in the archives of Archangelsk port office. In 1764 the merchant Vasilii Latyshev and two peasants – Aleksei Kotlov and Artemei Kuroptev – built three ships. The Admiralty code required an inspection of the hulls and rigging of the ships in order to check if they were suitable for the open sea.14 After this procedure the ship was recorded in the official list under a certain number and the mark with the two-headed eagle (the State Court of the Arms of Russia) was stamped on the vessel. The governmental bodies issued a certificate that the owner of the ship kept and provided when required in the future.15 But even if the ship had no stamp it was still recorded by the authorities.16 The preparation of an expedition started in autumn, when the ships were repaired and the crew was recruited. Expeditions departed in spring, when the ice in the strait between the White and the Barents Seas melted.17 In summer the Pomors hunted walruses and seals in the sea around Spitsbergen, and in winter they left one or two hunters in the base camp near the ship and dispersed to small huts situated 20 to 100 km from the main camp. From autumn to spring the hunters killed polar foxes, polar bears and reindeer. In spring, after Annunciation Day, the hunters gathered together in the base camp. As soon as the decided to return, they loaded their bags and departed back to the home port. Thus, the hunters had to take on board a lot of food, including grain, fat, butter and also cloudberries as an anti-scorbutic remedy, and also firewood and sometimes disassembled huts.18 In the early 19th century the hunters reported that there were summer (from June to August) and winter (from July to next September) expeditions to Spitsbergen.19 13 For example in 1783 the merchant from Kola Filipp Golodnyi asked for permission to cut down trees for a fishing vessel. Such permission was granted, however he was allowed to take only timber of a low quality that could not be used for the construction of battle ships by the state, see GAAO, coll. 1, inv 1 (8), file 314, list 1–2; see also GAAO, coll. 4, inv. 9, file 78. 14 GAAO coll. 1, inv.1, file 13982, list 3. 15 Amos Kornilov, a well-known Spitsbergen hunter, reported in 1748 that he had three ships “of a new manner” (i.e. European construction), that have been “inspected and marked with the proper stamps … and had certificates issued by the administration”, see GAAO, coll. 1, inv. 1, f. 4160, l. 1. 16 For example in 1782 the Archangelsk town magistrate recorded in the official list 7 stamped ships (korabl’), 57 stamped vessels (sudno) and 27 vessels without stamps, see Kuratov A A. (Ed.), 2004. Arkhangelskii sever v dokumentah istorii (s drevneishih vremen do 1917 goda), Arkhangelsk: Izdatelstvo GAOO, 194–195; the above-mentioned Latyshev, Kotlov and Kuroptev did not present their vessels for inspection and stamping (GAAO coll. 1, inv. 1, f. 13982, l. 3). 17 For example in 1748 Spitsbergen expedition left Achangelsk port on May 11, see GAAO, coll. 1, inv. 1, f. 4160, l. 1–1 rev. 18 Belov, M.J., 1956. Istoria otkrytia I osvoenia Severnogo Morskogo puti. Moscow, Morskoi Transport, 61. 19 Droprosy Russiki promyshlennikov o Shpitsbergene. Dukh Zhurnalov. 1818, Part 27, Book 21: 635-636.

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Alexei Kraikovski, Yaroslava Alekseeva, Margarita Dadykina, and Julia Lajus

To prevent the illegal trade of grain the government created a complicated system of permissions required to leave a port.20 This procedure was mandatory not only for the Spitsbergen expeditions, but for every ship that left the port with a significant consignment of grain on board. First of all the ship-owner had to submit a petition addressed to the Emperor in order to get a pass.21 Of course this address was symbolic, and the decision was made by the Governor. When the ship-owner was a merchant, he dealt with the Provincial administration (Gubernskoe pravlenie) and Provincial Magistrate (Gubernskii Magistrat) the peasants had to contact another juridical body – Nizhniaia Rasprava.22 The Administration issued an order to the customs office to allow the ship-owner to take on board a certain quantity of grain. This practice existed throughout the 18th century: petitions are known from 1711, 1728, 1729, 1740, 1748 and 1795.23 Before departing the head of an expedition had to sign an obligation to avoid any commercial activities during the trip24 and was issued with the document from the authorities which allowed him to pass Novodvinskaia fortress in the Dvina River downstream.25 When the vessel returned from Spitsbergen the ship-owner had to provide a report proving that his vessel had spent a certain amount of time on Spitsbergen, not in another place. If his report was not provided in time or was not satisfactory he was forced to pay 150% taxes for the grain he had exported.26 Expeditions to Spitsbergen were organized by private persons as well as by government and non-government institutions. The major role belonged to the merchants, both rich and well-known, like the families of Starostins or Bazhenins, and more ordinary ones. Many expeditions were organized by monopolistic companies, which under reforms by Peter the Great formed an important instrument of government projects for the modernization of marine resource use.27 With this aim for 20 For example in 1790 the Archangelsk Governmental Prosecutor accused the customs office of Archangelsk port of criminal negligence. He came to the conclusion that the custom officials let the fishermen and hunters take too much bread on board, and this bread was transported abroad and sold. The customs office director K. K. Lang was forced to provide several explanatory notes, and even Count A. R. Vorontsov, a head of the College of Commerce, had to take part in the conflict, see GAAO, coll. 1367, inv. 2, f. 1158, l. 1 – 2. 21 This document was called chelobitnaia, later – proshenie 22 Shidlovsky, A.F., 1912. Shpitsbergen v russkoi istorii i literature: kratkii ocherk russkikh plavanii i promyslov na Shpitsbergene i podrobnyi ukazatel literatury i arhivnykh del, otnosiaschikhsia k etim voprosam. St. Petersburg: Tipografia Morskogo ministerstva, 6. 23 GAAO coll. 1, inv. 1, f. 3, 529н, 545а, 2638, 4160; coll. 58, inv. 16, f. 174. 24 We found an example of such a document in the archives of Solovetsky monastery and it was signed by the monastic agent who led the fishing team to the island Kildin. See: Kraikovski, A.V., 2004. Promysel treski I paltusa na o. Kildin v XVIII–XX v. In: Ushakovskie chteniia, Murmansk:Murmanskoe oblastnoe knizhnoe izdatelstvo, 67. 25 Example of such a document see GAAO coll. 1, inv. 1, f. 9820; We could not find such documents for Spitsbergen expeditions, but anyway it looks like a normal bureaucratic practice. 26 For example in 1798 Afanasii Amosov was forced to pay 150% of taxes for grain used during the expedition to the island of Kolguev, see GAAO coll. 47, inv. 2, f. 59, p. 5 rev – 6. 27 For details see Lajus, Julia, Alexei Kraikovski, and Alexei Yurchenko, 2009. Sea Fisheries

The organization of Pomor hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century

7

instance the development of whaling near Spitsbergen coasts was envisioned.28 The model of organization was taken from the joint-stock companies of the Netherlands and Britain. The first company (1703 to 1721) was organized for Aleksandr Menshikov, one of the closest servitors of Peter the Great and a rich magnate. Then the state organized the Treasury Company for Kola Whaling (1723-1731). Then again the rich merchants and noblemen took these activities into their own hands: in 1731-1735 – the Evreinov brothers then from 1732-1741 Baron P. Shafirov and only for one year – Baron P. Schemberg. In 1742-1749 the company was returned to the Treasury, and finally for almost twenty years (1749-1768) it was in the possession of Count Pavel Shuvalov. The principle on which the activity of these companies was based on was the following: the company took responsibility before the government for developing new types of marine exploration, first of all whaling, in exchange for subsidies and privileges which included a trade monopoly on the products of traditional Pomor fishing and hunting. The judgment on who were the main organizers of Spitsbergen expeditions at the beginning of the eighteenth century is closely related to the question when these expeditions actually began. We do not intend here to discuss the archeological material and early anecdotal data, the reliability of which is very difficult to assess. We aim to discuss the documents only. The Norwegian historian Tore Hultgreen stated that the earliest document is a document cited by M.I. Belov in the first volume of his comprehensive work “History of discovery and exploration of the Northern Sea Route”.29 This document mentions the ship “St. Ioann Zlatoust”, which was sent to Spitsbergen on 28 June 1710. The owner of the ship was the merchant Fedor Bazhenin. Based on this evidence Hultgreen built a story of the prominent role of the Bazhenin family in the exploration of Spitsbergen.30 Although the story sounds very probable, it is not possible to assess the role of the Bazhenins in Grumant hunting expeditions, primarily because our attempt to find the original document cited by Belov and then by Hultgreen was unsuccessful. Belov referred to collection 10 – Arkhangelsk governor’s office – which is kept in the archives of the St. Petersburg Institute for History.31 This collection has four inventories, though Belov did not mention the number of the inventory at all. Folder 21 cited by Belov from any of these four inventories does not contain information about Bazhenin’s ship. Thus without seeing the document it is not possible to confirm or reject the story provided by Belov and Hultgreen.

28 29 30 31

in the Russian North c. 1400-1850. In Starkey, David J., Jon Th. Thor, and Ingo Heidbrink (Eds), A History of the North Atlantic Fisheries: Volume 1, From Early Times to the midNineteenth Century, Bremerhaven: Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum, 56 – 59. See Kraikovski, A. 2010. The governmental projects of whaling development in 18th century. Russia. In: Ringstad, J. E. (Ed.) Whaling and History III. Sandefjord, 171 – 176. Hultgreen 2002. 139; Belov 2005, 68. Hultgreen 2002, 140–141. Former LOII archive.The reference in Belov’s book is as follows: LOII, DAGK, №21.

8

Alexei Kraikovski, Yaroslava Alekseeva, Margarita Dadykina, and Julia Lajus

Our archival search revealed documents for the same period of time. The earliest so far is a letter from 1709 sent to Baron Shafirov, one of the shareholders of Menshikov’s monopoly, by the agent of this company in Arkhangelsk. The letter writes about the ship which left the port of Arkhangelsk on course for Grumant.32 Thus, it is certain that the monopolistic companies were important actors on Spitsbergen at least from 1709 and maybe they were even the initiators of Spitsbergen hunting. The town-dwellers33 were obviously the main group of private organizers of and participants in Spitsbergen expeditions. Thus, for instance, in 1710 Archangelsk citizens Asei Kirov, Luka Barabaskov, Filipp Dorofeev and Terentii Lebenin asked Peter the Great to provide them with the protection charter which could open the way to Grumant for them. Such a charter was granted.34 Other organizers of the expeditions were the representatives of religious organizations: the Orthodox Church, especially the Solovetsky monastery35 and the communities of the Old Believers.36 One of the best known names belonging to the latter group was Amos Kornilov – a member of the Vyg commune.37 His expeditions 32 Grumant is the contemporary Russian name for Spitsbergen. See SPB II RAN, coll. 83, f. 3111, l.1-2 rev. 33 The urban settlements were not so numerous in the Russian North. Archangelsk founded in the sixteenth century was the biggest one, while Kola, Mezen’ and Onega were significant centers for adjacent territories. Posadskie liudi at that time referred to the social status of ordinary merchants or craftsmen who did not belong to the privileged corporations, they formed the most numerous part of the urban population. 34 See State Archives of Ancient Documents (RGADA) coll. 159, inv. 2, f. 5111, l. 1 – 3. This request might be caused by an unsafe situation in the waters near the archipelago: in the materials of the Office of Peter the Great there is a letter from the Archangelsk governor Golitsyn from 1710 in which he wrote that unknown pirate ships (one was under the Dutch flag) had robbed two Russian vessels, which were going to Spitsbergen to hunt. It seems that the hunters believed that the name of the Russian Tsar who had recently defeated Swedish troops near Poltava (1709) could be formidable enough to provide them protection even in the Arctic. 35 GAAO coll. 1, inv. 2, f. 520, l. 67, 114 rev. 36 The term “Old Believers” refers to the Russian citizens who did not accept the Church reform undertaken in 1653-58 by Patriarch Nikon. Old Believers later divided into several groups. One of the most numerous and powerful was Pomorskoe soglasie, the proponents of which, both openly and in secret, constituted a large part of the population in the Russian North. One of the main centers of Old Believers was Vygoretskoe obschezitelstvo –a large and prosperous commune located in the forests along the rivers Vyg and Leksa, see Crummey, Robert O., 1970. The Old Believers and the world of Antichrist: the Vyg community & the Russian State, 1694-1855, Madison; London: University of Wisconsin Press. Peter the Great gave permission for the official existence of this commune on condition that double taxes would be taken from it. During one and a half centuries from this time this commune became one of the leading religious, cultural and economic centers of Old Believers in Russia. Its members actively participated in different industries and trade. Marine hunting provided a large share to their economy. 37 Vize (Wiese) V.Iu., 1948. Russkie poliarnye morekhody is promyshlennykh, torgovykh i sluzhilykh liudei 17 -18 vv.: Biograficheskii slovar, Moscow–Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Glavsev-

The organization of Pomor hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century

9

to Spitsbergen are widely known because he met with the leading Russian scientist of his time Mikhail Lomonosov, who included information about Kornilov’s expeditions in his works.38

The team The traditional hunting team (artel’) in both Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya hunting was much larger than the traditional fisheries team of 4 people and consisted of 12–20 team members. It was led by a skipper – kormschik, who had a deputy – polukormschik. Sometimes the leader had two deputies. Two harpooners – nososhniki – had had two assistants – zabocheshniki, thus these four conducted a hunting. If the ship owner was on board – he was the main harpooner, and nososhniki had to help him. Other team members who manned the oars were known as oarsmen –veselschiki. Sometimes the team also had one or several “pupils”.39 The team members were hired on the basis of a particularly ancient economic system known as pokrut.40 In contrast to the seasonal marine fisheries which were open to everybody and were not professionalized, marine hunting expeditions to both Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen demanded some professionalization. Hunters like fishermen usually became involved in this business in their youth (at 15 – 17 years old) when they went to the expeditions as “pupils” usually together with older relatives. Members of particular families formed the core of the expeditions.41 Most hunters either did not have a family, being relatively young (younger than 30 - 40 years old) or widowed (45 – 60 years old), or had a very small family (only a wife or a wife with 1-2 children).42 They did not have a plot of land and thus were not involved in the peasant economy. In Russian this category of peasants was called morputi, 33–34. 38 Lomonosov M.V., 1952. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem vol. 6. Trudy po Russkoi istorii, obschestvenno-ekonomicheskim voprosam i geografii,1747–1765, Moscow–Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Академии Наук СССР, 462-463. 39 Efimenko, A.Ya, 1873. Arteli Arhangelskoi gubernii. Sbornik materialov ob arteliakh v Rossii. Vol. I. St., Petersburg: Topigrafiia Maikova, 13-14. 40 In its initial meaning pokrut is lend (money, food, implements) , (comma) subsequently paying it back by work. This system was known in Novgorod lands from the fourteenthfifteenth centuries at least. In the North it was most probably inherited from Novgorodian colonizers who settled in these lands about the same time. Later this word was issued for describing the economic relations between the host and the seasonal workers in fisheries and marine hunting. The main principles of the system were the following. The workers who agreed to be hired into the team got some money in advance from the organizer of the expedition, which was later calculated out of their profit. The size of these payments depended directly on the status of the team member because every member had his own share in the overall profit. 41 This can be seen for example in the lists of the young Pomors recruited for the Navy by Leutenant Siniavin in 1714–1715, see SPb II RAN coll. 10, inv. 3, f. 621. 42 GAAO coll. 1, inv. 2, f. 520.

10

Alexei Kraikovski, Yaroslava Alekseeva, Margarita Dadykina, and Julia Lajus

“bobyli”, some of them had their own houses in the village, but some did not, living instead within larger families of their relatives.43 The recruiting of a team was also connected to a certain bureaucratic procedure. According to Peter the Great’s decrees issued from 1719-1724 everybody in Russia who left his permanent place of residence had to get a passport – a special document combining proof of identity and permission to travel. Such a document was issued by the local authority (or by the feudal lord for the serfs) and was valid for one year.44 Spitsbergen obviously was considered to be outside Russian rule, thus the law required that only those hunters who had valid passports were recruited to go there. The organizer of the expedition had to collect the passports, present them to the local administration and in turn obtain special documents called “hunting tickets”. When back from Spitsbergen the hunters provided their tickets and got their passports back. Private organizers did not always bother themselves with this burdensome procedure. They often left collected passports not in the office of the local authorities but at home, or did not collect passports at all. In 1794 Arkhangelsk Court (Arkhangelsky Nadvornyi Sud) discussed the case of the merchant Fedor Dolgoshein, who was accused of hiring for his expedition several hunters without valid passports.45 Three peasants – Ustin Filippov from the Vologda region, Afanasii Pigin from the vicinity of Kargopol’ and Ivan Amrerov from the vicinity of Shenkursk (all places situated far from the sea) – were absent from their home places for one to three years being involved in different temporary jobs. They were hired by Dolgoshein to go to Spitsbergen at a time when their passports were expiring. According to the version which Dolgoshein provided to the Court he left the passports in the house of his father Petr Dolgoshein, 46 where they were destroyed by fire. Such cases cast light on the circumstances that led to gaps in the official documents which should list all the ships and team members who went to Spitsbergen.

Where the Pomor hunters came from? We can discern three main regions for which the tradition of Spitsbergen hunting can be traced on the basis of personal documents. The first one is the region of Mezen on the north-east coast of the White Sea. The best known settlements from where the majority of the hunters originated were Okladnikova slobodka, Kuznetsova slobodka, Dolgoschel’e and Lampozhenskaia slobodka. Here inside the same families of hereditary hunters several specializations existed:

43 See the “List of inhabitants of Lampozhenskaia settlement”, prepared in 1785 in GAAO coll. 1, inv. 2, f. 193. 44 See: Chernukha V.G., 2007. Passport v Rossii 1719–1917, St. Petersburg:Izdatelstvo “Liki Rossii”, 17-55. 45 GAAO coll. 1, inv. 2 (1), f. 520. 46 He is mentioned in a Customs book of 1763 as a merchant who sent food to Murman for artel’s, see GAAO coll. 1, inv. 1, f. 6094.

The organization of Pomor hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century

11

- Representatives of the first group organized the expeditions. They provided the capital, owned ships and equipment. Most probably they obtained the capital from their previous successful hunting activities. - The second group was mostly responsible for the trade of the hunting products. - The third one consisted of ordinary hunters who could be experienced skippers or just poor beginners. The second region was the area near the town of Onega, on the southern coast of the White Sea. Part of the settlements there in the 16th-17th centuries belonged to the Solovetsky monastery. During the period 1730–1760 this monastery had at least one ship destined for Spitsbergen expeditions.47 We can assume that the monastery recruited people to participate in these expeditions from the region of Onega and thus instigated a tradition for them to go to Spitsbergen. Even after the secularization of 1764 when the monastery lost most of its lands and economic power, this tradition remained. It is interesting however, that the peasants from the south-western, Pomorsky, coast which was also colonized by the Solovetsky monastery did not participate in Spitsbergen hunting. As it is seen on the basis of passport data, in 1750 most of its male population (more than 560 men) went instead to seasonal Murman fisheries.48 The third region, which was formed later, by the middle of the 18th century, consisted of the vicinity of the city of Archangelsk, including Kholmogory and Kurostrovskaia volost. The White Sea Company which organized Spitsbergen expeditions in 1803-1813 hired its team members mostly from this region. In addition peasants from the inner parts of the country who went to towns in search of money for the payment of state taxes or for payments to their landlords also came to Kholmogory or Archangelsk, where there was a greater likelihood of finding jobs in the timber or other industries. Some of them might be found among the hunters who went to Spitsbergen. However, among Archangelsk merchants very few stated that they were specialized in organizing Spitsbergen expeditions, for most of them hunting activities on both Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen were additional to fishing and hunting activities along the Murman coast and the fishing trade. Evidently merchants from Onega (the families of Turygin, Diakov, Lytkin) and Mezen (the families of Varaksin, Rogachev, In’kov) were more interested in going to Spitsbergen than merchants from Archangelsk. But even they did not specialize in Spitsbergen hunting but went to both regions – Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, because hunting in both these places required quite similar skills. Moreover, hunting on Novaya Zemlya was less dangerous, because hunters usually did not stay over the winter. There is no evidence of going to both places during one trip, the scheme which was proposed by Belov.49

47 «Opis Grulanskomu sudnu za 1760 god» (Description of Spitsbergen vessel) in RGADA coll. 1201, inv. 5, file 3964. 48 These types of passports allowed peasants to leave their villages for the limited period of time. The name, place of leaving and place of seasonal job where listed in these documents, see RGADA coll 1201, inv. 2, f. 81, l. 2–24 rev. 49 Belov 1956, 68–69.

12

Alexei Kraikovski, Yaroslava Alekseeva, Margarita Dadykina, and Julia Lajus

As is seen from contemporary documents the organizers of the expeditions preferred to hire a hunting team from the dwellers of their own region. Probably the main team members also served as recruiters for others, bringing into the team their family members and neighbors. Thus, people from the vicinity of the town of Onega went to the expeditions on the ships equipped by Onega town merchants – the families of Lytkins, D’iakovs and Turygins.50 This can be traced on the basis of the documents of the White Sea Joint Stock Company (1803 - 1813): for instance out of 23 team members of the master Akim Starostin, seven came from the vicinity of the town of Kholmogory which was the home town of one of the leaders of the team, Nestor Dobytin.51 The most qualified team members could be brought in from other regions, particularly from the Mezen ‘region, but ordinary members were usually from the home town of the merchants. They all knew each other and this might be important as the severe conditions of Spitsbergen wintering demanded good cooperation and trust.

How many ships were sent to Spitsbergen? It is possible to estimate the place of Spitsbergen expeditions in the general structure of shipping in the Russian North on the basis of customs materials and petitions by ship-owners concerning passes to the open sea. Table 1 shows the number of petitions found in the archives. As is shown in the table the intensity of shipping fluctuated significantly, but Spitsbergen occupied a rather modest place in this process. For the late 18th century we can get a more complex picture due to the reports sent from the port customs offices to the administration (Table 2). In total, during the navigation period of 1790 the biggest ports of the Russian North (without Onega) let out about 950 vessels and received about 510 vessels. The Spitsbergen shipping looks quite insignificant on this background – about 1% of both outgoing and ingoing shipping. Table 1. Structure of the Arkhangelsk port shipping in the 18th century on the basis of petitions on departure. Year

Period

Murman

Solovetsky

Novaya

and Kola

mon.

Zemlia 1

Spitsbergen

Other

In all

Source

1711

2 — 8.06

9

4

7

21

GAAO-1-1-3

1728

14.05 — 8.10

17

17

34

68

1-1-529н

1729

19.06 — 19.09

9

9

18

36

1-1-545а

1740

14.03 — 26.09

12

22

34

1-1-2638

1748

11.05 — 31.08

3

1

1

5

1-1-4160

1795

01.05 - 31.10

1

256

334

56

19

2

58-16-174, 176, 177, 178

50 GAAO coll. 1, inv. 2, f. 520 51 GAAO coll.10, inv. 1, f. 32.

The organization of Pomor hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century

Table 2. Shipping in the Russian North, 1790. GAAO 1367-2-1223. Port

Arkhandelsk.

Arkhangelsk,

departure

arrival

Kola and vicinity

90

66

Onega and vic.

57

21

Mezen’ and vic

5

14

Kem’ and vic.

71

30

Povenetc vic.

75

17

Arkhangelsk vic

347

54

52

4

Kola departure

Kola arrival

Mezen’

Mezen’ arrival

departure

1

3

14

5

5

Nenoksa Solovki monastery

2

Murman

80

178

Spitsbergen

9

6

Novaya Zemlya

1

3

141

88 1 5

Kolguev island Total

5

1 787

393

144

102

12

13

Table 3. Departures of Spitsbergen expeditions in the late 18th century on the basis of customs reports (sources for tables 3 and 4 - RGADA coll. 1261, inv. 6, f. 848, 849, 856, 871, 886, 891, 898, 904, 905). Year

Port

Destination

Vessels

1784

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen

4

People

1785

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen

5

69

1786

Onega

Spitsbergen

2

32

1786

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen and Novaia Zemlia

6

97

1786

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen

5

77

1787

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen

3

51

1787

Onega

Spitsbergen

1

19

1788

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen

4

20

1789

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen

4

69

1789

Kola

Spitsbergen

3

43

1790

Arkhangelsk

Spitsbergen

9

135

1790

Onega

Spitsbergen

4

44

Table 4. Arrivals of Spitsbergen expeditions in the late 18th century on the basis of customs reports. Year

Port

Vessels

People

1785

Arkhangelsk

6

83

1787

Arkhangelsk

2

29

1787

Arkhangelsk

3

50

1788

Arkhangelsk

2

35

1788

Arkhangelsk

1 lodia, 5 karbases

Dash in the document

1789

Arkhangelsk

9

119

1790

Arkhangelsk

6

90

1790

Mezen’

1

10

13

14

Alexei Kraikovski, Yaroslava Alekseeva, Margarita Dadykina, and Julia Lajus

Some more or less reliable data on the number of ships going to Spitsbergen exist only for 1784-1791, when reports from the customs offices of Arkhangelsk, Kola and Mezen’ were sent to Count Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov, the head of the College of Commerce. The data show that Arkhangelsk was obviously the main port for Spitsbergen expeditions. During the 7 years under study only Arkhangelsk is mentioned annually as a place of departure to Spitsbergen. Onega is mentioned three times and Kola only once. The data are most probably incomplete, but still the minor role of these ports is evident. As is clear from the documents, on average five to six ships annually departed from Arkhangelsk to Spitsbergen with a maximum of nine ships in 1790. The total numbers of people in the expeditions fluctuated from 20 to 135 hunters. From Onega one to four vessels departed and from Kola 3. Thus the maximum of the data we have is for 13 vessels and 179 hunters departing from different ports to Spitsbergen in 1790.

Conclusion Historical documents studied in several archives demonstrate that Spitsbergen expeditions took place regularly in 18th century Russia and were an integral part of the social and economic life of the Russian North. The first document pointing to a Spitsbergen expedition known so far dates from 1709. However, Spitsbergen shipping represented only around 1% of all shipping in the area. Not big, but rather stable strata of the population were involved in this activity. Among them it is possible to distinguish three main groups of people on the basis of the place they lived: vicinities of towns of Mezen’, Onega and Arkhangelsk. The organization of an expedition required significant financial resources as well as literacy and a knowledge of bureaucratic procedures. The main organizers were local merchants private or government monopolistic companies.

Literature Avango, Dag, Louwrens Hacquebord, Ypie Aalders, Hidde de Haas, Ulf Gustafson and Frigga Kruse, 2011. Between markets and geopolitics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day. Polar Record 47 (1). Arlov, Thor B. 2005. “The Discovery and Early Exploitation of Svalbard. Some Historiographical Notes”, Acta Borealia 22 (1). Chernukha, V.G. 2007. Passport v Rossii 1719 – 1917, St. Petersburg: Izdatelstvo “Liki Rossii”. Chernosvitov, P.Yu. 2006. The Pomor’s Grumant Koch reconstruction based on archaeological Spitsbergen materials. In: Starkov, V. F. (Ed). Spitsbergen in the History Research Works. Moscow: Nauchnyi mir. Crummey, R.O. 1970. The Old Believers and the world of Antichrist: the Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694-1855. Madison: London University of Wisconsin Press. Doprosy Russkih promyshlennikov o Shpitsbergene, Dukh Zhurmalov, 1818. Part 27, Book 21: 635-636.

The organization of Pomor hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen in the 18th century

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Efimenko, A.Ya. 1873. Arteli Arhangelskoi gubernii, In: Sbornik materialov ob arteliakh v Rossii. Vol. 1. St. Petersburg: Topigrafiia Maikova, 1-76. Hultgreen, Tora 2002. When Did the Pomors Come to Svalbard?, Acta Borealia 2002, 19 (2). Kraikovski, A. 2010. The governmental projects of whaling development in 18th century. Russia, In: Ringstad, J. E. (Ed) Whaling and History III. Sandefjord, 171-176. Kraikovski, A.V. 2004. Promysel treski I paltusa na o. Kildin v XVIII – XX v. in Ushakovskie chteniia. Murmansk: Murmanskoe oblastnoe knizhnoe izdatelstvo, 65-70. Kuratov, A.A. (Ed) 2004. Arkhangelskii sever v dokumentah istorii (s drevneishih vremen do 1917 goda). Arkhangelsk: Izdatelstvo GAOO. Lajus, J., Kraikovski, A. & Yurchenko, A. 2009. Sea Fisheries in the Russian North c. 14001850. In Starkey, David J., Jon Th. Thor and I. Heidbrink, I. (Eds), 2009. A History of the North Atlantic Fisheries: Volume 1, From Early Times to the mid-Nineteenth Century. Bremerhaven: Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum, 56-59. Lomonosov, M.V., 1952. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem vol. 6. Trudy po Russkoi istorii, obschestvenno-ekonomicheskim voprosam i geografii,1747–1765. Moscow–Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Академии Наук СССР. Moon, D., 2003. The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930. The World the Peasants Made. London: Longman. Shidlovsky, A.F., 1912. Shpitsbergen v russkoi istorii i literature: kratkii ocherk russkikh plavanii i promyslov na Shpitsbergene i podrobnyi ukazatel literatury i arhivnykh del, otnosiaschikhsia k etim voprosam. St. Petersburg: Tipografia Morskogo ministerstva. Starkov, V.F., 2007. Review of the Arctic pioneering. Vol. 1. Spitsbergen. Moscow: Scientific world. Stora, N., 1987. Russian Walrus Hunting in Spitsbergen. Etudes Inuit Studies, 11 (2). Vize (Wiese), V.Iu., 1948. Russkie poliarnye morekhody is promyshlennykh, torgovykh i sluzhilykh liudei 17-18 vv.: Biograficheskii slovar. Moscow–Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Glavsevmorputi. Zhilinsky, A.A., 1933. Promysel morskogo zveria v Belom more i Ledovitom okeane. Kratkii ocherk sovremennoi promyslovoi tekhniki i tekhnologii severnogo morskogo zveroboinogo promysla. Leningrad–Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe torgovoe izdatelstvo.

Productivity and Profitability of Russian Spitsbergen Hunting in the Late 18th Century

Alexei V. Kraikovski European University, St Petersburg, Russia

Abstract The paper is a result of the IPY-LASHIPA project that studies the exploitation of natural resources in polar areas. Using 18th century documents including customs records this paper examines the production of market products from Spitsbergen. On the basis of the market prices conclusions are drawn concerning strategies used by hunters to achieve the highest possible profitability of expeditions. The documents indicate that blubber provided the major part of the revenue from summer marine mammal hunting and fox skin was the most important target for winter terrestrial hunting.

Introduction The main problem of any research concerning 18th century Russian activities on Spitsbergen is a specific situation concerning sources. In the 18th century both governmental officials and independent observers considered walrus hunting (including the Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya expeditions) as an inextricable element of Northern blubber production together with White Sea sealing.1 For the Pomors the walrus hunting on Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya was one industry. A lot of known 18th century walrus hunters used to visit both Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya.2 Cases are even known when the hunting team initially prepared for Novaya Zemlya but finally decided to go to Spitsbergen.3 As a result we have a lot of documents describing walrus hunting in general and the main task is to distinguish information related specifically to Spitsbergen. It is especially important for the issue of the productivity of this hunting ground. Spitsbergen hunting is always considered in historic literature as being highly profitable for both expedition organizers and for hunters. Walrus tusks are usually described as extremely expensive and consequently as the main target for Spitsbergen expeditions.4 This paper is an attempt to study the productivity and 1 2 3 4

See for ex. RGADA, coll. 1261, inv. 6, f. 67, 66 back; Lepehin 2009, 156, 165; Fomin 1797, 49. See for ex. Vize.( 1948), 33, 35 – 37, 44. Le Roy. 1955, 31. See also Le Roy 1808. See for example Ushakov 1998. 58. Richards 2003, 609.

18

Alexei V. Kraikovski

profitability of the Pomor hunting on Spitsbergen on the basis of reliable documentary sources. The data on the delivery of products from Spitsbergen are rather scarce. Historians often use the publication by Pavel Svin’in on the adventures of the later well-known sculptor Samson Sukhanov who in his young years took part in Spitsbergen hunting.5 According to this story the team of hunters spent one year in Magdalena Bay (from August 1784 to August 1785) and killed “300 walruses, 1000 polar foxes, both blue and white, 80 bearded seals, 150 Greenland seals, 100 beluga whales, 150 polar bears and also collected a lot of blubber in barrels.6 Later this information was used by M.I. Belov7 I.F. Ushakov8 and other historians, both Russian and foreign.9 J.F. Richards even supposed that these are the only available data on the productivity of Spitsbergen hunting and “the annual catch is impossible to estimate.”10 However, the story published by Svin’in requires a far more critical attitude. The literary miscellany “Otechestvennye zapiski” was published after the victory of Russia in the Napoleonic war and was full of patriotic rhetoric. The main goal of the publication was to demonstrate to the Russian reader that he ”is happy to be a part of a great and positive nation”.11 Most of the stories in these two volumes published in 1818 and 1819 were devoted to the talented people who emerged from the lower strata of society. The author told the story about Sukhanov as a sort of adventure novel full of picturesque details showing the outstanding abilities of the Pomors. They traveled on the open sea in a small boat and killed a huge whale 25 sazhen (50 m) long.12 Sukhanov, a youth just nineteen years of age, himself killed two huge polar bears one after another and suffered not a single wound.13 The team of Pomors who went to collect eider down was shipwrecked and reached the camp after terrible hardships, but their comrades prepared a bath for them and that was enough for the Pomors to “revive as if nothing happened”.14 In a word the main task for Svin’in was not to provide a full and reliable report on Spitsbergen expeditions but to glorify “the courage, patience and force of the Russian heroes” who are portrayed as the only men able to “overcome the threatening dangers”.15 As for the catch – it is obviously too big. For example, to get 150 polar bears in one year the team would have to kill on average one bear every two days, which is hardly possible. For instance, four Pomors who spent six years on Spitsbergen after being shipwrecked killed only ten polar bears in this period.16

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Svin’in. 1818 Ibid, 204 – 205 Belov 1956, 352. Ushakov 1998, 58 See for ex. Stora, 1987, 119. Richards 2003, 609. Svin’in. 1818, III Svin’in 1818, 198. Svin’in 1818, 199 – 200 Svin’in 1818, 203 – 204 Svin’in 1818, 202. Le Roy 1955, 14.

Productivity and profitability of Russian Spitsbergen hunting in the late 18th century

19

Archangelsk customs documents For more reliable information on the productivity of Spitsbergen hunting I studied the reports of the Archangelsk customs office created in the late 18th century for Count Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov, the head of the College of Commerce.17 This governmental body was established in the early 18th century and was the highest authority in the sphere of commerce including commercial shipping. This documentary complex is unique due to the fact that customs officials in these reports recorded the results of the walrus hunting expeditions to different hunting grounds separately and we can easily separate the results of Spitsbergen hunting from those of Novaya Zemlya. Table 1 contains information on the delivery of products of summer marine mammal hunting from Spitsbergen to Arkhangelsk port in 1784 – 1790. As can be seen, the hunters were mainly interested in seal and walrus. The major part of the Spitsbergen delivery consisted of blubber, seal and walrus skins and walrus tusks. Blubber is recorded in the sources using the Russian word vorvan’, that according to the 19th century dictionary of the Russian language means fat of all marine mammals including walrus, seal and whale.18 Government documents of the 18th century also explain the word vorvan’ as fat of “walrus and other marine mammals.”19 The Russian naturalist Ivan Lepekhin on the basis of his observations during the expedition to the Russian North in 1771 – 1772 noted that the Pomors killed for blubber (vorvan’) seal, walrus and beluga whale.20 Table 1. Delivery of marine hunting products from Spitsbergen to Arkhangelsk in the late 18th century. (Sources for tables 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 – RGADA. Coll. 1261. Inv. 6. F. 848, 849, 856, 871, 886, 891, 898, 904, 905) Year

1784

1785

1787

1787

1788

1789

Blubber, bar.

528

541

428

541

 150

1449

309

100

Blubber, poods

366b

Bearded seal skins

100

Walrus skins

140

356

453

Walrus tusks

240

554

493

15 poodsc and

1790

5070d 125

384

1742

387

2094

714

360 tusks Seal skins

10

92

30

Greenland seal skins

14

Whale cheeks

2

Whale bones

300

1White whale laftaksa

1200

Walrus laftaks

300

a Laftak – a piece of skin.

17 18 19 20

b = 5995,08 kg.

Zimmerman 1975. Dal 1880, 246 PSZ. 1830. Vol. 9, 516. Lepehin 2009, 165.

10 400

c = 245,7 kg.

d = 83046,6 kg.

300

20

Alexei V. Kraikovski

The whale products are recorded occasionally, mainly being skins of beluga or white whales (Delphinapterus leucas), familiar to Pomors because they are common in their home country in the White Sea and along the coasts of the Barents Sea. The total annual delivery from Spitsbergen consisted of products obtained from one or two thousand marine mammals. From autumn to spring the Pomors hunted terrestrial animals, and the delivery of these products is presented in Table 2. Polar fox was the main target for terrestrial hunting, but they also killed polar bears and reindeer and collected eider down. Table 2. Delivery of terrestrial hunting products from Spitsbergen to Arkhangelsk in the late 18th century. Year

1784

1785

1787

1787

1788

1789

1790

Polar foxes

457

383

224

224

300

70

547

257+193

Polar bears

6

6

20

115

170

8

Reindeer skins

46

44

38

15

730

4

541

Reindeer meat, poods Eiderdown, pood

160 (2620,8 kg.) 30 (491,4 kg.)

20 (327,6 kg.)

8 (131,04 kg.)

10 (163,8 kg.)

These data are well supported by other 18th century sources. For instance, in 1748 the well-known Spitsbergen hunter Amos Kornilov reported to the College of Commerce that in 1747 his hunting team delivered from Spitsbergen only walrus products - skins, blubber and tusks. He also mentioned that on Spitsbergen the Pomors used to kill polar foxes, reindeer and polar bears, and that foreigners (but not the Pomors) hunted for whales.21 In 1750 the Pomor walrus hunters Ivan and Alexei Himkov’s informed professor L. Le Roy that on Spitsbergen and in the coastal waters they found very few whales but plenty of other marine mammals and obtained many walrus and seal skins, walrus tusks and blubber obtained from seal and especially from walrus.22 They also mentioned an abundance of reindeer and polar fox both blue and white.23 N.Ya. Ozeretskovskii describing in 1785 the Danilov monastery of Old-Believers in the Vyg area, noted that they sent hunting teams to Spitsbergen to hunt reindeer, walrus, seal, polar bear, polar fox both blue and white and also beluga whale.24 In 1780 the Spitsbergen hunters also informed the Swedish doctor S. Bacstrom that they killed “the black whales … white bears, foxes, reindeer, and birds”, and also unicorns25 (obviously narwhals). These data are also confirmed by the so-called Marine Charter – a collection of unwritten rules and customs of Pomor walrus hunters recorded in the late 18th century by the educated Archangelsk dweller A.I. Fomin and published by N.Ya. Ozeretskovskii. Later this document was reprinted several times in the 18th and 19th centuries I used the text published in 1873 by A.Ya. Efimenko. The document mentions among the products of the Pomor walrus hunting expeditions walrus skins,

21 Ogorodnikov 1889, 704 – 705. 22 Le Roy 1955, 28. 23 Ibid,14. 24 Ozeretskovskii 1989, 175. 25 Bacstrom 1808, 619.

Productivity and profitability of Russian Spitsbergen hunting in the late 18th century

21

walrus blubber, walrus tusks, whalebone, reindeer lard, reindeer skin, eider down.26 It is necessary to stress that the rules and habits recorded in the Charter were considered as obligatory for all the Pomor walrus hunters disregarding the place of their hunting ground – be it Spitsbergen or Novaya Zemlya or any other point. Customs books confirm that when the walrus hunters appeared on the market they normally sold not only tusks but several commodities obtained during their hunt. For instance, in 1721 the Kola dwellers Ivan and Alexei Rekunov sold in Kola products of their own hunting – walrus blubber, skins, tusks and genitals of 200 animals.27 Thus on the basis of the written sources we can conclude that the Pomors used many of the natural resources of Spitsbergen to make their expeditions profitable.28

Comparison of the Spitsbergen hunters and the Murman fisheries To determine the role of Spitsbergen hunting in the economy of the Russian North I propose to compare the profitability of Spitsbergen hunting with the profitability of Murman fisheries. The task is rather complicated. The data suitable for comparison were collected in the archives of the Solovetsky monastery. They consist of money payments to the fishermen who spent the summer of 1785 at KildinIsland fishing station on the Barents Sea. According to the monastic records the monastery sent five fishing teams, four people in each, with among them five skippers and 15 ordinary fishermen. After the fishing season the monks made payments according to the special register both in money and in kind (grain and clothes). The monks always stated the money equivalent of the payments in kind, for example the servant Andrei Kostin got in addition to money a quarter of rye for 3 rubles 60 kopecks, and clothes for 3 rub. 52 kop.29 In total the skippers got from 18 rub. 60 kop. to 46 rub. 80 kop. Additionally 12 fishermen got an advance for the next summer and promised to go to Kildin Island the following year: the skippers got from 15 to 20 rub., while the ordinary fishermen – from 10 to 12 rub. (seeTable 3). Thus in total the payments and the advance together for the skipper were from 18 rub. 60 kop. to 63 rub. 80 kop., the payments to the ordinary fishermen fluctuated from 5 rub. to 46 rub. 80 kop. Such a big difference can be partly explained by the fact that some fishermen got no advance. Those who did not obviously received an invitation to be part of a fishing team the following season. Notably as can be seen from the table an advance consisted of about 30% of the total salary. The result of such a system was obviously a higher profitability to be gained from permanent membership in the team.

26 27 28 29

Efimenko 1873, 69, 71. RGADA coll. 273, inv. 1, f. 32771, 8. See also Jasinski 1991, 159 – 161. RGADA coll. 1201, inv. 5, f. 5281, l. 6.

22

Alexei V. Kraikovski

Table 3. Payments on Murman fisheries of Solovki monastery, 1785. (Source RGADA. Coll. 1201.

Inv. 5. F. 5281). Position

Name

Payment Rub.

Skipper

Spiridon Yuriev

18,6

Skipper

Ivan Kozmin

20,6

Skipper

Nikita Voronin

40,6

Skipper

Petr Eliseev

40,2

Skipper

Ivan Shumilov

46,8

Fisherman

Ivan Borisov

15,6

Fisherman

Ivan Utkin

42,28

Fisherman

Stepan Voronin

16

Fisherman

Mikhail Kruglyi

27

Fisherman

Mikhaliu Sheliagin

17

Fisherman

Galahtion Gordeev

5

Fisherman

Evdokim Akilov

43,285

Fisherman

His son Ivan

23

Fisherman

Petr Akilov

23

Fisherman

Osip Shumilov

25,8

Fisherman

Lupp Klkukin

28,8

Fisherman

Sidor Titov

31,08

Fisherman

Andrei Voronin

28,62

Fisherman

Alexei Kormanov

25

Fisherman

Andrei Kostin

18,6

It is much more complicated to evaluate the profitability of Spitsbergen hunting. Documents containing direct information like contracts and payment records were not found but still some estimation is possible. To make a comparison we have first to convert the results of expeditions into money and then to study the principals of distribution of the catch between the members of the hunting team. On the basis of that it will be possible to calculate the money income of a Spitsbergen hunter and compare it with the income of a Murman fisherman. As is shown by table 4 which is based on the customs reports, the average catch per vessel was much lower than that stated by P. Svin’in (300 walruses, 1000 polar foxes, 230 seals, 100 beluga whales, 150 polar bears and a lot of blubber). In the annual reports to Count Vorontsov there were fixed products from the hunting of marine mammals – blubber of marine mammals, walrus skins and tusks, bearded seal skins, as well as products from terrestrial hunting – the skins of polar foxes and reindeer. Other products are also mentioned: seal skins, beluga whale skins, eider down, whale bones, polar bear skins. In general an average consignment of one ship according to the customs records in different years was about 90 – 200 barrels of blubber, 60 – 200 walrus skins, 90 – 230 walrus tusks, 13 – 64 bearded seal skins, 60 – 112 polar fox and 7 – 180 reindeer skins (Table 4). Of cause, every individual vessel could have a much smaller or much bigger haul than the average one. There is no obvious way to convert the catch into its money equivalent. The sources contain no data on the price the owners used to calculate payments to the hunters. The only data we have consist of information on the Arkhangelsk market prices for the products of marine mammal hunting. The customs office had to provide such data to

Productivity and profitability of Russian Spitsbergen hunting in the late 18th century

23

the College of Commerce annually. The data for 1792 and 1793 were published by E. Veberman at the beginning of the twentieth century.30 According to these data prices fluctuated strongly. For example, one skin of a polar fox cost from 2 to 12 rub, a polar bear skin from 10 to 20 rub, and so on. There might be several causes for these fluctuations such as changes in market conditions as well as differences in quality between commodities (this is, for instance, the case of polar fox). Table 4. Average delivery of Spitsbergen products per boat in kind, 1785 - 1790. Year

1785

1787

1787

1789

1790

Vessels

6

2

3

9

6

Blubber, bar.

90,17

214

180,33

161

Polar foxes

63,83

112

74,67

60,77778

75

Polar bears

1

0

0

18,89

1,33

Bearded seals

51,5

50

0

13,89

64

Reindeer skins

7,33

0

180,33

81,11

0,67

Reindeer meat, poods

0

0

0

17,78 (291,6 kg.)

0

Walrus skins

59,33

0

151

193,56

64,5

Walrus tusks

92,33

0

164,33

232,67

119

Seal skins

15,33

0

0

0

5

Greenland seal skins

0

0

0

0

2,33

Eider dawn, poods

5

0

0

0,89 (15 kg.)

1,67 (27,8 kg.)

Whale cheeks

0,33

0

0

0

0

Blubber, poods

845 (13841,1 kg.)

Whale bones

50

0

0

0

1,67

Beluga whale skins

0

0

0

44,44

50

Another problem is a difference between the system of recording commodities in the customs documents and the system of pricing. For example the blubber (Vorvan’ in the document which meant all sorts of marine mammals fat – walrus, seal and whale) was recorded in barrels while prices were fixed for one pood (16,32 kg). Walrus tusks were recorded in pieces but the price was also fixed for one pood. So first of all it was necessary to convert the customs data to make them usable. The barrels for blubber mentioned in the document are ten-bucket barrels known as “kardelka” or “kartelka”. The use of these barrels for blubber in the 18th century was required by law.31 These barrels were used for the exportation of this commodity.32 Such a barrel contained 120 litres,33 or about 110 kg. of blubber. So if the average delivery of blubber per vessel in this period was from 90 to 200 barrels (Table 4) it can be assumed to have been between 10 (90 bar., 110 kg. each) to 23,5 (214 bar., 110 kg. each) tons annually.

30 31 32 33

Veberman 1915. See for ex. PSZ. 1830, Vol. 4, 46. Dal’in 1881, 92. Kuratov 1991, 17.

24

Alexei V. Kraikovski

To calculate the average weight of walrus tusks delivered to Archangelsk I used the materials of the Senate Commission of Commerce. As is shown in the sources, most of the walrus tusks were rather small, on average between 0,4 and 0,6 kg.34 Thus, the walrus tusks delivery per boat was from 92 to 232 tusks (Table 4), which means from 46 to 115 or 120 kg. These calculations helped to estimate the average market cost of a catch per ship in the late 18th century. It is important to note that blubber provided the major part of revenue (from 1600 to 3900 rub. that is from 60 to 80%), the share of Polar fox was also significant (from 425 to 785 rub.) while other products including walrus tusks (from 60 to 150 rub.) were obviously of less importance. As is seen in table 5, the total cost of the average Spitsbergen catch fluctuated between 2650 and 4700 rub. Table 5. Average delivery of Spitsbergen products per boat in rub. Year

1785

1787

1787

1789

1790

Vessels

6

2

3

9

6

Blubber

1612,86

3827,93

3225,71

2879,89

2239,25

Polar foxes

277,675

487,2

324,8

264,383

326,25

Polar bears

12,5

236,11

16,67

Bearded Seals

32,19

8,68

40

Reindeer skins

11,183

275

123,69

1,016

Walrus skins

57,85

147,225

188,72

62,89

Walrus tusks

54,71

97,37

137,855

Seal skins

9,583

31,25

70,51 3,125

Greenland seal skins

10,79

Eider down

243,75

Total

2312,29

4346,38

4070,11

43,33

81,25

3882,66

2851,75

Presumably if the team sold the catch at market price this was the amount used by the owners as a basis for payments. To study the average income of every hunter we have to look at the principles of distribution of shares among the members of the walrus hunting team. The official report found in the archives of A.R. Vorontsov confirms that in the 18th century these principles were the same for both Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya.35 Information about this issue is very scarce. In general we have three systems of distribution of shares among the participants of walrus hunting teams fixed in the sources. According to one of the contracts made in the late 17th century between the Archbishop of Kholmogory and the walrus hunters the catch of the hunters on Novaya Zemlya was divided into 17 equal shares. Two shares were intended for the ship and became the property of the Archbishop Archbishop as shipowner. The remaining 15 shares were distributed among the hunters. The skipper got his share entirely, while the ordinary hunters had to cover the ship-owner’s expenses. For example, according to one of the contracts "Nine hunters from their nine shares had to get only 1/3, two hunters from their two shares 1/4, three hunters from their three shares – 1/4 from one half of a share and 1/4 from another half. In general 34 RGADA coll. 397, inv. 1, f. 215. 35 RGADA, coll. 1261, inv. 6, f. 67, 66 back – 67.

Productivity and profitability of Russian Spitsbergen hunting in the late 18th century

25

all the ordinary hunters from their 14 shares got 35/112, while the ship-owner got 77/112, i.e. 2,5 times more".36 In the other contract between the same parties the system was much simpler – the ship-owner got 1/3 of products and the hunters 2/3 for all.37 In the 18th century the third system was fixed in the sources. The ship-owner got 50% of the catch, and the hunters distributed the rest unequally. Each hunter depending on his contribution and according to preliminary agreement got from 25% to the entire share (i.e. the lowest payment is approximately four times smaller, that the biggest one).38 Using this information I tried to evaluate the probable share of every hunter in the catch in systems 1, 2 and 3. As is shown in table 6, if the catch was distributed according to system 1, the share was between 155 and 275 rub. Table 6. Distribution of income between Spitsbergen hunters, rub. Year

1785

1787

1787

1789

1790

Total

2312,29

4346,38

4070,11

3882,66

2851,75

1 share

136,02

255,67

239,42

228,39

167,75

Vessel

272,035

511,34

478,84

456,78

335,5

Skipper

136,02

255,67

239,42

228,39

167,75

Hunter 1 kind

45,34

85,22

79,81

76,13

55,92

Hunter 2 kind

34

63,92

59,85

57,1

41,94

Hunter 3 kind

39,67

74,57

69,83

66,61

48,93

Owner

1309,17

2460,82

2304,4

2198,27

1614,59

The skipper got an entire share, which means from 155 to 275 rub. Ordinary hunters of the 1st rank got 1/3 of a share, i.e. from 52 to 92 rub. the hunters of the 2nd rank (1/4 of a share) – from 39 to 69 rub., the hunters of 3rd rank (7/24 of a share) – from 45 to 80 rub. From 310 to 550 rub were intended for the ship, and the owner got from 1500 to 2600 rub, in total (including the share of the vessel) from 1800 to 3200 rub. In the case of distribution according to system 2 the ship-owner got from 900 to 1600 rub., and the rest was distributed among the team. If the team included 15 hunters, the share (on an equal basis) was between 117 and 208 rub. and taking into consideration inequality of distribution the individual income can be evaluated at the rate from 47 rub. for the ordinary hunter in a bad year up to 330 rub. for the successful skipper in a good year (table 7). In the case of distribution according to system 3 the owner and the team got from 1350 to 2350 rub., and the share of a hunter on an equal basis was between 88 and 156 rub. Thus, the lowest payment fluctuated between 35 and 62 rub., and the highest one – between 140 and 250 rub. (table 8). As we can see, the results of calculations according to all three systems are rather similar. System 1 provides the biggest revenue for the owner while system 2 is the most profitable for the hunters.

36 Efimenko 1873, 12. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid, 14.

26

Alexei V. Kraikovski

Of course these calculations based on the average delivery per boat and on average prices are rather relative, but they give us a good estimation which we can compare with the profit from other economic activities. However, it is also necessary to consider traditional payments “for shoes” to the hunters from the owner before the expedition. This amount was not considered during the catch distribution and so this payment needs to be added to the share. Normally it was not big. Although we have no direct information from the 18th century, we know that in the early 19th century the White Sea Company39 paid “for shoes” from 1 to 25 rub. Some hunters got no money for shoes at all. Thus, the maximum payment for an extremely successful expedition can be estimated at 500 – 600 rub. for the skipper and 200 – 250 rub. for the ordinary hunter if the market prices were used as a basis for payments. It is important to remember that this was not necessarily the case. The owners were interested in bigger revenue and as can be seen in the sources, if they could they used as a basis for payments some relative price, much lower than the market one. Only very scarce data on this issue are available. For instance according to the contract made in 1694 between the Archbishop of Kholmogory and the walrus hunters who visited Novaya Zemlya, the hunters got for one pood (16,38 kg.) and one pound of walrus tusks 5 rub. 10 kop. for 17 walrus skins 13 rub., for 15 barrels of walrus blubber 57 rub.40 It is easy to calculate that the price used in payments was 0.3 rub. per kg. of walrus tusks, 0,76 rub. per walrus skin and 3,8 rub. per barrel of blubber. The barrels are mentioned in the document as “measured”, it means that we are dealing with standard barrels for blubber known as “kartelka” or “kardelka”. As was stated above, this barrel contained about 110 kg. of blubber. So, the price of payment was about 3,5 kop. per kg. of blubber. The next task is to compare these prices with the known market prices of that time. At the moment this is only possible for walrus tusks. According to the collected data the price for this commodity during the 17th and 18th centuries fluctuated between 0,7 and 1 rub. per kg.41 So, the Archbishop paid to the hunters about 30% of the market price. For the later time A. Efimenko recorded that the owner normally paid to the hunter from 3 to 4 rub. for blubber and skin if he could sell them later for 12 rub,42 i.e. from 25 to 33% of the market price. So, I assume that if the owner managed to force the hunters to use a conditional price for payment, it could be something like 30% of the average market price. In this case the income of the hunters was much lower. It is not easy to compare the incomes of a Murman fisherman and a Spitsbergen hunter. Nevertheless I have tried to find methods to make such a comparison feasible. First of all, it is hard to compare payments since the activities studied occupied different places in the economic calendar of the Pomors. The Murman fisheries took place from early spring to early autumn and the rest of the year the fishermen spent in their settlements participating, for example, in the autumn salmon fishing or in the winter seal hunting. Spitsbergen expeditions could not be combined 39 On the history of the company see Ushakov 1997, 230 – 231. 40 Efimenko 1873, 63. 41 See Veselovskii, S.B. (Ed), 1912, 205–209; Dubinskaia L. G., Stanislavskii A. L. (Eds), 1983, 86, 267; Yuht. 1994, 81. 42 Efimenko 1873, 12.

Productivity and profitability of Russian Spitsbergen hunting in the late 18th century

27

with other activities. In fact they took more than a year and led to the exclusion of the hunters from the economic life of their communities for a long period. Thus direct comparison of payments is not meaningful. At first glance (Tables 3, 6, 7 and 8), Spitsbergen skippers seem to have earned two and a half to five times more money than their Murman colleagues (140 – 311 rub. vs. not more than 63 rub.). The ordinary Spitsbergen hunters got from 34 to 91 rub., which is also higher than Murman fishermen (from 18,6 to 53 rub.). But after comparing payments calculated on a monthly basis the picture will be quite different. The Murman fisheries usually lasted for not more than six months (from March to August), while the Spitsbergen expeditions were 15 months long (from June to August the following year).43 This changes the picture radically. The average monthly income of a permanent skipper (i.e. one who received an advance payment) on Kildin Island was between 9,2 and 10,6 rub. At the same time a Spitsbergen skipper received from 9,3 to 20.7 rub per month. The difference is not so significant. This tendency is even more visible when comparing the monthly income of the ordinary members of the teams. The Murman fishermen can be divided into two groups – relatively highly-paid (more than 5 rub. per month) and relatively low-paid (less than 5 rub. per month). The Spitsbergen hunters can also be divided into two groups – those who got ½ of a share and those who got from 7/24 to ¼ of a share. If we compare the incomes of these groups, we can see that the highly-paid fishermen got from 6 to 9 rub. per month, that is higher than the highly-paid hunters (from 3.4 to 6.1 rub.). The low-paid Murman fishermen got from 2,6 to 5 rub. per month, which is very similar to the income of the low-paid hunters (from 2,26 to 5,5 rub. per month). As can be seen from our comparison, only the skippers, the elite of Spitsbergen hunters, could earn significantly more money than their colleagues on the Murman coast. At the same time the ordinary Spitsbergen hunters could earn per month approximately the same or even a smaller amount of money than the Murman fishermen. If we take into consideration the mortal danger of the Spitsbergen expeditions and the possible use of non-market prices as a basis for payments we can understand that hunting on Spitsbergen was indeed of interest as a working place to only a rather small segment of the population of the Russian North.

Strategy of Spitsbergen hunting The customs materials also allow us to make important observations concerning the strategy of Spitsbergen hunting. By comparing the prices of commodities and the biological parameters of the animals hunted we can better understand the logic of hunters who wanted to use the natural resources as effectively as possible in order to achieve the highest possible income. To do that I evaluated the market prices of animals mentioned in the documents as hunting targets. As can be seen from table 1 each year the hunters delivered from Spitsbergen the blubber (vorvan’ that included the fat of all the marine mammals killed), the skins and tusks of walrus and the skins of bearded seals. As for the terrestrial hunting each year the skins of reindeer and polar foxes were delivered. All the other commodities, such as polar bear skins, seal 43 Ogorodnikov 1889, 704.

28

Alexei V. Kraikovski

skins and eider down, appear irregularly in the records and cannot be considered as the main target of Spitsbergen expeditions. The walrus tusks are the most visible peculiarity of the walrus biology and are normally mentioned among the Spitsbergen commodities. At the same time the records of the 18th century cited above give the indication that the Pomors used not only the tusks, but also the skin and blubber of walrus. According to the 18th century Marine Charter and to the descriptions of walrus hunting provided by the 18th century observers, the Pomors used small boats (karbases) for walrus hunting. The hunters tried to catch the animals on the rookeries, sometimes very far from the base camp (up to 100 km). If they succeeded, the hunters killed all the animals they could and immediately butchered the carcasses and took the skins, fat and tusks, leaving the rest on the shore or on the ice.44 Pomors normally did not use the meat of marine mammals for food. M. I. Belov supposed that the Pomors transported the carcasses to the base camp and butchered there,45 but the 18th century descriptions clearly mention immediate butchering.46 This mode of dealing with the target animals of marine hunting is also well-known for sealing – the skin with blubber was taken from the body at the place where animals were killed.47 If the hunters killed too many walruses and could not take on board all the products immediately, they had to cut off and take the heads of the animals. According to the Marine Charter beheading was considered a sort of property claim, it meant that the owner would come back to take the skin and fat. Other hunters could not touch beheaded carcasses until they were washed into the sea.48 At the same time it was permitted by the Charter to take the unattended whole carcasses as well as the skins or blubber left behind, and everyone could take everything from the water – this was considered as the property of no-man.49 If the owner for some reason did not return, the animals killed and beheaded could stay untouched for a long time and “the bay was covered with walrus carcasses for many years after.”50 The zoologist Karl Ernst von Baer in the early 19th century noted that on Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen remains such as dead walrus can be left for significant time in the open air without any putrefaction.51 The Pomors in 1750 informed Professor L. Le Roy that they found a lot of walrus remains on the shore but not in the nearest vicinity of their base camp.52 We can estimate an approximate price of the commodities obtained from one walrus. The documents provide as a rule a rather low average size of the walrus tusks delivered. Big tusks, more than 1 kg., were just a small part of the catch. The average weight of delivered tusks mentioned in the 17th century documents was from

44 Efimenko 1873, 14, 21–22, Stora 1987, 129–130. 45 Belov 1956, 60 46 Efimenko 1873, 14, 47 Lepekhin. 2009, 167. 48 Efimenko 1873, 21–22, 65 49 Ibid. 50 Stora.1987, 130. 51 Baer. 1838, 26. 52 Le Roy 1955, 28–29.

Productivity and profitability of Russian Spitsbergen hunting in the late 18th century

29

0,65 to 1 kg.53 In the 18th century document notes on even smaller tusks – from 0,3 to 0,5 kg – are rather numerous.54 So, we can assume that young walruses and females were the main targets of the Pomor hunters. In general such a walrus on Spitsbergen weighs about 600 kg, its length is not more than three m. Using the market prices of 179355 we can estimate the income obtained from one such animal. The average walrus provided the following commodities: two tusks, 0.5 kg each, in total one kg -- one pood (16,38 kg.) of tusks was sold for about 19,75 rub., so, two such tusks cost about 1,2 rub.; one skin, cost about 0,98 rub; 150 kg. of blubber - one pood of blubber cost 2,65 rub., or 0,16 rub for one kg - thus, the blubber from one walrus could be sold for about 24,25 rub. In total one walrus of this size could fetch on the market about 26 – 27 rub., and about 90% of that was the revenue provided by the blubber. It is interesting that the outcome of the LASHIPA zoo-archaeological research of Kokerineset (2007-2008) shows another picture. Based on the results of this research and Dutch historical documents it seems that the Pomors were primarily interested in the tusks of the walruses.56 This can be explained by the peculiarities of the walrus hunting process described above – the butchering of the carcasses directly on the rookeries and the beheading of killed animals used as a property claim. It is interesting to note that based on the prices found in this historical research of the LASHIPA project it seems that blubber yielded much more money on the market than walrus tusks. The bearded seal is one of the biggest pinnipeds in the Arctic. One animal can provide from 40 to 100 kg. of blubber. On average it can be assumed that it weighs about 70 kg. If the average price of blubber was 2,65 rub. per pood, it yielded about 11,3 rub. The skin fetched another 0,62 rub. In total one bearded seal fetched about 12 rub., and about 94% of this amount of money was the impact of the blubber. The only product of polar fox hunting was its valuable fur. Every polar fox brought on average 4,35 rub. Thus, six average polar foxes (or two of very high quality) were equal to one walrus. Reindeer were an important source of food for hunters, and we can assume that reindeer skins were not the main reason for hunting them. Nevertheless, these skins brought in additional income. Every reindeer killed brought apart from the food on average about 1,5 rub. for one skin.

Conclusions So, on the basis of this estimation it is possible to draw some conclusions concerning the strategy of Pomor hunting on Spitsbergen in the late 18th century. In the summer seasons the hunters were interested first of all in blubber. It provided from 90 to 94% of the revenue from the marine mammal hunting. In the winter the Pomors usually killed polar foxes, which provided the highest revenue from the terrestrial hunting. 53 Dubinskaia L.G., Stanislavskii, A.L. (Eds) 1983, 87, 267–268; RGADA coll. 137, inv. 1, f. 15, l. 322; RGADA coll. 137, inv. 1, f. 16, part. 2, l. 154. 54 RGADA coll. 397, inv. 1, f. 215. 55 Vebermann 1915. 56 Avango, D., L. Hacquebord, Y. Aalders, H. deHaas, U. Gustafsson and F. Kruse 2011.

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Alexei V. Kraikovski

The skins of polar foxes – expensive but light to carry – were very important for the financial results of expeditions. The customs materials show that when the hunters got a lot of blubber they could even ignore other commodities. For example on two ships that came to Archangelsk from Spitsbergen in 1787 the customs officials fixed 428 barrels (that is about 2890 poods or about 47,5 tons, 110 kg. for 1 barrel) of blubber and no walrus skins and no tusks, just 100 skins of bearded seals (Table 1, 4). At the same time when the Pomor hunters could not get enough blubber they used other resources. For example in 1785, when the hunters got on average only 90 barrels per ship, they also brought from Spitsbergen walrus skins and tusks, the skins of seals, eider down and whale bones (Table 1, 4). Spitsbergen hunting was market-oriented and all the products were delivered to the market and were of interest to the foreign merchants who came to Archangelsk. In general it is possible to divide Spitsbergen commodities into two groups – the products of marine hunting, and furs. Blubber forms the main part of the first group, while polar fox fur forms the main part of the second group. The products of marine mammal hunting were part of the so-called “Pomor” commodities, quite important in the exports from the Archangelsk port through all of the 18th century.57 Walrus tusks in large quantities were sent to Astrakhan in the Volga downstream and then exported through the Caspian Sea to Iran, India and Middle Asia.58 N. Stora, basing himself on a book by Bacstrom, also mentioned the export of walrus ivory to Germany and France in the late 18th century,59 but the Swedish traveller actually described the narwhal ivory trade.60 Thus, we may conclude that the documents of the late 18th century do not support the image of unusual productivity or profitability of Spitsbergen hunting which is often presented in both academic and popular literature. The main target of hunters was blubber, quite an important commodity in those times that was delivered to Arkhangelsk not only from Spitsbergen but also from the coasts of the White and Barents Seas. Spitsbergen hunting occupied a rather modest place in the overall economic life of the Russian North; however, it was relatively important for several groups of the population there.

Literature Avango, D., L. Hacquebord, Y, Aalders, H. deHaas, U. Gustafsson and F. Kruse, 2011. Between markets and geopolitics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day. Polar Record 47(1), 29–39. Bacstrom, S., 1808. Account of a voyage to Spitsbergen in the year 1780. In: Pinkerton, J. (Ed.), A general collection of the best and most interesting voyages and travels in all parts of the World. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Cadell, Davies, 614–620.

57 58 59 60

For more details see Zakharov 2003, 250–285. Yuht 1994, 41, 81, 161. Stora 1987, 122. Bacstrom 1808, 619.

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31

Baer, K., 1838. Russkaya Laplandiya i Novaya Zemlya. Puteshestvie akademika g. Baera. Biblioteka dlya chteniya. Vol. 29. Part 3, St. Petersburg. A. Smirdin. 1–30. Belov, M.I., 1956. Istoriia otkrytiia i osvoeniia Severnogo Morskogo puti. Vol. 1, Moscow: Morskoi transport. Dal’, V.I. 1880. Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo yazyka. Vol. 1, Moscow: St. Petersburg: M.O. Volf. Dal’, V.I. 1881. Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo yazyka. Vol. 2, Moscow, St. Petersburg: M.O. Volf. Dubinskaia, L.G., Stanislavskii, A.L. (Eds). 1983 Prihodo-rashodnye knigi Moskovskih prikazov. Moscow: Nauka. Efimenko, A.Ya., 1873 Arteli v Arkhangelskoi gubernii, Sbornik materialov ob arteliah v Rossii. Issue 1, St. Petersburg: 2 Tipografia Maikova, 1–75. Fomin I.A., 1797. Opisanie Belogo moria s ego beregami I ostrovami, St. Petersburg: Academia Nauk. Jasinski, M.E. Russian Hunters on Svalbard and the Polar Winter, Arctic 44(2), 156–162. Kuratov A.A., 1991. Metrologiia Rossii I Russkogo Severa. Arkhangelsk: Geograficheskoe obshestvo SSSR. Le Roy, L. 1808. Narrative of the Adventures of Four Russian Sailors Who were cast in a Storm upon the uncultivated Island of East Spitsbergen, on which they lived for six years and four months. In: Pinkerton, J. (Ed) A general collection of the best and most interesting voyages and travels in all parts of the World, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Cadell, Davies), 595–613. Le Roy, L. 1955. Priklucheniya chetyreh rossiskih matrosov, k ostrovu Shpicbergenu burei prinesennyh. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo geograficheskoi literatury. Lepehin, I. 2009. “Dnevnye zapiski puteshestviya akademika Ivana Lepehina”. Nikolaev D. (ed.) Severnye vorota Rossii: soobsheniya puteshestvennikov XVI - XVIII vekov ob Arhangelske i Arhangelskoi gubernii. Moscow: OGI Ogorodnikov, S.F. 1889. Russkie na Shpicbergene v 1747–1748 gg”. Russkaia Starina, 6: 703–706. Ozeretskovskii, N.Ya. 1989, Puteshestvie po ozeram Ladozhskomu i Onezhskomu, Petrozavodsk: Karelia. PSZ. 1830, Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii. Vol. 4. 1700–1712. Vol. 9. 17331736, St. Petersburg: Tipografia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kancelyarii). Richards, J.F., 2003, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World, Berkeley: University of California Press. Stora, N. 1987. Russian Walrus Hunting in Spitsbergen. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 11(2). 117–138. Svin’in, P.P. 1818. Prikluchenie Sukhanova, prirodnogo russkogo vayatelia,.Otechestvennye zapiski, St. Petersburg, 188–219 Ushakov, I.F., 1997. Izbrannye proizvedeniia. Vol. 1, Murmansk: Murmanskoe knizhnoe izdatelstvo. Ushakov, I.F., 1998. Izbrannye sochineniia. Vol. 2. Murmansk: Murmanskoe knizhnoe izdatelstvo,. Veberman, E., 1915. Torgovlia, sudokhodstvo I tamozhennye sbory Arkhangelskogo porta v 1792–1793 g., Petrozavodsk. Veselovskii, S.B., (Ed.),1912. Prihodo-rashodnye knigi Moskovskih prikazov. Vol. 1. RIB. Vol. 28. (St. Petersburg: Arheograficheskaia komissiya).

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Vize (Wiese), V.Iu.,1948. “Russkie poliarnye morekhody is promyshlennykh, torgovykh i sluzhilykh liudei XVII – XVIII” vv.: Biograficheskii slovar, Moscow/Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Glavsevmorputi). Yuht A.I., 1994 Torgovlya s vostochnymi stranami i vnutrenniy rynok Rossii (20e – 60e gg. XVIII v.). Moscow: IRI). Zakharov, V.N., Zapadnoevropeiskie kupcy v rossiiskoi torgovle XVIII v. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003). Zimmerman, J.S., 1975. Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov, Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Russian Statesman. 1741–1805, New York: City University of New York.

Perceptions of Polar resources: a comparison of the animal remains of the russian Hunting station kokerineset and the dutch Whaling station smeerenburg

Ypie I. aalders Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

absTracT According to contemporary historical sources Russian hunters exploited a wide range of animal resources on Spitsbergen in the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. In this paper I will look at the archaeological data to get more insight into which animals the Russians hunted and for what products. For this I will use the Russian hunting station Kokerineset in Green Harbour as a case study. During excavations at this station by the LASHIPA-team all animal remains were collected and studied. Study of these remains indicates that reindeer and walrus were the main target animals of the hunters here. These animals however were used in completely different ways. All skeletal elements of reindeer were represented in the animal bone assemblage demonstrating that the Russians hunted the animal for food as well as for various utilitarian products. Of walrus on the other hand only parts of the skull were found. Clearly walrus was only hunted for products with market value and not for food. The meat and sometimes also the blubber of the animals killed were left behind on the killing sites. This is an example of how man already exploited the natural resources in a wasteful way in the pre-industrial period. The animal remains from Kokerineset were further compared with the remains from a 17th century whaling station. Like the Russians the whalers came to Spitsbergen aiming to exploit the animals there for commercial profit. Their main target was the Greenland Right Whale. The comparison shows interesting differences. In contrast to Kokerineset barely any reindeer bones or bones from other indigenous animals were found; instead the whalers brought along pork and beef meat from their home country. To prevent the meat from rotting it was dried and salted. So while the Russian hunters relied for a great part of their diet on local resources like reindeer the Dutch whalers obviously did not. The strategy of the Russian hunters had the advantage that they had fresh meat, which was rich in vitamins and minerals. The dried and salted meat of the whalers was of lower quality and did not contain enough vitamins and minerals, which were essential to prevent the disease scurvy. This partly explains why the Russian hunters were more successful in wintering on Spitsbergen than the whalers.

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Ypie I. Aalders

Introduction From the beginning of the 18th century until the middle of the 19th century Russian hunters organized yearly hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen. Most of these expeditions included wintering on the archipelago. Contemporary historical sources mention how the Russians exploited a wide variety of animals here, amongst others walrus, polar fox, polar bear, birds and seals.1 In this presentation I will examine the available archaeological data to get a better understanding of how the Russian hunters exploited the natural resources of Spitsbergen. For this I will use the Russian hunting station Kokerineset, situated in Green Harbour as a case study. Excavations of this station by the LASHIPA-team in the summers of 2007 and 2008 resulted in the collection of a large number of animal bone remains. The study of remains gives information on the questions of which animals the Russians hunted at Kokerineset and for what products these animals were hunted. Further, I will compare the composition of the animal remains from Kokerineset with that from a 17th century whaling station. With this comparison I aim to point out the similarities as well as the differences in how both culture groups perceived and exploited the natural resources on Spitsbergen and how this affected the success of their stay there.

Russian hunters in Green Harbour Kokerineset is situated on the western side of the Green Harbour fjord. The area around Kokerineset knows a long history of occupation and several archaeological features can be found there. The oldest remains consist of remains of a double blubber oven from the 17th century whaling period. In the 18th century Russian hunters built a base-camp of several houses nearby the blubber oven. In the 19th century Norwegian hunters reused the site and built a house next to the remains of the Russian houses. Several graves can be found on the third marine terrace behind the Russian base camp. These probably belong to the Russian hunting period. At the beginning of the 20th century the area of Kokerineset was used as an anchorage for a so-called floating factory ship used for whaling. In this presentation only the remains of the Russian houses will be discussed. This Russian hunting station was one of the many Russian stations that once stood on the archipelago. Currently remains of about 75 Russian hunting stations have been registered by the Governor of Spitsbergen as cultural heritage, and at more than half of these sites archaeological excavations have already been carried out. Unfortunately at none of these excavations was a systematic collection of animal bone fragments made. Usually only bone fragments were taken along that showed 1

Charitonow, A., 1851. “Die Russischen Promyschleniks auf Grumant (Spitzbergen): ihre Sagen und Überlieferungen”, Erman‘s Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, 154-175; Conway, M., 1906. No Man’s Land, A history of Spitsbergen from its discovery in 1596 to the beginning of the scientific exploration of the country; Keilhau, B.M., 1831. Reise i Ost-og Vest-Finmarken, samt til Berren-Eiland og Spitsbergen, i Aarene 1827 og 1828; Beaufoy, F.R.S., 1818. A Northwest Passage. In: Barrington, D., 1818. The possibility of approaching the North Pole,167-177.

35

Perceptions of Polar Resources

0 1 2

4

6

8

10 Meters

Figure 1 – Remains of huts at the site Kokerineset (map: author).

traces of carving. This was one of the reasons why the LASHIPA-team chose to conduct a new excavation at the Russian station of Kokerineset and to collect all the animal remains there. The remains of Russian houses at Kokerineset are clustered on the first marine terrace that can be seen here and are surrounded by a drainage ditch. The area covers about 150 m2. Six excavation trenches were set out and a total of 83 m2 was excavated. Figure 1 shows the layout of the site with a reconstruction of the location of the houses and the location of the excavation trenches. Parts of at least four structures or houses could be identified but it is very possible that more houses once stood on the site. The complex nature of the site makes a reconstruction of its occupation history difficult: houses were disassembled after use, structures were built on top of older houses, building materials were reused and repairs were carried out.

36

Ypie I. Aalders

Table 1 – Overview of animal bone fragments of Kokerineset Kokerineset

N

%

BW

%

1943

92

23646,5

99

Bird

102

5

151,2

1

Fish

61

3

113,1

0

Total

2106

100

23910,8

100

Mammal

Table 2 – Overview of mammal bone fragments of Kokerineset Kokerineset

N

%

BW (g)

%

Average weight per bone (g)

Dog

1

0

38,2

0

-

Cow

3

0

241,7

1

-

Polar bear

4

0

17

0

-

Polar fox

7

0

19,6

0

2,9

Bearded seal

32

2

92,4

0

Seal

34

2

199,6

1

5,9

151

8

8802,8

37

58,3

Walrus Ind

388

20

1162,8

5

-

Reindeer

1323

68

13072,4

55

9,9

TOTAL

1943

100

23646,5

99

-

Radiocarbon dating of some of the Russian culture layers indicates the site was in use around the end of the 18th century.2

The animal remains from Kokerineset In total 2106 animal bone fragments were collected during the excavation, see table 1. The bones were collected from areas inside as well as directly outside the houses and partly from the ditch surrounding the houses. Concentrations of small leather pieces and bones here show that the ditch was probably also used for throwing away garbage. The distribution of all the collected bones in the excavation trenches is given in figure 2. Apparently the hunters did not really take care to keep their settlement clean from animal remains and animal waste material was just thrown about. In the area between house 2 and 3, and west of the house the largest concentrations of bones were found but no other striking concentrations were noticed. Tables 1 and 2 together with the graph of figure 3 give an overview of the distribution of species represented by the bones and the weight of the bones. Possibilities that animals might be over- or underrepresented by the bones should always be kept in mind. Bones of small animals like birds, fish and also polar fox are 2

GrN-32120: Kokerineset find number K08-4-326 180±25BP GrN-32122: Kokerineset find number K08-4-208 135±15BP GrN-32123: Kokerineset find number K08-4-133 160±15BP

Perceptions of Polar Resources

37

Figure 2 – Distribution of animal bone fragments at Kokerineset (map: author).

more likely to disappear in the archaeological record because they get fragmented more easily; because of their small size they might also be more easily overlooked during the excavation work. Further, the higher fragmentation of these small bones makes them more difficult to determine according to species compared to the more sturdy bones from reindeer or walrus. Mammal bones clearly take up the largest part of the animal remains, only a small part concerns the bones of fish or birds. Even though these animals will be somewhat underrepresented still the number is so low that the conclusion can be drawn that birds and fish were not consumed in high numbers on the site. It is unlikely that the hunters would have deposited the bones at a separate location. The fish remains found include cod, haddock and halibut. All these types of fish could have been caught on Spitsbergen but could also have been brought along as

38

Ypie I. Aalders

Table 3 – Overview distribution skeletal elements of the mammal bones found at Kokerineset Kokerineset

Reindeer

Bearded Seal

Walrus

Seal

Polar fox

Dog

Polar Bear

Cow

Total

Atlas

6

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

7

Axis

7

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

8

24

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

26

404

0

0

2

1

0

0

2

365

7

0

138

1

0

0

0

0

146

Femur

80

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

81

Fibula

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gewei

21

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

21

Humerus

55

0

0

1

2

0

0

0

58

Mandibula

16

0

2

0

1

1

0

0

20

127

5

0

14

0

0

0

0

146

Patella

12

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

12

Pelvis

46

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

46

Phalanges

40

14

0

2

0

0

4

0

60

Radius/ulna

63

0

0

1

1

0

0

1

66

Scapula

44

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

44

Sternum

12

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

12

Tarsus/carpus

54

13

0

2

0

0

0

0

69

Tibia

116

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

119

Vertebrae

184

0

0

2

1

0

0

0

187

7

0

11

0

0

0

0

0

18

1325

32

151

32

7

1

4

3

1555

Calcaneus Costae Cranium

Metacarpus/ Metatarsus

Tooth Total

dried stock fish or have been caught during the journey. The river near the site of Kokerineset is known to be a breeding place for salmon.3 Other edible fish available in the area are for instance Arctic Char and halibut. Only five percent of the bones came from birds. Birds identified were eider and guillemot. Although these birds could be a nice addition to the diet the hunters did not appear to have gone out of their way to search for birds for food. In the direct vicinity of Kokerineset no bird cliffs or large colonies can be found. The nearest bird cliff is situated on the other side of the Isfjorden at Alkhornet. Some eider nests can be found in the surroundings but in general birds do not occur in large numbers in the area of Green Harbour. Some remains of egg were also found during the excavation, probably from eider.

3

”Brev til Udenrigsdepartementet fra L. Hansen. Tromsø, 12-5-1910”. Tromsø StatsArkiv. PrivatArkiv nr: 73. Boks 455: mentions how in 1901, Ludvig Hansen, Søren Zachariassen, Maaken Jensen and Ole Eriksen Langnes claimed the area at Kokerineset and erected a hut at the site. The purpose of the claim was to exploit salmon that bred at the site.

Perceptions of Polar Resources

39

Reindeer Reindeer takes up by far the largest part of the mammal bones. A total of 1281 reindeer bone fragments were identified and as table 3 shows all skeletal elements of the animals were represented. This indicates a very intensive use of the animals but also that the hunters processed the whole animal in the base camp. The Russian folklorist Charitonow wrote in 1851 on the activities of Russian hunters on Spitsbergen that hunting reindeer was the first thing the hunters did upon arrival at their base camp.4 Further, the Norwegian archaeologist Hultgreen stresses in her dissertation on Russian hunting on Spitsbergen that reindeer meat was such an important element of the hunters’ diet that they always took care to establish their base camps in regions frequently visited by reindeer. The area near Kokerineset is in this respect a suitable location for a base camp. The rich tundra vegetation forms attractive grazing fields for reindeer and nowadays small groups of reindeer can frequently be seen here. The hunters had to hunt a considerable number of reindeer in the summer to build up a sufficient supply for the winter months. As I pointed out in the introduction the Russian hunters were the first people to successfully winter on a yearly base at Spitsbergen. The biggest threat they had to face during wintering here was the disease scurvy, which develops due to a lack of vitamin C. The availability of fresh reindeer meat and blood combined with the collection of so-called scurvy grass was an important factor preventing this. Besides the consumption of the meat and blood of the animals, most of the bones had also been broken in order to extract the nutritious marrow from within. Various parts of antler with traces of sawing and smoothing show the hunters not only used reindeer for food but also for making various products like tools and other small objects. Not only bone and antler were found but also numerous pieces of leather, some pieces still with reindeer hair. Most of these appeared to be waste fragments from the production of shoes and other leather objects like knife shafts. A wooden shoe mould was also found. Indications of shoe production were also found at other Russian sites on Spitsbergen, for instance at Slettneset on the northern side of Bellsund where even shoes for children and women have been found. This shows the shoes were not produced by the hunters exclusively for their own use. Clearly the hunters already processed the skins at the base camp for products to be used in their home region, perhaps even for sale on the markets there.

Walrus About 151 fragments of walrus bone were collected during the excavation. As table 3 shows these were all skull fragments. No other skeletal elements of the animals were represented. The hunters thus only brought the heads of the animals killed back to the base camp and no other body parts. Perhaps they also took the blubber and skin of the animals with them but this would have left no traces in the archaeological 4

Charitonow 1851, 154-175. Charitonow wrote this article on the basis of interviews with Russian hunters who had been to Spitsbergen.

40

Ypie I. Aalders

Figure 3 – Relative amounts of mammal bone fragments from Kokerineset.

record. The skull fragments show traces of heavy chopping resulting from attempts to remove the valuable ivory tusks. Walrus was usually hunted at so-called walrus haul-out points, places where the animals would gather together on land in large numbers. On the basis of observations in the past and current known walrus haul-out points the biologists Wiig and Gjertz created a map of known walrus haul-out points on Spitsbergen, see figure 4.5 This map shows that Kokerineset was situated near two of such walrus haul-out points. Walrus haul out points however could change every season and the animals also gather on the ice. Further it should be kept in mind that after a mass killing surviving animals would avoid going back to the same location and became more wary and so the hunters probably constantly had to look at new places for walrus.6 According to Zorgdrager walrus also gathered on land in Green Harbour.7 Hunting walrus could be a dangerous enterprise. Especially in the water where the animals are in their element they can be very aggressive and difficult to kill. For a walrus hunt the Russian hunters usually set out in small sloops (karbasses) to search for a herd on land or on ice. Each hunter was equipped with a large lance of circa three meters long. When a herd was found they would take care to approach the animals as quietly as possible. The animals lying closest to the shoreline were killed 5 6 7

Gjertz, I. and Ø. Wiig, 1994. “Past and Present Distribution of Walrus in Spitsbergen”, Arctic 47(1), 34-42 See for instance Conway 1906: 238 or for the whalers Houttuijn 1761 or Zorgdrager 1720: 201 Zorgdrager, C.G., 1720. Bloeyende opkomst der Aloude en Hedendaaggsche Groenlandsche Visschery, 201-204

Perceptions of Polar Resources

41

Figure 4 - Distribution of walrus haul-out points on Svalbard (based upon Gjertz and Wiig 1994 – fig.4).

first. In this way the dead animals formed a barrier for the animals further ashore, preventing them from escaping into the water. With this strategy a small group of hunters could kill a large group of animals relatively easily. Although there was a market for the skins and blubber of the animals in Russia it is not possible to say if the hunters on Spitsbergen always took these with them. They were restricted in transportation possibilities with their karbasses and might therefore only have taken back the parts with the highest value. The animals were extremely heavy; an adult walrus can weigh two to three tons.8 A skull with tusks alone must weigh about 8 kg. Table 2 shows the relatively high weight of the walrus bone compared to the bone of a reindeer. On average a reindeer bone weighs 9.9 gram while the average for a walrus bone is 58.3 gram. The average weight of a

8

Born, E.W., I/ Gjertz, and R.R. Reeves, 1995. “Population Assessment of Atlantic Walrus”, Meddelelser Nr. 138, Oslo, 81.

42

Ypie I. Aalders

walrus tusk appears to have been 1.5 kg.9 So a skull without tusks would weigh on average 5 kg. This would mean that the 8.8 kg of walrus skull found at Kokerineset would represent only about two animals. So on the basis of the animal remains from Kokerineset it cannot be said that the Russians applied mass slaughter. Historical sources on the other hand do mention the use of mass slaughter as the main hunting technique of the Russians on Spitsbergen. Only few accounts however provide information on the size of the walrus catches of the Russians: – 1707: a group of Russians killed about 1,200 walruses at the south cape of Spitsbergen.10 – 1784/85: a Russian team caught 300 walruses, 230 seals, 100 belugas, 150 polar bears, 1000 polar foxes and one whale, produced a large number of barrels of fat and collected more than 300 kg of eider down.11 – 1818-19: two groups of Russian hunters, in total about 40 men, made a catch of 1200 walrus at Sørkapp.12 – 1821: the crew of a Russian ship caught 400 walrus at Spitsbergen.13 – 1822-23: a group of twenty Russians caught 1100 walrus in Bellsund.14 Catches of 1,100 and 1,200 animals seem almost incredible and must have provided such large quantities of tusks, blubber and skins that this catch alone would fill a ship completely. Accounts are known for the later Norwegian hunting period that sometimes so many animals were killed the hunters could not take everything with value along.15 It is not unlikely that similar events occurred during the Russian period. At Kokerineset relatively few walrus skull fragments were found but at Russian hunting stations like Trygghamna and Kapp Lee for instance the excavation reports mention the presence of large numbers of walrus skull fragments.

Other animals Based on the animal bone fragments reindeer and walrus were the main targets of the hunters at Kokerineset. Historical sources however also mention polar fox and beluga as popular hunting targets. Polar fox was especially hunted during the winter when the animals carry a thick white winter fur. Among the foxes of Spitsbergen a number of animals keep a bluish/grey fur during the winter and for this reason are called blue foxes. The furs of these were more valuable than the white furs.16 Barely any fox bones were found during the excavation of Kokerineset. Did this mean the Russian hunters here did not hunt fox? An explanation for the lack of fox bones might 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Zorgdrager 1720, 197 Stora, N., 1987. “Russian walrus hunting in Spitsbergen”, Etudes Inuit Vol. 11, 132 Ibid, 119. Lønø, O., 1972. “The catch of walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) in the areas of Spitsbergen, Novaja Zemlja, and Franz Josef Land”, norsk Polarinstitutt Årbok, 202 Ibid. Ibid.; norsk Handels-tidende, 1827. Kjaer, K.G., 2011. “Serial Slaughter: the development of the North Norwegian sealing fleet: 1859-1909”, Polar Record 47 (247), 1-20. 16 Lamont, J., 1867. yachting in the arctic seas, 175.

Perceptions of Polar Resources

43

be that fox was hunted during the winter months when the group of hunters spread out over smaller outposts away from their base camp. Perhaps the hunters already skinned the foxes at the traps or at the outposts and only took the furs with them to the base camp. This would have left no traces in the archaeological record here. In several historical documents it is mentioned that Green Harbour is an excellent spot for the hunting of Beluga.17 However, no beluga bone was identified in the animal remains. Only a small part of whale bone was found which might also have been picked up by the hunters from the beach. The absence of animal remains however does not directly mean the animal was not hunted. Perhaps Belugas were hunted at Kokerineset but processed at the beach, after which the bones were thrown into the fjord. Beluga was hunted for its blubber and skin. During our stay in Green Harbour we regularly saw groups of Beluga passing by, swimming in and out of the fjord. Beluga was hunted with large nets. Since these nets took up a lot of space they were not always brought along.18

Non-indigenous animal remains Some animal bones found at Kokerineset belong to animals non-indigenous on Spitsbergen. These consisted of three cow bones and one lower jaw of a dog. Perhaps the hunters brought some beef with them to Spitsbergen but since this was more the strategy of whalers the presence of cow bones in Kokerineset might indicate that the Russians here had contacts with European whalers and they exchanged food. Beaufoy19 mentions that the Russians brought beef with them for provisions but they do not seem to have done so in large quantities.

Comparison with the animal bones excavated in the Dutch whaling station Smeerenburg The Russian hunters were not the only people who were attracted by the rich natural resources of Spitsbergen. Already in the early 17th century an intensive whaling industry had developed here with the Dutch Noordse Compagnie and the English Muscovy Company as the main actors. Like the Russian hunting stations, numerous whaling stations were established along the coasts of Spitsbergen. The most wellknown whaling station is the Dutch station of Smeerenburg, situated on the southeast point of Amsterdam Island. This station consisted of seven so-called try-works; each try-works included a blubber oven a working platform and living quarters for the work crew (figure 5 for a lay-out of the station). The area of Smeerenburg was in use from 1614 to 1663. Except for two wintering attempts in 1633-34 and 1634-35 the site was occupied only during the summer season.20 17 18 19 20

Keilhau 1831, 238. Charitonow 1851. Beaufoy 1818 , 172 Hacquebord, L.,1984. Smeerenburg: het verblijf van Nederlandse walvisvaarders op de westkust van Spitsbergen in de zeventiende eeuw.

44

Ypie I. Aalders

Figure 5 – Lay out of the whaling station Smeerenburg (Map: Louwrens Hacquebord, Jaap Kees Kwadijk, Wouter Zweers and Frits Steenhuizen).

The animal bones discussed here were collected from one of the excavation trenches in the try-works of Vlissingen. This trench covered part of the inside as well as the direct surroundings of the main living quarters. Analysis and determination of the animal remains has been carried out under the direction of Van Wijngaarden.21 In total 967 animal fragments were collected and studied. The relative amount of bird and fish bone was some higher than at Kokerineset but still forms only a small fraction of the whole bone assemblage. In one of the whaling logbooks however it is mentioned that the whalers appreciated birds as an addition to their diet.22 When looking at the distribution of mammal bone the first striking difference with the diagrams of Kokerineset is the low number of reindeer bone fragments found at Smeerenburg. At Kokerineset 68% of the bone came from reindeer and for Smeerenburg this is only 23%. Further, not all skeletal elements of reindeer were represented and barely any antler was found. It appears that the whalers hunted reindeer for meat only occasionally or not at all, and not near the station. In two accounts there is a mention of going on a reindeer hunt.23 The winterers in any case did hunt reindeer to get extra provisions for the winter. Perhaps the apparent reluctance to hunt reindeer for meat had to do with the fact that the whalers focused all their energy on the catching and processing of whales. They were only there for a short summer season and so did not want to lose any time. Besides, I imagine only 21 Van Wijngaarden, L.H., 1984. De dierenresten van Smeerenburg, een poging tot reconstructie van de dierlijke component in de voeding van de 17de eeuwse walvisvaarders. In: Hacquebord, L. ,1984. Smeerenburg: het verblijf van Nederlandse walvisvaarders op de westkust van Spitsbergen in de zeventiende eeuw, 279-300. 22 Martens, F., 1671. Spitzbergische oder Groenlandische Reise Beschreibung gethan im Jahr 1671. 23 Martens, 1710; L’Honoré-Naber, E.P., 1633. Walvischvaarten, Overwinteringen en Jachtbedrijven in het Hooge Noorden 1633-1635.

Perceptions of Polar Resources

45

the people in higher command were allowed to be equipped with guns and could go hunting. Another explanation is that reindeer do not frequently visit the area near Smeerenburg. Another difference with Kokerineset is the higher number of bones from nonindigenous animals like cows and pigs. The whalers at Smeerenburg clearly brought meat along from the Netherlands. According to Van Wijngaarden beef was the major component in the meat consumption of the whalers. Whaling expeditions took about 4-5 months and meat brought along had to be preserved well. This was done by drying, salting or smoking the meat. A disadvantage of these preservation methods was the loss of vitamins and minerals. We know from historical documents that the whalers brought along salted beef in barrels. The meat was cut into pieces that could fit into the barrels and be salted. For this mostly pieces from the chests were used which usually are the cheapest parts of a cow. After eating the meat the long bones would be broken to also extract the marrow inside. Smeerenburg was a whaling station but only very few whale bones were found in the settlement because the animals were processed near the beach. Some experimenting with the baleen was done but the other remains of the animals were discarded. The meat, which the whalers could very well have used for consumption, was thrown away. This had nothing to do with limitation of transportation possibilities as was the case for the Russian hunters with their karbasses. The whales killed were pulled to the station with rowing boats and were owned by the company. The whale meat was burned as fuel in the ovens It is also possible that not eating the meat had to do with a superstition that whale meat was not edible or perhaps it was because the whalers did not like the taste of it.

concLusIon In the beginning of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century Russian hunters organized annual expeditions to Spitsbergen to exploit the natural resources there. They were interested in these resources for commercial profit. The study of animal remains from the Russian hunting station of Kokerineset shows that reindeer and walrus were the main targets of the hunters who stayed there. The animals were however exploited in very different ways. Reindeer were hunted for food but also for raw materials like skin and antler. The hunt for reindeer for food provided the hunters with fresh meat and blood rich in minerals and vitamins. This was important during winterings when a lack of vitamins could cause deadly diseases. Walrus was primarily hunted for its valuable ivory tusks. Walrus was mainly killed using mass slaughter techniques and after the kill only the products with market value were taken along. The meat of the animals was left behind. Comparison of the bone material from Kokerineset with that from the Dutch 17th century whaling station Smeerenburg shows the similarities and differences in perception and use of available resources on Spitsbergen by the two culture groups. The whalers hunted local resources like reindeer much less for food than the Russians but instead took along dried and salted meat from their home country. Their diet therefore contained much fewer minerals and vitamins than the diet of the Russians. Like the Russians the whalers came to Spitsbergen to exploit the natural

46

Ypie I. Aalders

resources here for commercial profit. The Greenland Right Whale was their main target but only the products of the animals killed with a market value were used, the rest was thrown away. Both groups; Russian hunters and Dutch whalers saw the natural resources of Spitsbergen as an opportunity to make a profit. They did not take any care to avoid over-exploitation of the resources and exploited these in a wasteful way. This probably had to do with Spitsbergen being a No-Man’s Land where anyone could go to exploit its resources. Such a situation created the demonstrably wasteful attitude without any attempts to create an industry with a long-term perspective. Another reason might be that initially the whalers and hunters must have considered the wealth of resources at Spitsbergen to be inexhaustible.

Literature Beaufoy, F.R.S., 1818. A Northwest Passage. In: Barrington, D. The possibility of approaching the North Pole. James Eastburn & Co., New York. Born, E.W., I. Gjertz and R.R. Reeves, 1995. “Population Assessment of Atlantic Walrus”, Meddelelser Nr. 138, Oslo. Charitonow, A., 1851. “Die Russischen Promyschleniks auf Grumant (Spitzbergen): ihre Sagen und Überlieferungen”, Erman‘s Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Rusland. Conway, M., 1906. No Man’s Land, A history of Spitsbergen from its discovery in 1596 to the beginning of the scientific exploration of the country. Gjertz, I. and Ø. Wiig,, 1994. Past and Present Distribution of Walrus in Spitsbergen, Arctic 47(1). Hacquebord, L., 1984. Smeerenburg: het verblijf van Nederlandse walvisvaarders op de westkust van Spitsbergen in de zeventiende eeuw. PhD Thesis, Amsterdam. Houttuijn, Martinus / Houttuijn, F., 1761. Natuurlyke historie of uitvoerige beschrijving der dieren, planten en mineraalen, volgens het samenstel van den heer Linnaeus. Met naauwkeurige afbeeldingen. Keilhau, B.M., 1831. Reise i Ost-og Vest-Finmarken, samt til Berren-Eiland og Spitsbergen, i Aarene 1827 og 1828. Christiana. Kjær, K.G., 2011. ”Serial Slaughter: the development of the North Norwegian sealing fleet: 1859-1909”, Polar Record 47 (247). Lamont, J., 1867. Yachting in the Arctic Seas. London: Chatto and Windus. L’Honoré-Naber, E.P., 1633. Walvischvaarten, Overwinteringen en Jachtbedrijven in het Hooge Noorden 1633-1635. Lønø, O., 1972. The catch of walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) in the areas of Spitsbergen, Novaja Zemlja, and Franz Josef Land, Norsk Polarinstitutt Årbok. Martens, F., 1671. Spitzbergische oder groenlandische Reise Beschreibung gethan im Jahr 1671. Martens, F., 1710. Stora, N., 1987. Russian walrus hunting in Spitsbergen, Etudes Inuit Vol. 11 Zorgdrager, C.G., 1720. Bloeyende opkomst der Aloude en Hedendaagsche Groenlandsche Visschery.

In Search of Profit in the High Arctic. The Commercial Background of the Dutch Expedition to Spitsbergen in 1920

Hidde de Haas Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

Abstract The first decades of the 20th century mark a turning point in the history of Spitsbergen as the Arctic Archipelago became the theatre for a run on mineral resources. An international mining industry established itself in the periphery, while in the political centres of the world diplomatic issues concerning the question of authority over Spitsbergen were resolved. Two Dutch companies, the Hollandsch-Noorsche Mijnbouw Maatschappij (HNMM) and the Nederlandsche Spitsbergen Compagnie (NESPICO), became commercially interested in Spitsbergen. In this paper, De Haas focuses on the economic background and commercial motives behind the Dutch Spitsbergen expedition of 1920, which resulted in the founding of NESPICO. De Haas demonstrates that, while having some geopolitical consequences, the goal of the Dutch entrepreneurs was to exploit the mineral resources on Spitsbergen at a time the global coal market was severely disrupted.

Introduction In late 2011, the naming committee at the Norwegian Polar Institute officially recognized the historic name of Rijpsburg for a former Dutch mining settlement on Bohemanflya, a peninsula on the northern side of the central Icefjord on Spitsbergen (figure 1).1 While only a low impact decision in itself – a historic name with Dutch origins will from now on be shown on geographical maps of the region – it offers a relevant starting point for a study into the backgrounds of this settlement. The name dates back to 1920, when a Dutch expedition went to Spitsbergen to develop a coal mining operation. The mine was in operation from 1920 to 1921, as the Dutch had already shifted their operations to Barentsburg at Green Harbour in late 1920 and subsequently transferred most of the buildings and equipment from the site from 1921 onwards. This Dutch expedition took place in a period of peak interest in the mineral wealth of Spitsbergen. Since the turn of the century, an increasingly international prospecting and mining industry had been establishing itself on Spitsbergen. World 1

Norwegian Polar Institute, 1-11-2011, Meeting Cf case number 353.

48

hidde de haas

Figure 1. Map by H.R. de Haas.

War I strongly accelerated this process. General scarcity of resources such as coal, and correspondingly high prices on the world markets (figure 2), made it attractive for adventurous entrepreneurs to look for alternative supplies of coal. At the same time, governments felt that strategic access to coal reserves was increasingly essential to support their national economies in periods of international turmoil and to compensate for the lack of coal supplies from abroad. This was a motive for some national governments to become interested in the resources of Spitsbergen and in

49

In search of profit in the High Arctic

Indexed US and UK coal prices (1890-1940) 500 450

Price (1913=100)

400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 1940

1938

1936

1934

1932

1930

1928

1926

1924

1922

1920

1918

1916

1914

1912

1910

1908

1906

1904

1902

1900

1898

1896

1894

1892

1890

0

Year

UK

US

Figure 2. Graph by H.R. de Haas.

acquiring possible control over them. Altogether, issues of law, order and ownership on Spitsbergen became part of the international diplomatic agenda. The mix of national politics, international diplomacy and entrepreneurship was central in the interest taken in Spitsbergen well into the 1920s. This time-frame then represents a turning point in the history of Spitsbergen and has been the subject of many studies. Concerning the motives of the individual companies and nations involved, this has also led to some speculation in certain cases. The idea that the Dutch expedition might be part of a Dutch governmental strategy, with the possible goal of claiming Spitsbergen for the Netherlands, has previously been suggested in literature.2 Recent research has shown that the Dutch government was not interested in attaining sovereignty over Spitsbergen, nor were there any political connections or government involvement when Dutch interests in Spitsbergen were initiated in 1915 with HNMM or in 1920 with NESPICO.3 However, the question remains as to how this idea came into being. In order to address this issue, this article explores the actual motives and the activities of the Dutch 1920 expedition, and how other companies and governments already actively involved in the run on Spitsbergen perceived the newcomers.

2

3

Mathisen, T., 1954. Svalbard in international politics 1871-1925. The Solution of a unique international problem, Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter nr. 101, Oslo,110, 131; Østreng, W., 1971. Økonomi og politisk Suverenitet. En studie av interssespilet om Svalbards politiske status, 99-104. Haas, H.R. de. 2008. Spitsbergen’s resources, Dutch entrepreneurs and Geo-politics, Industrial Patrimony, resources, practices, cultures 19, 2008, 25-36.

50

hidde de haas

The question of authority over Spitsbergen International discussions on authority and ownership with regard to Spitsbergen date back to the early 17th century.4 From 1899 onwards, discussions on how authority over Spitsbergen should be established, and more importantly by whom, became once again a theme in international politics. Spitsbergen was still a noman’s-land, a situation that some governments deemed unfavourable for all the companies and individuals involved in working on Spitsbergen – although one could argue that the main motive was to expand their own political influence into the High Arctic for strategic and nationalistic goals. After years of diplomatic exchanges and conferences, the international community came to a final solution for these questions of law, order and ownership in 1919-1920.5 In February 1920, the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen was officially introduced. With the Treaty, Norway would be granted authority over the Arctic Archipelago, although under specific conditions that ensured everlasting rights for all individuals and companies from the signatory nations.6 In Norway, these additional terms met with criticism by many, as Norway had striven for full sovereignty.7 The treaty itself was not effectuated until August 1925. The process of establishing specific laws, and installing offices in the periphery took even longer. Norway was thus not yet in control of Spitsbergen when the Dutch expedition set sail. Norway was still dependent on obtaining international consent for some aspects of introducing law and regulations. The idea that the Dutch expedition might have a geopolitical component, originates from this situation, in which Norway apparently still felt somewhat insecure of their newly gained rights over Spitsbergen. The Netherlands obviously had strong historic connections with Spitsbergen, dating from the discovery of the archipelago in 1596, and a strong economic presence in the form of the whaling industry in the subsequent period.8 During the diplomatic process that eventually resulted in the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen, the Netherlands were seemingly sharply opposed to Norway gaining control over Spitsbergen.9 The Netherlands however, were mostly opposed to the idea of the Spitsbergen Issue being solved at the Allied Peace Conference in Paris, rather then through the League of Nations where the whole of the international community 4 5 6 7

8

9

Conway, M., 1906. No Man’s Land. A history of Spitsbergen from its discovery in 1596 to the beginning of the scientific exploration of the country, Cambridge. Mathisen 1954. Ulfstein, G., 1995. The Svalbard Treaty. From terra nullius to Norwegian sovereignty, Oslo. NA, 2.05.21, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: A-documents 1815-1940, 1723 . Memos and minutes of meetings of Dutch diplomats involved in the negotiations illustrate this. Mathisen 1954 also describes the Norwegian sentiments concerning limitation of their authority on Spitsbergen. Hacquebord, L., 1984. Smeerenburg. Het verblijf van Nederlandse walvisvaarders op de westkust van Spitsbergen in de 17de eeuw; Avango, D., L. Hacquebord, Y. Aalders, H.R. de Haas, U. Gustafsson and F. Kruse, F., 2011. Between markets and geo-politics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day, Polar Record 47, 2939. Mathisen 1954, 84-85.

In search of profit in the High Arctic

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could contribute. The main idea behind this Dutch policy was the promotion of a joint institutional solution, and the strengthening of international law and cooperation after WWI. Because of this viewpoint, which was a matter of principle, the Netherlands argued against Norwegian control.10 This approach with the focus on the League of Nations lacked sufficient international support. The Allied victors favoured the Norwegian position, after which the Dutch became one of the advocates for limitations to Norwegian sovereignty.11 Protecting the future rights of the many international businesses on Spitsbergen from any possible disadvantages compared to Norwegian businesses, as well as keeping all land, resources and business opportunities on Spitsbergen open to all – as it had been for centuries – was their main motive.12 While the Dutch sentiments were thus not necessarily anti-Norwegian, Norwegian authorities and the Norwegian public seemingly increasingly interpreted them this way. The diplomatic opposition by amongst others the Netherlands even caused some small reciprocal irritations in diplomatic relations between Norway and the Netherlands on this subject.13

The commercial motives of the 1920 Dutch Spitsbergen expedition In the autumn of 1919, with the draft version of the treaty in place, a group of investors grouped around Herman Hendrik Dresselhuys, director of Van der Eb & Dresselhuys’ Scheepvaart Maatschappij (EDSM), bought the majority share in Kulkompaniet Isefjord Spitsbergen. This Norwegian prospecting company held vast claims to coalfields and land on Spitsbergen, which its Norwegian participants had amassed over the previous two decades (see figure 1).14 With the takeover, the name changed to Isefjord Kulkompani, and management shifted from Christiania to Rotterdam. Here plans for the actual exploitation of the coalfields – something for which the Isefjord Company previously lacked the means and capital – were developed. This culminated in the 1920 expedition. On the 5th of June 1920, a specially outfitted ship of EDSM, the SS Mont Cenis, left Rotterdam harbour and set sail for Spitsbergen.15 SS Mont Cenis docked in Hamburg, Christiania and Tromsø, where all the remaining necessary equipment, supplies, materials, staff, guests, and 10 De Haas 2008. 11 The Dutch National Archives hold a number of communications between the Swedish and Dutch departments of Foreign Affairs during the negotiations on the Spitsbergen Issue in 1919, discussing how to secure open access and equal rights for all on Spitsbergen under future Norwegian Rule. National Archive The Hague (NA), 2.05.21 Ministry of Foreign Affairs: A-documents 1815-1940, 1722. 12 De Haas 2008. 13 Mathisen 1954, 84-85. 14 Hoel, A., 1966. Svalbard. Svalbards historie 1596-1965, Vol I, Oslo, 223-239. 15 Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (NRC) Thursday 20 May 1920, “Een expeditie naar Spitsbergen”; Het Vaderland, Thursday 20 May 1920, “Een expeditie naar Spitsbergen”; Swart, A., 1920. “Een Nederlandse expeditie naar Spitsbergen”, Cornelis Douwes, 1982, 1458-1462.

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about 50 German miners were taken on board. In late June, the ship anchored about 3.000 kilometres north of Rotterdam, off the coast of Bohemanflya. The group of Dutch entrepreneurs behind the expedition, with Dresselhuys as the main initiator, were driven by the idea of commercial coal mining and making a profit. They regarded the economic circumstances in Europe and the peaking coal prices as a great business opportunity to bring Spitsbergen coal to the European markets. In the previous years, EDSM had shipped coal from, amongst other places, South Africa to Europe.16 Because of the profits involved, the company had first planned to develop a coal mine in South Africa to supply the European market - a distance of about 10.000 km as the bird flies. Spitsbergen was obviously much closer to Europe. Director Dresselhuys was incidentally acquainted with the opportunity on Spitsbergen. His interest was immediately aroused when a Norwegian business contact introduced him to the possibility of investing in the Norwegian Isefjord company.17 The status of no-man’s-land added to Spitsbergen’s attraction, as neither taxation nor regulations were in place to limit entrepreneurs.

The goals and activities of the expedition In the days after their arrival, some 80 expedition members, together with building materials, tents, provisions, mining and all other equipment, were loaded on barges and towed to land by small motor boats. Incidentally, these boats were named after Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerk. This left the second captain of the 1596 expedition that discovered Spitsbergen, Jan Cornelisz Rijp, to provide a suitable name for the settlement.18 During the remainder of the summer, the expedition built Rijpsburg, a small-scale experimental mining operation. The location was both predetermined and historic. Dutch management had already settled in advance on Bohemanflya as the location of choice for the mining operation.19 Knowledge of this specific region was an important consideration. It was a location where the Isefjord Company had been active since 1899. As such, it was also one of the oldest commercial coal mining sites on Spitsbergen. Furthermore, in 1900 the Isefjord Company had built a hut there, as part of their claim to the region, so some facilities were already in place. 20 The whole operation was essentially a case study of all aspects of mining, living and sustaining a business under Arctic conditions on Spitsbergen. The expedition was to inspect the Dutch owned claims, as well as other coalfields and mines on Spitsbergen, and to experience mining in Arctic conditions. The eventual goal was 16 NA, 2.20.01 Nederlandse Handels-Maatschappij (NHM), 12819 Stukken met betrekking tot de oprichting en leiding van de Zuid-Afrikaansche Scheepvaart Mij. 17 Hoel 1954, 238-239 and 300-301. 18 NRC, Thursday 30 September 1920, “De expeditie naar Spitsbergen”. 19 NRC Thursday 20 May 1920, “Een expeditie naar Spitsbergen” and NRC Sunday 6 June 1920, “De expeditie naar Spitsbergen.” 20 Reymert, P.K., 2004. “Den første kulldrift på Svalbard. Søren Zakariassen og Kulkompagniet Isefjord Spitsbergen,” Arktisk Gruvedrift II. Teknik, vetenskap och historia i norr, Stockholm, 107-118.

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Figure 3. Map of the Rijpsburg settlement and surroundings by L. Hacquebord, E. Bolhuis, F. Steenhuisen and H. de Haas, LASHIPA 7, 2009.

to assess the possibilities and profitability of mining on Spitsbergen, and to decide whether to further develop a coal mining business on Spitsbergen. At the same time, the proceeds from selling the Spitsbergen coal in North Norway covered the expenses of the expedition.21 Experience of and research into all aspects of sustaining a business on Spitsbergen were especially important since the accounts of the Norwegian partners, as well as many of the written accounts on mining on Spitsbergen, were not always completely accurate, or unbiased for that matter. The Dutch took along specialists in the field for these purposes. Geological research focused on the extent and quality of the coal reserves, at Bohemanflya and elsewhere. Coasts and possible anchorages were explored, tested for water 21 NRC, Thursday 20 May 1920, “Een expeditie naar Spitsbergen”; NRC, Sunday 6 June, “De expeditie naar Spitsbergen”.

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depth, and mapped. In the mine, experiments into the most efficient and applicable mining methods and techniques in the permafrost were undertaken. In technical terms, Arctic mining was rather new. That this research was necessary in order to pursue commercial mining is illustrated by the information provided by the Norwegian collaborators in the Isefjord Company. They advised open-pit mining at Bohemanflya. However, after only brief experiments the expedition’s mining engineer judged that tunnelling was more practical, more productive and more cost efficient.22 Other vital aspects such as housing, hygiene, health and nutrition, clothing, logistic questions – for example how to deal with the necessary fresh water supplies, as water is not always available in liquid form in the Arctic –working schedules, labour-management relations, were all evaluated in the same way. The map by the IPY-LASHIPA international research project (figure 3), shows the remains of the settlement, of the mine, and of various other features, that are still visible in the landscape today.23 Its historic plan is still mostly visible. The settlement consisted of seven buildings and a number of tents, to house up to about a hundred persons. The settlement had access to running water, transported from an artificial reservoir, filtered, and distributed through pipelines; a wireless radio station; and dedicated space for storage, photography, geological research, meetings, administration, cooking, dining and recreation. The prefabricated buildings from Norway were well insulated, with double walls and windows. Compared to many of the other smaller mining camps on Spitsbergen, Rijpsburg was rather elaborate and offered relative comfort to both labour and staff. When visiting Rijpsburg, a geologist in the service of the British Northern Exploration Company (NEC) was said to be impressed by the Dutch accomplishments, stating: ‘You are quite a centre of civilisation here.’24

Results of the expedition The rational and pragmatic approach to the study of mining on Spitsbergen was rather successful. The expedition was well equipped for its tasks. If any tool, material or piece of equipment was lacking it was shipped from Norway as quickly as possible. The Mont Cenis went back and forth, taking coal (mostly from other mines on Spitsbergen) to Norway, and returning to Spitsbergen with supplies. As the summer ended, management decided that a small group was to winter at Rijpsburg in order to guard the settlement, to continue mining through the winter and so have coal ready for shipping in the spring, and most importantly to gain experience of the Spitsbergen winter and see how it affected men, machines, coal, work and operations in general. Altogether, the whole experience on Spitsbergen offered Dutch management a whole lot of knowledge. Dresselhuys regarded the overall results very positively.25 22 23 24 25

NRC, Thursday 19 August 1 920, “Expeditie naar Spitsbergen VII. LASHIPA. Lashipa 7 Archaeological expedition on Spitsbergen July 4-12 2009”, Groningen, 2010. NRC, Saturday 4 September 1920, “Expeditie naar Spitsbergen VIII.” Dresselhuys, H.H., 1921. “De Nederlandsche expeditie in 1920 tot het onderzoek naar de

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Figure 4. Photo courtesy Michigan Tech University Archives.

Financially it was successful as well. Coal prices were at exceptionally high levels, and the profits on the 2.000 tons of coal mined at Rijpsburg, combined with the proceeds of shipping coal for other Spitsbergen companies, covered the costs. With future business on Spitsbergen in mind, Dresselhuys was not only favourably inclined but very ambitious as well. Dutch management decided to pursue further mining on Spitsbergen, but now on a more efficient, mechanized and large scale basis. This inevitably meant looking for another coalfield. Bohemanflya was not suitable for these plans, nor were any of the other Dutch claims. The coal reserves at Bohemanflya were insufficient, with only up to 1 million tons available. Shipping conditions were difficult and the coals from the Rijpsburg mine were of mediocre quality, especially when compared to other coalfields on Spitsbergen, which meant that the price on the market would suffer as well.

Norwegian perception and reaction to the Dutch expedition The Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (NRC) was the first to announce the news of the Dutch expedition and its intentions in May 1920. Their article was republished in both Dutch and international newspapers, and news travelled to Norway as well.26 As pointed out above, Norway was already somewhat suspicious of the Dutch government’s motives regarding the issues of authority over Spitsbergen. In spite of mogelijkheid der exploitatie van steenkolenvelden op Spitsbergen”, De Ingenieur 36, 684696. 26 The Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant sent a journalist with the expedition to post updates for the newspaper. These were republished in for example: The Times, 22 May 1920, “Dutch expedition to Spitsbergen”, and in Aftenposten, 10 June 1920, “Det nyste Spitsbergenselskab”.

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the fact that the treaty was formally in place and the Netherlands had even been the first to ratify the document in February 1920, news of the Dutch expedition triggered some alarm bells in Norway. A number of communications between the Norwegian Spitsbergen mining company Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK) and the Norwegian Government illustrate this.27 In the news, Dresselhuys stated that the expedition would inspect all the Isefjord claims on Spitsbergen. It was common knowledge that claims to ownership of land and resources on the no-man’s-land of Spitsbergen were of doubtful legal value.28 Since there were no laws on ownership, a great number of regions with resources were claimed by more then one company. Claim conflicts were one of the major reasons for HNMM to abandon their business on Spitsbergen back in 1916.29 In practice, however, there were informal rules and traditions that upheld claim rights to some extent. These were based on history, presence, economic use, and, in some respect, the law of the jungle. Dresselhuys proclaimed that since they held some of the oldest claim rights on Spitsbergen, they had undisputed ownership. He added that the expedition would protect their rights against any claim jumper on their properties. If necessary, they would use forceful persuasion. He reassured the journalist that they would be fully equipped and prepared for this job, bringing firearms and all. Together with explicit linkages to nationalism made in the media, the emphasis on Polar heroism and accounts of the proud Dutch history on Spitsbergen possibly gave a rather aggressive impression. To add to Norwegian concerns, one of the staff members of the expedition was presented as a Navy Lieutenant at Sea in the Norwegian media. This could suggest that the Dutch government was indeed involved, and possibly had a political agenda with the expedition. That the man, Dijkshoorn, was not a representative of the Dutch Navy, but in fact retired and had joined the expedition because of his experience in sailing the Spitsbergen waters was lost in the process of translating and copying the original article. The reason for choosing this method of communication was outreach. The expedition was relatively big news in the Netherlands.30 In the context of the heroic age of polar exploration, the Dutch had played only a very modest role in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet the Dutch public was very interested in the region. 27 Norwegian National Archives ( NNA). Utenriskdepartementet Arkiv, B5227, map Isefjord, correspondence between Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Adolf Hoel dating from May and June 1920. 28 In contemporary literature, the Terra Nullius status of Spitsbergen and how this related to numerous conflicts between companies was often elaborated on. Correspondence between NESPICO and the Dutch Department of Foreign Affairs in the process of handing in the official claims for the Svalbard Commissioner in 1925-1927, gives a good insight into the complications with ownership rights. See: NA, 2.05.21, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: A-documents 1815-1940, 1722 and 1723. 29 De Haas 2008, 25-36. 30 The expedition and the accomplishments of the Dutch were published in numerous newspapers, journals and magazines in the Netherlands. A brief search on the key word Spitsbergen on the digital library of the Dutch Royal Library (http://kranten.kb.nl/) for the year 1920 gives well over 200 results, most of these deal with the Dutch expedition.

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Dresselhuys explicitly linked Dutch history and nationalism to his expeditious efforts. The dedicated and forceful words on the future accomplishments of the Dutch on Spitsbergen were part of a strategy to generate interest and attract investors. In that sense, the news worked in two ways. It was good for the company, and it informed and inspired the general public. For these reasons, at least two Dutch journalists joined the expedition and extensively covered the events and dealings on Spitsbergen for Dutch newspapers, magazines and journals. Altogether, this caused some concerns in Norway regarding the motives and intentions of the Dutch. Conflicts of ownership regarding the Dutch claims would primarily be with the SNSK, especially on Advent Point.31 SNSK had its primary harbour there, and was fearful of conflicts concerning its ownership. In the correspondence between SNSK and the Norwegian department of Foreign Affairs, the possible problems were discussed. The Norwegian government decided to dispatch the navy vessel Farm with the geologist Adolf Hoel as expedition leader to keep watch over the Dutch activities on Spitsbergen. In their exchange, Norwegian authorities even speculated on a worst case scenario, and wondered if the captain of the ship perhaps needed special instructions.32

Storm in a teacup The activities and the approach of the Dutch expedition, took a completely different turn to the one the newspapers might have suggested. That the expedition had no political agenda became clear to both SNSK and the Norwegian authorities over the summer of 1920. Instead, the Dutch turned out to be ambitious businessmen, and rather good neighbours on Spitsbergen. As described above, prior to the expedition the Dutch had already decided to focus their attention on Cape Boheman – as they were also fully aware of conflicts about other claims and of the activities deployed by SNSK at Advent Point. The claim conflict with SNSK was quickly resolved by a business agreement after some friendly negotiations.33 Over the summer, the Dutch received the official representatives of Norway, the captain of the Farm and the geologists Adolf Hoel and Werenskiold, with all deference when they visited Rijpsburg. 34 Together with the Dutch management, they enjoyed some leisure time, talked business and made plans for future cooperation in geological research on Spitsbergen. The Dutch would develop good relations with SNSK too. The Dutch visited their mine and settlement several times, assisted with medical issues and exchanged knowledge and figures from their mining operations. This cooperative approach fitted the primary goal of the Dutch expedition: to build the foundations for a new large scale, commercial coal mining operation. By 1920, the development of a handful 31 Hoel, 1966, 239. 32 NNA, Utenriskdepartementet Arkiv, B5227, map Isefjord, letter from the Department of Foreign Affairs, 8 June 1920. 33 The Isefjord Company agreed to transfer all rights to Advent Point to SNSK in June 1921, see: Hoel 1966, Svalbard Vol. I, 239. 34 NRC 17 September 1920, “Expeditie naar Spitsbergen”.

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more elaborate and larger scale mines was already well under way. The Dutch visited these, as well as a number of not yet fully developed coalfields owned by other companies, and inspected them with the intent of possibly starting negotiations for a takeover. The Dutch turned out to be particularly interested in the region between Green Harbour and Coles Bay. This area offered a large coal reserve of good quality and relatively good harbour conditions. The region however, was claimed by the Russiske Kulfelter Green Harbour and SNSK. The Dutch entered negotiations to acquire their properties. Both companies were willing and came to agreements with the Dutch, as under the economic conditions of the day, their coalfields brought high prices. The agreement with SNSK however, fell through in the end. While the Dutch expedition did not turn out to be a threat, the Norwegian Government – a major shareholder in SNSK – was still not willing to weaken its economic presence on Spitsbergen in the light of their acquired role as the exerciser of authority over Spitsbergen.

Conclusions As is clear from the above, the Dutch actors behind the 1920 expedition were entrepreneurs, interested in Spitsbergen for its business opportunities, not for any geopolitical motives. The primary goal of the expedition was to see to what extent the opportunity held up in practice, and to start a new business in coal mining. Under the market conditions and general economic circumstances in 1920, Dresselhuys arguably judged Spitsbergen somewhat over-optimistically, as a great opportunity for a profitable commercial business. At Green Harbour, on the area the Dutch bought from the Russian company – over 50 square kilometres, and containing well over 20 million tons of bituminous coal – the large scale mining operation of Barentsburg would arise in the course of the following years. With the newly founded company NESPICO, Dresselhuys implemented his ambitious plans, and developed a mine and settlement for an annual production of up to half a million tons of coal between late 1920 and 1932.

Literature LASHIPA. Lashipa 7 Archaeological expedition on Spitsbergen July 4-12 2009 (Groningen 2010). Avango, D., L. Hacquebord, Y. Aalders, H. de Haas, U. Gustafsson, and F. Kruse, F., 2011. “Between markets and geo-politics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day”, Polar Record 47, 29-39. Conway, M.,1906. No Man’s Land. A history of Spitsbergen from its discovery in 1596 to the beginning of the scientific exploration of the country, Cambridge. Dresselhuys, H.H., 1921. “De Nederlandsche expeditie in 1920 tot het onderzoek naar de mogelijkheid der exploitatie van steenkolenvelden op Spitsbergen,” De Ingenieur 36, 684696.

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Haas, H.R. de, 2008. “Spitsbergen’s resources, Dutch entrepreneurs and Geo-politics”, Industrial Patrimony, resources, practices, cultures 19, 25-36. Hacquebord, L., 1984. Smeerenburg. Het verblijf van Nederlandse walvisvaarders op de westkust van Spitsbergen in de 17de eeuw, PhD thesis Amsterdam. Hoel, A., 1966. Svalbard. Svalbards historie 1596-1965 Vol I, Oslo. Mathisen, T., 1954. Svalbard in international politics 1871-1925. The Solution of a unique international problem, Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter nr. 101, Oslo. Østreng, W., 1971. Økonomi og politisk Suverenitet. En studie av interssespilet om Svalbards politiske status. Reymert, P.K., 2004. ”Den første kulldrift på Svalbard. Søren Zakariassen og Kulkompagniet Isefjord Spitsbergen”, Arktisk Gruvedrift II. Teknik, vetenskap och historia i norr, Stockholm, 107-118. Swart, A., 1982. ”Een Nederlandse expeditie naar Spitsbergen in 1920”, Cornelius Douwes, 1982, 1458-1462. Ulfstein, G., 1995. The Svalbard Treaty. From terra nullius to Norwegian sovereignty, Oslo.

Spitsbergen1 – Imperialists beyond the British Empire

Frigga Kruse Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

Abstract This paper looks that the relationship between Spitsbergen in the European High Arctic and the global British Empire in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Spitsbergen was an uninhabited no man’s land and comprised an unknown quantity of natural resources. The concepts of geopolitics and New Imperialism are used to show why and how British imperialists strove to explore and exploit the archipelago. Actors such as Conway, Bruce, the Royal Geographical Society, mining companies, and governmental departments represent the overlapping interests of discovery, science, commerce, and politics. Their interactions were additionally shaped by the shifting historical context that initially focused on maintaining the balance of power in Europe, but cumulated in the First World War, which placed an emphasis on coal and iron ore reserves as well as anti-German policies. The imperialist actors were united under common anxieties, but their approaches were multi-directional and therefore ineffectual. In 1920, the Spitsbergen Treaty granted Norwegian sovereignty and initiated the slow decline of British commerce on the islands. If the British Government refused a potential European colony in view of former German territory gained elsewhere can as of yet not be proven.

Introduction Spitsbergen lies in the European High Arctic. 800 kilometres of sea separate it from Northern Norway and it is closer to the North Pole than either Alaska or Siberia. Approximately half the size of Scotland, the archipelago lacked an indigenous population. Its documented history began in 1596. Since then it has been the focus of exploration and exploitative industries such as whaling, hunting and trapping, and mining. In the early seventeenth century, whaling was characterized by Dutch and English rivalries. An English company made a claim on behalf of the Crown in 1614, but this was soon forgotten. British interest in the islands was revived with scientific expeditions at the end of the nineteenth century. From the early 1900s, steam technology brought the resource-rich no man’s land within increasingly easy reach 1

The name Spitsbergen is used as contemporaries would have understood it: to include only the Arctic archipelago. Presently, Spitsbergen and Bear Island to the south form the Norwegian territory of Svalbard.

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of Europe and America. International mining companies quickly formed and an Arctic coal rush developed. The unrestrained occupation of land and subsequent conflicts soon called for a settlement of Spitsbergen’s legal status. In 1920, sovereignty was decided in favour of Norway, but allowed exploitation by other nations to this day. This paper explores the relationship between Spitsbergen and Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. Spitsbergen was one of the world’s last remaining no man’s lands and provides an opportunity to study the emergence of such a no man’s land on the global political stage. What, however, was ‘Britain’? The term all too often denotes the British Government only. For the purposes of this paper, however, there is not one Britain but rather several British imperialists, so called because everyone living in an age of empire was invariably imperially tainted. Besides the British Government, these imperialists included the explorer Martin Conway; the scientist William Speirs Bruce; the Royal Geographical Society; and several commercial companies. What were their attitudes towards the islands? Did these change? What was the outcome of their involvement? Central concepts like geopolitics and New Imperialism help to understand why and how each party attempted to protected their interests. This study, however, is still at an early stage and offers only glimpses into complex interactions and consequences. A comprehensive account requires yet more research. Nonetheless, it appears that while British sovereignty would have been the ultimate safeguard, the parties did not work together and failed to persuade their Government. The British Government may have had a secret agenda.

Geopolitics and New Imperialism This is the study of a former Arctic no man’s land, whose borders were defined only in that they coincided with its coastlines. Mapping the coasts and interior became more important as mining companies strove to exploit the natural resources. In the absence of authority and policing, the companies staked out claims, but these were poorly protected against trespassers. The best protection available was indisputable effective occupation by means of a year-round presence and work – easier said than done during the Arctic winter. Even better was official government recognition. Yet not all governments supported the risky business of developing the Arctic. The story of Spitsbergen is therefore concerned with borders, resources, flows, territories, and identities. According to Dodds, these factors form the essence of geopolitics.2 Geopolitics enables critical analysis and understanding, although it includes much that is controversial. Geopolitics is as much a way of looking at the world as a means by which to influence it. It is ‘intended to convey a robust attitude towards political action using taken-for-granted geographical templates.’3 The simple term ‘Britain’ commonly brings to mind an image of a powerful, seafaring nation, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, more apt at occupation than any other country. Geopolitically speaking, this would justify a British take-over of Spitsbergen, a barren rock in the middle of a hostile sea, ahead of any other country. Geopolitics relies heavily on images 2 3

Dodds, K., 2007. Geopolitics – a very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dodds 2007, 4.

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and visualization. Maps, tables, and photographs are the most common tools used ‘to campaign and mobilize public support for different political geographical representations of the world.’4 Public support is the key to political success, but it would be wrong to think that only politicians control these representations. In fact, Dodds identifies three separate mechanisms. Popular geopolitics makes use of mass media such as newspapers and magazines. Formal geopolitics is the realm of strategic institutions, think tanks, and academia. Practical geopolitics comprises foreign policy, bureaucracy, and political institutions. Together, but not always in unison, they spatialize global boundaries and global conflicts. The self-image of Britain at the turn of the twentieth century found expression in New Imperialism. For the purposes of this paper, the benchmark year was 1897: Conway and Bruce had begun their polar expeditions; the Royal Geographical Society was nearing its seventieth anniversary; and Queen Victoria was celebrating her Diamond Jubilee. Her Empire spanned 11 million square miles, 372 million people, and 43 separate governments.5 While educated, travelled men such as Conway and Bruce could fathom the extent of the Empire, the public as a whole could not grasp the implications of the colonies. Although unity across the imperial patchwork was non-existent, ‘the nation had [nonetheless] been carried away by the enthusiasm known as New Imperialism, an expansionist, sensational concept of Empire which exactly fitted the spirit of the nineties.’6 Empire meant different things to different people. It encompassed military power and commercial opportunity as well as national prestige. Many aspired to acquire a reputation. Thus Conway and Bruce targeted the uncharted Arctic islands of Spitsbergen to make their mark.

Imperialists Martin Conway was driven by self-interest and personal gain. While studying art history in the 1870s, he embraced mountaineering.7 In 1892, he surveyed remote regions in the Himalayas and seemingly set an altitude record. In 1893, he joined the Royal Geographical Society and fostered a lifelong connection. A year later, he walked the length of the Alps before being knighted in 1895. On this occasion he failed to win a Liberal seat in parliament. In 1896 and 1897, he explored Spitsbergen. Geopolitically, these two expeditions found expression in numerous newspaper articles, the first map of the interior (Fig. 1), no less than 11 scientific articles, and two books. In 1898, he climbed in the Bolivian Andes. He held Bolivian mining concessions until 1902 and continued to invest in South American rubber, railways, and gold for 30 years. I mention this to indicate that he was by no means immune to speculation of this kind. Seemingly fickle in his choice of destinations, he nonetheless carried out meticulous surveys, which enhanced Britain’s perception of the world. For his efforts, Conway was awarded the Founders Medal of the Royal Geographical 4 5 6 7

Dodds 2007, 9-10. Morris, J., 1979. Pax Britannica – the climax of an empire, London: Penguin, p. 200. Morris 1979, 22. Hansen, P. H., 2004. “Conway, (William) Martin, Baron Conway of Allington (1856-1937)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Figure 1. Conway’s map of the interior of Spitsbergen. Any map is a geopolitical statement. This one, however, incorporates little additional symbolism. (Source: Conway, W. M. (1907) The First Crossing of Spitsbergen, London: J. M. Dent & Co., p. 348.)

Society in 1905. The First World War rekindled his interests in politics - and in Spitsbergen. In 1918, he first asked for a Conservative nomination, then a Liberal one. He eventually held the Unionist seat of the combined English universities until 1931, when he was raised to the peerage. In all, Conway made 163 speeches in parliament. On a handful of occasions he focussed on Spitsbergen. If he intended to use the subject as leverage to yet greater personal prestige, it did not generate sufficient interest. William Speirs Bruce was an ambitious, disinterested scientist. A volunteer in the Challenger laboratories, he was subsequently recommended as a surgeon and naturalist to the Dundee Whaling Expedition to the Weddell Sea in 1892-3, which represented the start of his lifelong association with the Polar Regions.8 In 1896, he joined the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition to Franz Josef Land. In 1898, he first travelled to Kolguyev, Novaya Zemlya, and the Barents Sea before being invited on board the oceanographic vessel of the Prince of Monaco, which set sail for Hope Island, Bear Island, and Spitsbergen. He repeated the trip to Spitsbergen in 1899. Bruce applied for a position on the Discovery expedition to the Antarctic, but a minor post was offered too late, which caused a severe rift with the then president of the Royal Geographical Society. Instead, Bruce successfully led his own Scottish National Antarctic Expedition from 1902-4. Yet he could never raise the finances to launch a follow-up expedition. As a substitute, he concentrated on Spitsbergen, visiting the archipelago seven times between 1906 and 1920. Like Conway, Bruce’s work found mention in newspapers, sometimes writing himself, in maps, and in 8

Speak, P., 2004. “Bruce, William Speirs (1867-1921)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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numerous scientific articles. Since science did not pay for itself, he formed the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate for the exploitation of economic minerals in 1909 and acted as its consultant until his death in 1921. Bruce received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society and other awards, but he never gained the same recognition as other polar explorers. This was due to a combination of his being somewhat unsociable as well as not actively seeking public acclaim. In the story of Spitsbergen, the Royal Geographical Society fulfilled several functions as it became increasingly involved. It provided networking opportunities; it occasionally acted as a sponsor; it published the results of expeditions; it was the manifestation of formal geopolitics; and for once it had an actual political goal. The Society’s members were initially almost exclusively men of high social rank. ‘[It] may thus be regarded as having been to some extent a Society Institution to which everybody who was anybody was expected to belong […].’9 For Conway, membership may have been a springboard to greater public esteem; for Bruce, it was all the more damaging to be snubbed by its president. The aim of the Society was to promote exploration and the publication of records, but ‘their energies were directed rather to the history of geographical discovery and to the exploration of particular regions than to geography as a department of scientific research.’10 The Society prided itself on being apolitical and looked down on exploration for commercial gain. That was until Douglas Freshfield took the reins in 1914, “[He] had the courage to defy the tacit convention that the Society should have no dealings with politics. Party politics, he admitted, must be rigidly excluded; but at a time when all parties were at one on national questions he held that the Society was entitled to make its views known on pertinent facts and the wider aspects of national policy. A minor case in point arose on a paper by Sir Martin Conway on the unsettled status of Spitsbergen, and communications were made to the Foreign Office on the subject.”11 The Royal Geographical Society had a total disregard for the British mining companies that had formed on Spitsbergen – although it is difficult to imagine that its members like Conway, did not invest in mining companies elsewhere. Bruce’s Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate has been mentioned above. In addition, there was the Spitzbergen Coal &Trading Company (1904).12 They had bought a former Norwegian claim in Advent Bay and attempted to mine coal until 1908. They were plagued by mismanagement and strikes and soon dissolved. There was the Spitzbergen Mining & Exploration Syndicate (1906). Its original English prospector searched for gold, while development concentrated on coal seams in Bell Sound. 9

Keltie, J., 1917, “Thirty years’ work of the Royal Geographical Society”, Geographical Journal, 49 (5), 350. 10 Keltie 1917, 351. 11 Mill, H. R., 1930. The record of the Royal Geographical Society 1830-1930, London: Royal Geographical Society, 193. 12 Spitzbergen with a central ‘z’ is the German spelling and was used by British writers until an anti-German feeling prevailed during the First World War. It is therefore in itself an interesting political statement and has not been corrected throughout this paper.

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Figure 2. The Northern Exploration Company’s map of the world, showing the British Empire and clear intentions for Spitsbergen. (Source: Coal and iron in spitsbergen. Pamphlets (*32):622.333, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.

They requested British Government assistance to consolidate their claims and fend off trespassers. When none was forthcoming, the investors lost interest. The English prospector was able to sell the claims a second time to the Northern Exploration Company (1910). This company claimed extensively across the island, but only zinc blende found a market for a short time. By and large, the British mining companies were unsuccessful. They are of interest, however, because of the wealth of claim maps and photographs they produced, with which they attempted to influence the geopolitical view of Spitsbergen (Fig. 2). The British Government was barely aware of Spitsbergen and had its reservations. As such, a practical geopolitical representation of the archipelago was initially nonexistent. In 1871, the Foreign Office had been alerted to the Swedish intention to occupy the islands. While Britain had no objections, the notion was rejected by the Russian Government, who was, however, not opposed to Swedish colonies there. In 1897, it was brought to the Foreign Office’s attention that Norway intended to place a seasonal post office on Spitsbergen. Again there were no British objections, but the Foreign Office was nonetheless interested to hear what Russia’s reaction to the plan would be. In due course, the post office was established inside the tourist hotel in Advent Bay. In 1904, British mining companies on Spitsbergen requested government assistance. This coaxed the Foreign Office into taking a greater interest in Arctic affairs and formulating a coherent policy towards Spitsbergen.

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Interactions 1904 fell into a period of escalating political tension, which coincided with a time of increasing world trade. Spitsbergen was at the beginning of its industrial development and British mining companies were confident. There was, however, no protection against claim jumpers. In turn the Spitzbergen Coal & Trading Company and the Spitzbergen Mining & Exploration Syndicate requested security from the British Government. The Foreign Office considered its options.13 By 1905, Russia had lost the Russo-Japanese War and the Swedish-Norwegian Union had crumbled. The country’s attitudes towards Spitsbergen were unknown and it was wise to remain neutral. So the Foreign Office informed the companies that sovereignty was disputed, that prospectors were proceeding at their own risk, and that the British Government could not offer them security in any way. Furthermore, the Foreign Office could not take any title deeds into custody lest it be associated with the companies, however limited or indirect. It was clear that the Foreign Office would not get involved while conflicts over the islands had the potential to further upset the shaky political balance in Europe. By 1912, European markets were strong and British coal prices were higher than ever before, but war was imminent. On Spitsbergen, claim-jumping and other abhorrent practices were rife. On behalf of the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate as well as for the protection of the environment, Bruce now appealed to the British Government to reconsider its rights to sovereignty over the islands. With a looming international conflict, the Admiralty could have been interested in Spitsbergen’s coal reserves and strategic position, but it was not. In fact, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, stated, “I have had the matter carefully considered by my expert advisers, and they have shown me good reason for thinking that it would be useless for us to assert a claim to Spitsbergen, even if it were possible to do so.”14 Unbeknown to most, Churchill had in fact begun to consider oil as a more costeffective means to fuel the Royal Navy.15 During the First World War, it became a matter of urgency among Spitsbergen veterans that the islands should not fall into enemy hands. Bruce, as a scientist rather than a company consultant, now enlisted the help of the Royal Geographical Society. Apolitical to date, but willing to adapt to the circumstances, the Society promptly formulated a political goal,

13 Spitzbergen 1897-1905, FO 83/2147, National Archives, London. 14 Speak, P., 1992. “William Speirs Bruce: Scottish nationalist and polar explorer”, Polar Record, 28 (167), 291. 15 The Times, 1912. “Liquid fuel for the Navy”, 30 July, p. 6; The Times (1913) ‘Naval and military intelligence. Admiralty oil contracts.’, 31 July, p. 12; The Times, 1913. “Naval and military intelligence. The supply of oil”, 9 August, p. 15; Addison, P. (2004) ‘Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965), prime minister’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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“[…] the Council yesterday decided to send the following resolution to the Foreign Office: That the Council of the Royal Geographical Society beg leave to represent to his Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the urgent importance of taking immediate steps to safeguard British interests, political, strategic, and commercial, in Spitzbergen, and to urge that the matter be adjusted with our Allies before the termination of the war.”16 Despite the Royal Geographical Society being able to exercise substantial influence among the higher social ranks, the reply from the Foreign Office remained noncommittal, “[…] the question of Spitzbergen, which cannot be decided without discussion with several foreign Governments, is not one in which any definite settlement can be come to now, as the present moment is not opportune for bringing forward matter of this nature.”17 As the war progressed, coal and iron resources were increasingly needed for the war effort and soon became sparse. Incidentally, both coal and iron ore could be found on Spitsbergen and the mining companies approached the Ministry of Munitions with a view to utilising these resources. By 1917, however, Churchill had become Minister of Munitions. Whether it was the official stance of the British Government or simply his personal opinion, his reply sounded familiar, “There is no naval reason which would make the annexation of the island by this country necessary at the present time, particularly as a pure formal annexation without the presence of an armed force would not in itself affect whatever possibility may exist of the island being used by our enemies.”18 The First World War ended without affecting Spitsbergen’s status. So in May 1919, Conway made a last case for British sovereignty in the House of Commons, albeit in the middle of a discussion about Egypt. He referred to the historic claim of 1614, stated that the Royal Geographical Society strongly favoured the notion, and emphasised the averted German threat. According to Conway, the British Government would be ill-advised to abandon their claim and suggested that perhaps the mining companies could be used to strengthen it. Despite what is known about his investments elsewhere, he was now quick to point out, I have no interest whatsoever, prospective or present, in any of these syndicates or companies, and I know nothing whatever as to the real value or importance of

16 Hinks 1916, Letter to Bruce, 19 December, RGS/CB8/Spitsbergen, Annexation of, Royal Geographical Society, London. 17 RGS/CB8/Spitsbergen, Annexation of, Royal Geographical Society, London. 18 Foreign Office, 1917. Letter to the President, RGS, 7 March, RGS/CB8/Spitsbergen, Annexation of, Royal Geographical Society, London.

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any of the deposits of coal or minerals on those islands. I wish to dissociate myself altogether from the possibility of being misunderstood in this matter.”19 His idea essentially involved merging the companies and placing them under Government control, “British companies, apart from historic claims, have pegged out over threefourth of the area of valuable ground. Possibly some combination of them might be brought about, and, as it seems to me, that combination should be brought about, both on historical and commercial grounds under the aegis of the British Government.”20 This would undoubtedly have been highly unpopular with the companies. In any case, his statements received no feedback from the House. Predictably, the British Government attempted no such thing. Instead it agreed to the terms of the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen in 1920.21 The Treaty placed the archipelago under Norwegian control, but it allowed the continued exploitation of natural resources by British companies. The Northern Exploration Company existed until 1934. A successor of the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate only dissolved in 1953.

Discussion This paper has shown that there was never a united Britain in favour of sovereignty over Spitsbergen. Instead there were several parties. There was Martin Conway, who in search of prestige spent only two seasons on the islands, yet published extensively on the subject and lobbied both at the Royal Geographical Society and in the House of Commons. There was William Speirs Bruce, the determined scientist, whose actions ultimately favoured his discipline and protected his subject, even if it meant forming a company and engaging in politics. There was the Royal Geographical Society, who found itself pulled into the same debates at times of political upheaval and uncertainty. If the Society had the imperial good at heart while they promoted Spitsbergen’s mineral resources and strategic position, it is likely that the British mining companies, using the same arguments, continued to be interested simply in financial gain. Although these groups seemingly strove for the same goal, there existed animosity and snobbery between them. Disunited they failed to win over the British Government represented by the Foreign Office and the Admiralty, as well as the Ministry of Munitions. The British presence on Spitsbergen was thus somewhat single-minded, but multi-directional, and therefore ineffectual. Whether the British 19 Affairs in Egypt, HC Deb 15 May 1919 vol 115 cc1829-922. 20 Affairs in Egypt, HC Deb 15 May 1919 vol 115 cc1829-922. 21 The full title is ‘Treaty between Norway, The United States of America, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland and the British overseas Dominions and Sweden concerning Spitsbergen signed in Paris 9th February 1920’. It is commonly shortened to the Spitsbergen Treaty. Any reference to a Svalbard treaty is chronologically inconsistent.

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Government conceded Spitsbergen in the light of receiving former German territories elsewhere cannot yet be proven (Fig. 3).

Figure 3. Map of the British Empire in 1919. New mandates were mainly former German territory, while Spitsbergen had not become part of the Empire. (Source: http://wapedia.mobi/en/File:BritishEmpire1919.png (2008) (Accessed: 11 May 2011).

Literature Addison, P., 2004. ‘Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965), prime minister’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dodds, K., 2007. Geopolitics – a very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, P. H., 2004. Conway, (William) Martin, Baron Conway of Allington (1856-1937), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keltie, J., 1917.Thirty years’ work of the Royal Geographical Society, Geographical Journal, 49 (5), 350-72. Mill, H. R., 1930. The record of the Royal Geographical Society 1830-1930, London: Royal Geographical Society. Morris, J., 1979. Pax Britannica – the climax of an empire, London: Penguin. Speak, P., 1992. William Speirs Bruce: Scottish nationalist and polar explorer, Polar Record, 28 (167), 285-92. Speak, P., 2004. ‘Bruce, William Speirs (1867-1921)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Winning Coal at 78˚ North: Mining, Contingency and the Chaîne Opératoire in Old Longyear City

Seth DePasqual Departement of Industrial Archaeology, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, USA

Abstract Between 1905 and 1916, the American-owned Arctic Coal Company labored intensively to develop its mining claims on Spitsbergen (today known as Svalbard); an Arctic archipelago situated roughly midway between Norway and the North Pole. Within this decade, the company attempted to establish a reliable and effective mining system at its Advent Bay mining property. The enterprise developed strategically but struggled constantly with various deficiencies and uneven growth. Many of the improvements followed a general development plan. Others were spontaneous adaptations to deal with imposing situations. While some of these difficulties related to environmental and technical conditions experienced at the property, socialized aspects of the mining systems played their own role. Taken together, the problems experienced at Mine No. 1 forced the company to continuously evaluate the efficiency of their mining system. In 2004 and 2008 in the framework of the YPI-LASHIPA project fieldwork was carried out to study the aspects of these mining systems.

Introduction Mining systems can appear straightforward and self-explanatory at first glance. Coal mines utilize a number of technologies and devices that are specific to a range of tasks. For example, every mine will incorporate some kind of transportation system be it a narrow-gauge track network, incline tramway or aerial tramway. Their presence is somewhat inherent and mining companies often follow similar trajectories of development. Environment also weighs heavily on how particular mining systems are arranged. Arctic snowstorms, for instance influence how transportation systems are laid out and maintained. And yet mining systems, like any other human endeavor, are also organized according to cultural behaviors and practices. Social approaches to understanding technology have evolved steadily over the last fifty years and include contributions from the academic field of history (to the point of establishing a subfield in the history of technology), and to a lesser extent anthropology and archaeology.1 These approaches emphasize the need to 1

Good ‘History of Technology’ examples are found in Hughes (1983) and Staudenmaier

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understand the social factors involved in the technical system. They recognize the importance of seeing technology not only as physical objects or artifacts, which early technological histories tended to do, but to see technology as a process embedded in the social world. This view stresses the worth of understanding a particular technology within broader frames of analysis that account for how a technology materializes spatially and temporally. Furthermore, this approach seeks to understand how technological systems perpetuate and transform social relations. Recognizing the “social” within technology brings attention to explanations for technological change capable of connecting changes within a technical object to changes in the social world where technologies and humans interact. To explore these interactions as they relate to Arctic Coal Company history, I have employed an analytical tool known as the chaîne opératoire (chain of operation). Defined as a “conventionalized, learned sequence of technical operations, tightly imbricated with patterned social relations, that must be carefully and empirically described as an initial step in grasping the nature and implications of technological activities,” the chaîne opératoire highlights a technical sequence guided not by a specific order of things, but rather the internal and external forces that act upon it.2 These forces, which might include pressures from the labor force or environment or both, are in continuous flux, amounting to what might be understood as a “dialogue” between the material and the agents with which it engages. Detailing the chaîne opératoire for a particular technological system, like mining, stresses the importance of seeing how sequences of activity are parsed and orchestrated. This paper will examine the chaînes opératoires within methods of product transportation and storage within and outside the mine. This analysis parses out the various components of each system in an effort to fully understand their respective functions. Attention will be given first to the fixed elements inherent in each system. As the examination progresses, the chains of operation will reveal areas of flexibility, which point to choices made by various actors taking part in the mining system. When possible, I will draw connections to material evidence located during the 2004 and 2008 LASHIPA/MTU archaeological surveys and that located during archival research. Information gleaned from the chaînes opératoires may offer some perspective on pivotal stages within seemingly standard methods of operation.

Transportation and Storage Systems at Mine No. 1: Introduction Through the course of its operation on Spitsbergen, the Arctic Coal Company

2

1984 and 2002. For anthropological examples see Lemonnier 1986 and Pfaffenberger 1988 and 1998. Archaeological examples are found in Schiffer and Skibo 2001 and Schlanger 1994. Pfaffenberger, Bryan, 1998, Mining Communities, chaînes opératoires and sociotechnical systems. Social Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining. In A. Bernard Knapp, Vincent C. Pigott and Eugenia W. Herbert (Eds), Social Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining, New York: Routledge Press.

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labored constantly to develop an efficient system of mining. Indeed, considerable effort was expended in revamping and tweaking underground mining systems, but several important changes also occurred outside the main openings. These exterior systems have particular importance to an archaeological examination of the chaîne opératoire because many related components and features remain observable, unlike the underground components. Much of this material was documented during the archeological research project performed in 2008. The transportation systems employed at Mine No. 1 vary in form and function. They range from simple narrow-gauge track systems erected throughout the mine and property, to the sophisticated Bleichert aerial tramway capable of conveying large volumes of coal. Storage systems utilized by the company include voluminous coal piles, mine-based repositories and storage bins that delivered coal to aerial tramway buckets. Each system features its own series of arrangements. Most are straightforward, relating more to essential extraction practices than anything else. Others are less obvious, suggestive of complexities within related decision-making processes. The contrast between the uncomplicated and the complex allows one to identify the fixed and flexible aspects of particular systems and arrangements. To develop a mine properly, managers had to first decide how to transport and store their product. Sometimes these decisions were simple; however, others were relatively complex requiring raised levels of ingenuity. Narrow-gauge track systems were a given, at least inside the mine. The same might be said for coal piles, although their use on Spitsbergen was a subject of concern for a brief period. Coal produced over the winter months had to be stored somewhere, somehow. Outside storage was the norm in coal mining, but could be problematic in the Arctic. On the surface, the Mine No. 1 mining system and related infrastructures feature seemingly normal arrangements. However, a closer inspection indicates that some of its components developed in respect to influences that were less than conventional.

TransPorTaTIon and sTorage sYsTeMs: PHase I (1905-1908) During the initial phase of operations at Advent Bay, company managers immediately set to development of the new mine location. One of the first improvements was a narrow-gauge tram system that ran from the Advent Bay shoreline to the base of the mountain beneath the mine. This tramline was necessary for two reasons. The first related to the transfer of materials and equipment up to the mine location; the second for the conveyance of coal to the mining camp (Longyear City) and also to the shoreline for sale to the company’s earliest customers. Although high-volume transportation devices ultimately superseded this system, the valley-based tramway was utilized for light purposes in town and at the mine for the remainder of the American ownership. After installing the valley tramline, work shifted to a separate, mountain-based incline tramway. The incline, or “jinny track,” was erected so that materials and equipment could be transferred up the steep mountain grade to the mine. Since no electricity was yet available, the system employed gravity to move pit-tubs up and down the track alignment. The incline was comprised of two pit-tubs and a single

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wire rope. Although two cars were used, only one line of tracks was necessary for the system to work. Each car was situated at opposite ends of the line, one car up top, one down below. The wire rope ran from one car, around a mountain-based pulley, and then connected with the second car. At the top of the mountain, a narrow-gauge track line connected the incline to the mine entry. At the pit-mouth this exterior line then tied in to the mine’s interior network of tunnels and drifts. The same type of narrow-gauge track was used throughout the mine. Line extensions were constructed as the network expanded. These tributary lines facilitated the removal of coal from the mine’s expanding development. Although men could do much of the tramming, the company employed a small number of mine mules to assist with the haulage in the main entry, which featured a shallow incline. At this time the mine work was focused on development only and therefore all coal removed was from driving and tunneling. From the interior branches, laborers handtrammed the pit-tubs to the main entry and then hitched the tubs to a mine mule. Most of the mule work took place in this primary tunnel since the roof and floor had been ripped to accommodate their size and stature. The mules hauled the coal to the mine entrance where it was detached and hand-trammed to the incline terminal. The coal then descended down the mountain, the weight of which facilitated the ascent of the bottom car. Along with timber and equipment, the bottom car carried up materials for masonry work at the surface plant.3 Coal arriving at the lower tram terminal was carted through town to a shore-based coal pile where it could be used by the company ship or sold to passing whalers.4 The infrastructure just described forms the first mine-based transportation system to be employed by the Arctic Coal Company. Although basic in composition, the system permitted the company to transport coal and mine on a small scale. In respect to the chaîne opératoire, the transportation system, at this point, can be regarded as flexible. Although this particular system was guided by standard methods of procedure, the resulting arrangement featured a varied set of stages tuned to the conditions present at Longyear Valley. The same rules applied to the storage pile at the beach. Coal was needed at the shore for use and sale and since no other system existed, the company trammed the supply to the shoreline. This required multiple stages of handling. To pile it anywhere else along the way would require even more handling, an unnecessary action for an already toilsome arrangement of work. During this phase of development, the Arctic Coal Company erected an aerial tramway system to facilitate large-scale production. The tramway had been planned from the start as a necessary fixture to deliver coal straight from the mine to awaiting carrier vessels. The valley track and incline system was simply a device to get things up and running. Like the incline, the Bleichert design employed gravity to convey coal from the mine down to a lower discharge terminal. Detachable tram buckets were filled at a mine-based coal hopper and then sent down the ropeway, the weight of the load conveyed the buckets to the lower terminal where they detached again and were dumped into a sea-going vessel. At least six men worked in the terminal; one man as 3 4

Gilson, Kenneth L. Letter to ACC, September 1st, 1907. Houghton, Michigan Technological University (MTU) Archives, Longyear Collection, Box 4, Folder 18. Longyear, John M., 1912. Reminiscences by John Munro Longyear. Marquette, J. M. Longyear Research Library, Longyear Collection, Box 26.

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a foreman and the others as bucket handlers.5 The Bleichert tramway interfaced with a new 1100-ton coal hopper, which stored the coal and delivered it to the tramway system (Figure 1). The device was installed amid growing concerns over outside coal storage. Prior to the completion of the aerial tramway, all coal produced by the mine had to be stored on the beach at the lower terminus of the valley tramway. A company manager noticed that the shore-based pile, when impregnated with snow and ice, had become difficult to work with and load. Moreover, the work necessary to build and transfer the pile required multiple handlings of the coal product by an indeterminate number of laborers. The hopper required much less handling and labor since the coal went straight from the mine to an awaiting ship with minimal human interaction. The bin sheltered the coal from the elements and served as a delivery vehicle for the tramway. However, it could only store 1100 tons, which was far below projected outputs for the improved mining system. Company officials initially considered placing additional coal pockets on the mountain, but scrapped the idea after some preliminary foundation work on the account of expense. The first coal hopper alone had cost the company a significant

Figure 1. Ca. 1915 image of the Bleichert aerial tramway and coal hopper. Enclosure at centre sheltered tramway braking machinery Photograph courtesy of Statsarkivet i Tromsø, Box 241.

5

Arctic Coal Company. “Addendum 2: Organization Chart – Winter Season 1914-15,” Annual Report Covering Year September 1, 1913 to May 31, 1914. MTU Archives, Longyear Collection, Box 4, Folder 15

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amount of money for labor and timber. The alternative was to store coal inside the mine. A consultant suggested that approximately 2000 tons could be stored in the main entry during the winter season, and the acting manager selected this storage alternative at the close of the first phase of production.6 Upon completion of the aerial tramway and related coal hopper, the mine operation was now capable of delivering coal on a significantly larger scale. Instead of having to send all of its coal down the incline and through the valley, which was labor intensive and extremely inefficient, the outfit could now send its coal directly to awaiting ships for transport to market. Material evidence of these systems is located throughout the Mine No. 1 site complex, most obviously the coal hopper, the upper terminal, and tower foundations for the aerial tramway. Features associated with the incline tramway and narrow-gauge rail lines are far subtler; mountain rubble and natural slumping have obscured most of their related contexts, but several incline foundations persist near the base of the mountain. Three footings identifiable on the hillside between the coal hopper and mine level are likely associated with the coal hopper that company managers planned to construct in 1908 but later abandoned (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Foundation footing for proposed coal hopper. The footing was constructed in 1908 as part of an effort to increase storage at the mine. The idea was abandoned by the following summer. 2008 photograph by Seth De Pasqual /MTU.

6

Burrall, Frederick P. Letter to Bertrand Mangham, July 19th, 1908. Statsarkivet i Tromsø, Arctic Coal Company Collection, Box 2, Copybook: 1907-1908.

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TransPorTaTIon and sTorage sYsTeMs: PHase II (1909-1911) The completion of the aerial tramway and coal hopper marks a significant change in the mining system, which is here regarded as the second phase of operations for the Arctic Coal Company. Up to this point, the company had been holding back on production since it had no way to effectively remove large volumes of coal. Now, with the new system, more coal could be produced and transferred from the mountain. However, the storage method for this increased coal tonnage remained in a state of flux. Despite having decided to go with a mine-based storage plan, the concept was abandoned during the 1908/09 winter mining season for a separate, more convenient storage facility. Instead of piling all the excess coal in the mine, the winter mine manager identified an outside location closer to the lower terminal. The large, open area between tram towers 15 and 16 remained relatively free from snow due to the constant gust of prevailing Arctic winds. At the time, managers worried about melting snows and their effect upon the quality of the coal. The new storage method pleased company executives on their return, for it seemed to allay their concerns about how to store properly the increasing volumes of coal produced at the mine. Furthermore, the lower coal pile saved the expense of constructing an additional hopper at the mine. The creation of the winter stockpile introduced a number of modifications to the transportation system and organization of labor. To facilitate dumping at the pile, an elevated platform was constructed to bring at least four workers to the level of the descending tram buckets. When a bucket passed by, a worker tripped a lever and the coal dumped onto the ground below (Figure 3). As the stockpile grew in volume, it expanded from the aerial tramway at right angles. On top of the growing pile, the team of laborers carted the coal from the elevated platform across a narrow track system. The company installed a small railway at the base of the pile to facilitate the transfer of coal to a separate surface incline. This incline bisected a prominent bluff and ran down to the lower pier. The lower incline tramway utilized gravity to transfer its load. Most of the stockpile work was likely performed in the spring after the coal hopper had filled and when dangerous snowstorms had subsided. Since nothing could be offloaded until the summer, the stockpile incline saw little use until the first boats arrived. The incline system was set up to run simultaneously with aerial tramway loading. In 1910 the company installed a steam-powered crane that transferred stockpiled coal to the incline at a much faster than a team of laborers. The device rested on a steel traveler and moved along a heavy-gauge railway. When shipping season began, a crane operator loaded the coal into large cars, which were then sent down the incline to a landing platform. From this point the cars were hitched to a cable and hoisted across a long pier to a transfer station beside the lower aerial tramway terminal. The company employed a steam-powered winch to do the hoist work from the dock. The year 1910 marks a significant upgrade in the mining system at Mine No. 1. This is when the company invested in a power plant to provide electricity to the mine and property. At the mine, the upgrade supported the installation of new mechanical

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Figure 3. 1909 photograph of coal stockpile between tram towers 15 and 16. A wooden scaffold is visible at the top of the pile. The incline cable system is seen at lower-right. Photograph courtesy of Keweenaw Digital Archive, Image#: MS031-01-01-15.

apparatus including coal-cutters and rope hoists. While the former assisted with how the mining was performed, the latter proved useful for product transfer. Inside the mine, at the head of the main entry, the company installed an electric main-andtail hoist so that more pit-tubs could be removed at one time. The machine greatly improved haulage capability since it could raise a train of 25 cars at once.7 The increase reduced the amount of labourers and time necessary to haul tubs to the mine mouth. The company installed a second electric hoist at the top of the mine’s surface incline. This device did away with the gravity system, which depended on a top load to bring up materials from below. Furthermore, the hoist was capable of lifting heavier loads than had previously been possible. In addition to timbers and construction materials, mine workers could be hauled up from the valley floor aboard an improvised man-car. Until then, the only way up to the mine was a steep, arduous miner’s trail that took upwards of 45 minutes to hike. The company saw this as an improvement to the mine’s overall efficiency since the men were on site and available for work after a three-minute ride up from the valley floor.8 Additionally, the incline was elevated to a height of five feet in order to keep the causeway free from heavy snow accumulations. Before this improvement, winter laborers had to constantly clear snow from tracks, which were covered with each passing storm or wind event. 7 8

Atkinson, J. B., Spitsbergen Coal, 1913. Spetsbergenarkivet, Riksarkivet, Vol.4. Stockholm, Sweden. Arctic Coal Company. General Manager’s Report, November 5th, 1910. MTU Archives, Longyear Collection, Box 4, Folder 23.

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Figure 4. Stacked-rock foundation for incline tramway. Foundations such as this one were used to elevate the incline from the ground surface. The improvement was made in 1910. 2004 photograph by Larry Mishkar/ MTU.

The 2004 and 2008 LASHIPA/MTU surveys at Mine No. 1 identified a number of features related to these systems. Portions of the incline tramway survive; however, natural slumping has obliterated much of the related superstructure. A series of small foundations were located near the base of the incline (Figure 4). These features are part of the 1910 upgrade, which represented a small, although significant shift in how work was arranged at the mine. The lower stockpile also represents a shift in how the company organized its transportation and storage systems. In adopting the outside storage plan, the company (or winter manager who located the site) introduced a whole new system of infrastructure and labor arrangement. At least four men were now needed at the stockpile, which necessitated the installation of a new track system and incline. Despite the added expense, the company saw this new arrangement as necessary. Coal tonnages were expected to increase and they needed a place to store related output. Although the stockpile is separate from the Mine No. 1 site complex, the operational chains are interrelated and therefore worth noting. The creation of the stockpile between towers 15 and 16 represents a certain degree of flexibility within the arrangement of transportation and storage at the Longyear Valley property.

TransPorTaTIon and sTorage sYsTeMs: PHase III (1912-1915) The two electrical hoists at the mine greatly increased the effectiveness of the transportation system by enabling larger volumes of product and material to be transported at one time. Moreover, fewer men were necessary to perform the same

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Figure 5. Carrier chassis for Brownhoist crane. The crane was brought to Advent Bay in 1913 to assist with haulage at the stockpile. 2007 photograph by Seth DePasqual/MTU.

amount of work. However, there remained a number of inefficiencies at the mine, which would require further refinement. What’s more, increasing tonnages at the stockpile demanded additional improvements to the conveyance system. So by 1912, after all that had transpired, the mining system at Longyear Valley left much to be desired. To facilitate increased haulage at the stockpile, the company widened the lower incline from two tracks to four. The same was done to the 600’ pier, which connected the line to the sea-based loading station. An additional steam-powered crane was placed at the stockpile in 1913, although the first permanently broke down shortly thereafter. In 1914 the company installed a second ropeway to assist with haulage at the stockpile. Powered by an electric engine, the horizontal branch line conveyed coal from the dumping station beneath the aerial tramway to the far extension of the stockpile. The tramway did away with the need to hand-tram coal across the top of the pile, which freed men for use on other aspects of the system. At the mine, a new electric hoist was installed approximately one-third of the way down the main entry. The company used the device to haul pit-tubs from the south side of the mine, which had been affected by a steep roll in the coal seam. The miners complained about having to hand-tram the heavy tubs up steep grades to the main entry. Furthermore, a batch of new, steel tubs frustrated the men since they were heavy and unwieldy, so much so that they refused to use them until the haulage system could be improved.9 The installation of the new mine hoist in 1913 rectified 9

Arctic Coal Company. Manager’s Report Covering the Fiscal Year October 1st, 1911 to October 1st, 1912. MTU Archives, Scott Turner Collection, Box Z, Folder 13.

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some of these problems. Although many other improvements to the mine and property were proposed, little development was performed after the summer of 1914 due to associated costs and the escalation of World War I. By 1915, the company had reduced its workforce and limited mine work to production only. The following winter, the Advent Bay property and all related infrastructure was sold to a Norwegian interest. Since the 1916 transfer of ownership, the stockpile site has seen a variety of industrial events that have obscured many of the features related to Arctic Coal Company activity. However, some features related to the former stockpile site are still present on the landscape. For example, the carrier chassis for the Brown hoist remains in situ on top of a sunken section of railway (Figure 5). The crane was brought to the site in 1913 as part of a new expansion project for the auxiliary loading system. This feature is evidence of the company’s constant attempt to improve the efficiency of its delivery system for transport ships. The crane represents a period of flexibility within the transportation and haulage system. The hoist was not brought to Advent Bay because of its significance within a larger company plan; instead, the crane was purchased as a reaction to changes in a technical chain that had preceded it.

concLusIons Material residues of social involvement within the Arctic Coal Company transportation system can be found on the physical landscape that hosts the Mine No. 1 site complex. Within each feature lies a back-story in which company managers juggled men with varied pieces of equipment in an effort to create the ideal. On first glance, these features seem to reflect standard methods of operation, sequentially ordered in respect to managerial decisions made over time. While technical and environmental influences no doubt had a role in the placement of these items, socialized aspects had some weight in related decision making processes. When these artifacts and features are viewed in their respective contexts, and related operational chains are examined, one gains a sense of the impacts that they had on the larger, technological system. Looked at the other way, these same artifacts reflect the impacts of social organizations with which they interacted. The chain of operations approach provides researchers with a particular lens of interpretation that can be useful for understanding industrial settings. The method takes into account the effects of human agency and influence on the technological systems involved. In the case of Mine No. 1, the author found the method to be helpful when considering aspects of the production, transportation and storage systems represented on site. Wanting to offer more than a discussion of technological applications in the arctic, chaînes opératoires allowed me to delve into the archival and material records with a new perspective, one that enabled me to discover meaning within the “softer” elements of technical arrangements. I believe that the resulting discussion offers a fresh perspective on industrial development in the Arctic, where the environment, technology, and men interacted in many interesting ways.

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Literature Hughes, Thomas P., 1983. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.. Lemmonier, Pierre, 1986. “The Study of Material Culture Today: Toward an Anthropology of Technical Systems”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Vol. 5. Pfaffenberger, Bryan. 1988. “Fetishised Objects and Humanised Nature: Towards an Anthropology of Technology”. Man: New Series, Vol. 23, No. 2. Pfaffenberger, Bryan, 1998. “Mining Communities, chaines operatoires and sociotechnical systems”. In: Knapp, A. Bernard, Vincent C. Pigott and Eugenia W. Herbert (Eds). Social Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining. New York: Routledge Press. Schlanger, Nathan, 1994. “Mindful technology: unleashing the chaîne opératoire for an archaeology of mind”. In: Renfrew, Colin and Ezra B.W. Zubrow (Eds) The Ancient Mind: Elements of cognitive archaeology, Cambridge: University Press. Skibo, James M. and Michael B. Schiffer, 2001. Understanding Artifact Variability and Change: A Behavioral Framework. In: Schiffer, Michael B. (Ed). Anthropological Perspectives on Technology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Staudenmaier, John M. 1984. Technology’s Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric. Cambridge: Society for the History of Technology and the MIT Press. Staudenmaier, John M. 2002. “Rationality, Agency, Contingency: Recent Trends in the History of Technology”, Reviews in American History, No. 30.

Barentsburg: The Soviet Period in the History of the Mine

Alexandr Portsel Murmansk State Technical University, Murmansk, Russia

Abstract This paper describes the history of the Barentsburg mine from 1952 to the beginning of the 21st century. The paper is based on archive documents and on reminiscences of veterans of the Soviet coal mines on Spitsbergen. According to the Paris agreement of 1920 Norway has sovereignty of the archipelago of Spitsbergen. But all participants of the agreement have a right to free economic activity on the archipelago. Spitsbergen’s coal was delivered to the Kola Peninsula in large volumes in the 1920s thanks to the “Arcticugol” trust, which was a shareholder of the “Anglo-Russian Grumant” company. In 1931 the mines of “Anglo-Russian Grumant” were transferred to being Soviet property. In 1931 Soviet representatives started negotiations with the Dutch company “Nespico” on the purchase of its Barentsburg mine. The financial part of the deal was described in 1940 in the Acceptance report when the mines were transmitted from “Glavsevmorput” to the National Commissariat of the Coal Industry. Here is a fragment of this document: “On the 25th of May 1932 the Soviet Government bought the coal mine Barentsburg with the inactive field Bogeman Tundra from the Dutch joint-stock company named “Nespico” for 1250 thousand Dutch guldens”.1 The first Soviet workers arrived in Barentsburg in June 1932. The first coal was extracted on 7th of November 1932. All in all about 3 million tons of coal had been extracted from the Soviet mines of the archipelago until the Great Patriotic War began.2 Before the War about 1,500-1,900 Soviet people lived in the settlements on Spitsbergen each year (only in Barentsburg (no line here) nearly 1200 people).3 Many of them came to the archipelago together with their families. In 1932 in Barentsburg there were five children, the following year – (no line here) 22. Before the War more than 60 children each year stayed the winter there. Nearly half of them were born in Barentsburg.4 In August 1941 Soviet people were evacuated to Archangel by a British squadron. 1 2 3 4

State Archives of Murmansk Region ((ГАМО, GAMO). f. П-17. op.1. d.39. p. 10. Pechurov, L.V., 1983. The Spitsbergen. - M.: Мысль, 97. GAMO, f.П-17, op.1,d.11, p. 37; d.38, p.61; d.39, p. 102. The half a century near the Pole: A collection of the reminiscences by veterans of the soviet coal mines on Spitsbergen. – Murmansk: Кн. изд-во, 1983. – P. 42

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After the Great Patriotic War the USSR had serious problems with the coal production as the mines of the Donbass and the Moscow regions had been destroyed. It was decided to restore Soviet coal mines on Spitsbergen in order to provide the northern fleets and industries of the Murmansk and Archangel regions with fuel. The resolution concerning this issue was taken by the Soviet of Ministers of the USSR on August, 29, 1946 (number 1951). In October 1946 the first group of polar pioneers consisting of 12 people left for the archipelago. Nicolas Gusev was the head of this group. After the pioneers a group of 600 people arrived in November 1946.5 There were more difficulties in the restoration period on the archipelago than they had expected. Most necessities were in deficit. Living conditions were difficult. Delivery of food and clothing left much to be desired. Tragic events also took place. The worst incident was the loss of the ship the “Hercules” with 25 people on board in December 1948.6 Persistent work by the Soviet people led to the following results. In 1949 Barentsburg and Grumant were restored due to the heroic work of the Soviet pioneers. In 1992 “Arcticugol’s” technical director VladimirTrifonenkov noted: “During the 60-year period “Arcticugol” extracted more than 22 million tons of coal – 2 million tons by the mine of Grumant, more than 13 million tons by the mine of Barentsburg, more than 7 million tons by the mine of Pyramid. Only one Russian mine is working nowadays – Barentsburg. The mines Pyramid and Grumant are being preserved for economic reasons”.7 The population of the Soviet settlements grew due to the development of “Arcticugol’s” activity. For example, on the 1st of January 1966 1029 people lived in Barentsburg and in Pyramid lived (no line here) 753.8 One year the population of the Soviet settlements on Spitsbergen went up even to 1813 citizens, including 418 women and 65 children.9 Since 1975 Soviet miners have begun to fly to Spitsbergen by airplane. The Norwegian airport of Longyearbyen was used by these planes. However, in 1997 a terrible tragedy happened: Russian Tu-154 crashed just before landing on Longyear airport: 144 people died. During the nineties Russian activity on Spitsbergen declined. The Grumant mine was closed down for preservation in 1961 and Pyramid in 1998. In 2002 only 867 people worked in the Barentsburg mine.10 Today nearly 500 people live and work there.11

5 6 7

GAMO, f. П-17, op.1, d.48, p. 15. GAMO, f. П-17, op.1, d.66, p.40 Trifonenkov, V.D. “Arcticugol”: the yesterday, the today, the tomorrow. - El. resource: http: www.pseudology.org/goroda/Shpitsbergen.htm. 8 GAMO, f. П-17, op.1, d.250, p.29. 9 GAMO, f. П-17, op.1, d.251, p.3. 10 The report concerning the results of the inspection of the financial condition and the use of federal budget money which had been given to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “State trust “Arcticugol” in 2002-2004 (the Norwegian archipelago Spitsbergen). – El. resource: http://www.ach.gov.ru/bulletins/2005/arch5/03.rtf 11 Barentsburg // Wikipedia – El. resource: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Баренцбург.

Barentsburg: The Soviet period in the history of the mine

The Conception of the Russian Federation’s policy on the archipelago of Spitsbergen was worked out in the 1990s. Its realization is intended to give a new incentive to the development of Barentsburg.

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Literature Pechurov, L., 1983. The Spitsbergen. - M.: Мысль, 1983.

"The essence of the adventure": narratives of arctic Work and engineering in the early 20th century

dag avango (1), anders Houltz (2) (1) Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands, (2) Div of History of Science and Technology, KTH; Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

absTracT Why do people from the south decide to find work in harsh Arctic environments? This is an important question, if we want to explain the development of industry in the Polar Regions. The late 19th and early 20th centuries experienced the culmination of an exceptional hero cult surrounding polar scientists and explorers. Far less celebrated were the numerous mining workers and engineers active in industrial enterprises in the High Arctic in the same period. While the motives and driving forces of polar scientists and explorers have been relatively carefully examined, very little attention has been paid to these, less glamorous, people and their choice to earn a living in an Arctic industrial community. By examining a unique material of written accounts, diaries, newspaper articles and images from the Swedish coal mining establishment of Sveagruvan (the Svea Mine) on Spitsbergen, in production during the first two decades of the 20th century, we will analyse the narratives of workers, foremen and managers, men and women, expressing their views of the time they spent on Spitsbergen. The material will be discussed from four identity creating perspectives: gender, nationality, class and profession. How did individuals in different positions narrate their life and work at the Svea Mine? What was the source of inspiration for those narratives? To what extent were they inspired by the established heroic picture of the Arctic scientists and explorers? What does this tell us about the motives for working in the High Arctic?

Why did people in the early 20th century decide to leave their homes and find work in the distant, harsh environment of the Arctic? A century ago, the coal mines of Sveagruvan on Spitsbergen attracted considerable numbers of Swedes of different social and professional background, most of them men but some women, to earn their living in a context quite alien to anything they had previously experienced. What were their motives? How did they perceive and relate their own situation? For a both public and scholarly audience, the leading role on the polar stage of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries is still typically played by "the polar hero".

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The present glimmer around the polar scientists and explorers of that era is, however, merely a bleak image of their contemporary public attention. They were the heroes of their time and their deeds were dramatized in newspaper articles and schoolbooks. They were role models to the youth and the pride of their nations.1 As many scholars have pointed out, it is impossible to analyze the activities and motives of those scientists, without taking this unique position into account.2 Recent polar research in the humanities has done much to complement the dominant perspective of the heroic polar scientist by adding and admitting the importance of other actors – most importantly that of indigenous peoples within the region – and thereby shifting the research focus.3 In this article we are focusing on a different group of actors, who's motives for being active in the Arctic has received little attention in historical research – the workers and engineers, men and women, who worked at the coal mines in the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen in the early 20th century. Based on published remembrances, diaries and contemporary newspaper articles from the Swedish coal mine Sveagruvan (The Svea mine in the following), we intend to analyse the narratives which the people who were working there formulated about their time on Spitsbergen. How did they narrate their life and work at the Svea mine? What was the source of inspiration for those narratives? Were they related to the established heroic picture of the Arctic scientists and explorers, and if so, how? Were these Arctic coal miners also "polar heroes" – in their own eyes or in the eyes of others?

A Swedish coal mine on Spitsbergen In the beginning of the 1900's, Spitsbergen was still at the edge of the world that was known to people from more southern latitudes. Without permanent population but used as a basis for whaling, hunting and fishing since the 17th century, Spitsbergen had by then also become recognized for its rich deposits of workable coal. In a legal sense, Spitsbergen was a no-man's land at the time and therefore 1 2

3

Robinson, Michael F., 2006. The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture. Wråkberg, Urban, 1995. Vetenskapens vikingatåg: Perspektiv på svensk polarforskning 1860–1930; Wråkberg, Urban, 2004. "Polarområdenes gåter"; Sörlin, Sverker, 1988. Framtidslandet: Debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombrottet; Sörlin, Sverker, 2002. "Rituals and resources of natural history: The north and the Arctic in Swedish scientific nationalism". In: Sörlin, Sverker and Bravo Michael (Eds), Narrating the Arctic - a Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices. Compare Beckman, Svante, 1990. Utvecklingens hjältar: Om den innovativa individen i samhällstänkandet. Nilsson Dahlström, Åsa, 2009. "The Two-Way Appropriation of Indigenous Knowledge. Environmental Management Policies and the Laponia Process", Journal of Northern Studies, no. 2; Eliasson, Pär, 2002. Swedish Natural History in the Northern Space - from Lapland to the Arctic, 1800-1840. In: Sörlin, Sverker and Michael Bravo 2002; Paci, Chris et al, 2008. "Northern Science and Research. Postsecondary Perspectives in the Northwest Territories", Journal of Northern Studies, no. 1; Sawchuck, Christina. 2009. "Auktoritet och expertis: Forskning, lokal kunskap och politik i Kanadas nordområden", Ymer 2009.

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it was free for everyone who so wished to exploit the natural resources in the archipelago. The market for coal in industrial Europe was insatiable, especially in the Scandinavian countries with almost no coal resources of their own. The coal fields on Spitsbergen therefore appeared as a possibility both to solve an energy problem and to earn considerable amounts of money. The first attempts to mine coal for commercial purposes were made when the coal prices peaked during the last years of the 19th century. The first coal mining settlements were built in the years 1905–1907, and over the following decade several coal mines were established along the western coast line of Spitsbergen. The mining companies came from several countries – The Netherlands, Sweden, Great Britain, United States, Norway and Russia.4 One of the mining companies was Swedish – AB Isfjorden-Belsund (later renamed to AB Spetsbergens svenska kolfält and variations of that name). This company was started on the initiative of the Swedish ministry of foreign affairs and by Jernkontoret – the branch organization of the Swedish steel industry. In 1910, they sent an expedition to Spitsbergen with the objective to claim coal fields. Economically, the project was meant to supply Swedish industry with "domestic" coal. There was also a political motive – to strengthen the Swedish position in the ongoing international negotiations about the future legal status of Spitsbergen.5 The expedition defined four areas with coal, which were claimed by putting up signs saying "Swedish occupation". Over the following years, AB Isfjorden-Belsund sent more expeditions to its Spitsbergen possessions and made plans for a Swedish coal mine. In 1917 the company established a coal mine by an isolated fiord, accessible from the west coast of Spitsbergen – the Braganza bay. The colony was named the Svea mine, and the company claimed it would supply the entire demand for coal in Sweden for hundreds of years.6 The Svea mine never lived up to the expectations of its owners however. The coal prices on the European markets had peaked when the company was in the process of establishing the mine. Naturally, the production results were low during this initial phase, but at the same time the prices for buying technical equipment were sky high because of the on-going World War I. When the mine approached full production capacity, after multi-million investments from Swedish industry, the market prices on coal had dropped radically as a consequence of the 1920's worldwide economic crisis. The company made heavy economic losses and the mine survived only because of state investments ordered by the government. After the signing of the Spitsbergen treaty in 1920, granting Norway sovereignty over the archipelago while allowing equal rights for other nationalities to engage in commercial activities, the Spitsbergen question became a non-issue. This naturally meant that the Swedish government lost a major incentive for its commitment to the project. When, finally, an endurable fire broke out under ground in 1925, the Svea mine had played out its role economically as well as politically. The actors who once supported the project 4 5 6

Avango, Dag et al. 2010. "Between Markets and Geo-Politics: Natural Resource Exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the Present Day", Polar Record 47(1). Dag Avango, 2005. Sveagruvan: Svensk gruvhantering mellan industri, diplomati och geovetenskap. Ibid.

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were no longer interested in maintaining it. In 1934, the coal fields were sold to the Norwegian mining company Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani A/S.7 Over its eight years in operation, over a thousand Swedes worked at the mine. Some of their narratives have been preserved in the form of interviews, newspaper articles and books.

The heroic narrative The high public status of polar science in the 19th and early 20th centuries was, among other things, a product of the polar scientists own efforts to publish popular accounts of their research expeditions in the polar areas.8 These publications were sold in big editions and were also used in school teaching. The narratives related their untiring quest for answers to scientific problems and for unknown (and unclaimed) lands, hidden in the mists of the polar oceans. Books like Adolf Nordenskiöld's The voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe (1881) and Fridtjof Nansen's Farthest North (1897) can be read as moral epics over individual hardships and sacrifices endured to attain elevated goals. The historian of science Urban Wråkberg has pointed out that this heroic picture harmonized well with the romanticised and historicised nationalist ideas of the time; the Swedish (or Norwegian) polar researcher was portrayed as someone who was pre-destined to handle the Arctic because of his Nordic origin. The heroic myth surrounding the polar researcher also fitted well with the influential ideals of nature-romanticism. The research expeditions were portrayed against the background of the arctic wilderness, described as a peculiar combination of beauty and threat – monumental, boundless and tempting but at the same time deeply frightening – the "Arctic sublime".9 These books had a wide readership and they inspired more or less obvious followers. One such follower was the mine worker and amateur writer Helmer Johanson. He wrote two books in which he narrated life on Spitsbergen in general and at the Svea mine in particular, covering the years from 1917 to 1922 – Three years on Spitsbergen and Five years on Spitsbergen.10 Another author was the engineer Bror Granholm, who, in a popularly written but unpublished manuscript, narrated his experience of the first year at the Svea mine in 1917–1918. At this time Granholm was both managing director of the mining company and general manager 7 Ibid. 8 See Kjellman, Frans R. and Adolf E. Nordenskiöld, 1875. Svenska polar-expeditionen år 1872–1873 under ledning af A.E. Nordenskiöld; Nathorst, Alfred G., 1900. Två somrar i Norra Ishafvet, Vol. 1 (2); Nordenskiöld, Adolf E., 1885. Den andra dicksonska expeditionen till Grönland: Dess inre isöken och dess ostkust: utförd år 1883 under befäl af A. E. Nordenskiöld; Nordenskjöld, Otto, 1904. Antarctic: Två år bland sydpolens isar. The public activities of polar explorers from an American perspective are discussed by Michael F. Robinson in The Coldest Crucible : Arctic Exploration and American Culture, 2006. 9 Loomis, Chauncery, C., 1995. The Arctic Sublime, Nature and the victorian imagination; Tennyson, G.B. and Ulrich Camillus Knoepflmacher, (Eds), 1977; Wråkberg 1995, 72–82. 10 Johanson, Helmer, 1922. Tre år på Spetsbergen; Johanson, Helmer, 1929 Fem år på Spetsbergen.

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of the Svea mine. Other employees left narratives behind in the form of diaries, or have related their experiences in interviews – either contemporary or in retrospect. The narratives show many differences compared to the classical heroic tales of the expeditions of polar science, but they also reveal striking similarities. In the following we will analyze some of these accounts.

Expectations and ambitions Undeniably, there were strong economic incentives for young miners and engineers to go to Spitsbergen for employment. This becomes especially obvious when looking at the workers. The mine workers at the Svea mine earned more than twice as much as, for instance, the mine workers in the coal mines in Scania in South-western Sweden. For engineers and foremen the difference was smaller, but also they earned more at Spitsbergen. Moreover, the recruiters of the mining company profited from the turbulent situation on the Swedish labor market during the deep international economic crisis in the early 1920's. For many, to get a job in the Arctic was not only a lucrative opportunity, but also a road away from unemployment. The statement of a mine worker in a questionnaire distributed by the Nordic Museum in Stockholm in the 1950's gives typical example of such economic motives. With somewhat prosaic formulations, the miner describes his motives for leaving the Scania coal fields in order to work at the Svea mine for a few seasons around 1920: "Me and 7–8 others applied and were admitted. Now we were about to make some money."11 The economic factors were important, but there were also motives of another kind. From his perspective as a worker, Helmer Johanson wrote about the high salaries, but he also described the Arctic region's "extraordinary temptations, especially for the adventurous youth".12 The numerous accounts of polar exploration at the time and the tremendous popularity of adventure stories in wilderness settings, contributed to the attraction. Johansson continued: "When it was decided, that the Swedish coal deposit at Braganza Bay was to be utilized, surely the minds of thousands of youngsters were turned in that direction. Inspired by Jack London's graphic novels, their highest wish was to try out the hard trade of the fur hunter or mineworker."13 With the industrial initiatives on Spitsbergen, there was suddenly an opportunity also for the less wealthy to make dreams of adventures in the Arctic come true. First and foremost it was young men without families who picked up jobs at the Svea mine, men who could be away for a long time, but also family fathers went for longer or shorter periods. Among white collar workers, there were several examples of whole families moving up to the Svea mine, where they established themselves under forms that reminded as much as possible of the ideal bourgeois lifestyles back 11 "Jag och 7–8 andra anmälde oss och blev antagna. Nu skulle vi tjäna pengar", quoted in Mats Rehnberg, 1960. Gruvminnen, Svenskt liv och arbete, 25, 267. 12 Johanson 1929, 79. 13 "När det beslöts, att den svenska kolfyndigheten vid Braganza Bay skulle utnyttjas, vändes säkerligen tusende ynglingars håg dit upp, som genom förmedling av Jack Londons måleriska romaner intet högre önskade, än få pröva pälsjägarens eller gruvarbetarens hårda hantering." Ibid.

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home.14 Even if the coal mining communities on Spitsbergen were predominantly male environments, also young women went there. At the Svea mine women worked in places like the canteen, the washing house and the cottage hospital. Work at the canteen could be just as hard as in the mine, but it was generally less dangerous, it had a lower status and the workers there earned less. What attracted these women to seek employment on Spitsbergen? The Arctic hero was a purely masculine cultural construct, but appealed to women and men alike, and most likely the longing for freedom and adventure was just as strong for women trapped by traditional gender roles as for their male counterparts. The distant Spitsbergen archipelago offered a possibility to realize such dreams. However, the question of motivation remains largely open to speculation, since very few of the women who worked at the Svea mine left any account of their stay there. Were there any career opportunities on Spitsbergen? Most likely so, but first and foremost for people with an education and in leading positions, especially among the engineers. At the same time, these people took a risk by going to the Svea mine – their own future became tied to that of the company, and the Svea mine was – despite all grandiose visions of the future – a high-risk venture.

Drudgery or adventure? A typical characteristic in most of the accounts of life at the Svea mine is that the actual work and its contents play a subordinate role. However odd it may appear, the simple and straightforward explanations for going to the Svea mine are seldom expressed and never with any detail. After a few short words about the toil in the mines, most narrators move on to more emphatic narratives about their encounters with nature in its different forms – the severe climate or the difficulties and the adventures when travelling over ice and snow. The previously cited informer to the Nordic Museum gives a typical example of the dismissive tone used to describe the technical aspects of work in the mine: "The coal we cut with a pick-axe, the same way we did back home in Scania."15 Seemingly there was nothing more to say – the external circumstances may have been different but the work was the same and deserved no more attention than that. Thus, the narratives are seldom about the toil of everyday life. More often they tell about the exceptional and the extreme, the aspects of life that were different from home. A prominent theme is the experience of the Arctic cold, the darkness and the storms, but also the encounters with the landscape in itself. Helmer Johanson's narrative about his first experience with Spitsbergen is a good example: "The coastal landscapes appeared as battered ribbons and somewhat higher up the mountain tops rose towards the rolling clouds of the sky. Everything came together into one piece of compact nature, with the midnight sun as a decorative background painting, spreading its shimmer over the mountain tops and the rolling

14 Avango 2005, 235–243. 15 "Kolen högg vi ut med hacka på samma sätt som hemma i Skåne," Rehnberg 1960, 267.

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Figure 1. Workers en route to the Svea mine, after having been dropped off a ship at the ice-edge off the west coast of Spitsbergen. From there the walking distance to the Svea mine was about 40 kilometers across the ice. Many employees at the Svea mine made efforts to document their stay in photographic pictures. The photos were part of the adventure stories they brought home from the Arctic. Photo: Sven Wahlströms photo archive.

seas. It was not possible to avoid taking an impression of nature's frightening, but at the same time grandiose majesty."16 In a way similar to the polar exploration literature, Helmer Johanson had a special liking for dramatizing the Arctic landscape. With the help of the landscape, he expressed the workers' mixed feelings of fear and fascination, as their ship entered the Braganza bay. His description of the feelings of individual insignificance and exposure are similar to numerous other accounts of the encounter with the Arctic sublime. As previously mentioned, the director of the mining company, Bror Granholm, also wrote about his experiences from the Svea mine. Even if Granholm's text is more oriented towards engineering problems and technical issues, it has many similarities with Helmer Johanson's. His descriptions of his encounters with the Arctic are focused on the exceptional – ice obstacles with related hardships and delays, the extremely forced construction of the Svea mine in race against the approaching high Arctic winter, and the wintering at the Braganza bay with its hardships, difficulties and dangers. At the same time, Granholm down-plays the severity of the situations 16 "Själva kustpartierna tedde sig som sönderklippta band och något högre stucko spetsarna av fjällen mot himlens vaggande moln. Allt gick ihop till ett stycke kompakt natur, med midnattssolen som dekorativ fondmålning, som spred sitt skimmer över fjällens toppar och den rullande sjön. Man kunde icke undgå att taga intryck av den skrämmande, men samtidigt storstilade väldigheten i naturen," Johanson 1922, 10.

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– everything could be solved with the rational art of engineering, technical as well as social.17 Life at the Svea mine contained both the everyday struggle to make a living and thrilling adventures, but the proportions were never equal. The toil of everyday life was the rule, the exciting episodes were exceptions. Despite that fact, it was mainly these exceptional episodes that were narrated and re-narrated. Why? One answer is the fact that people generally tend to remember the exceptional and forget the ordinary, but it is also likely that the dramatic episodes were more in accordance with expectations, both those of the author and those of the public.

The right stuff In their narratives, workers as well as foremen and managers turned encounters with the Arctic nature into a "measure of men". It could be about solving engineering problems, or withstanding hardships and dangers, or simply enduring isolation and darkness. One clear-cut example is engineer Einar Berggren's description of a reindeer hunt with dog-sled and tent in temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius and blizzard that he undertook together with a group of foremen. The trip developed into a major showdown, and in his description of the events, Berggren evaluates the different team members' abilities to tackle the difficulties. The feat is described as in every aspect comparable to those of Arctic explorers, only with the addition that the participants were expected to function in their ordinary, professional capacity after returning: "The following day it was only a matter of getting up like any other working day. I did not go to bed after work until two o'clock the following night, while Plahn laid anchored for the whole day and Persson stayed in bed for several days. It may sound as if I was bragging, but at the time I was glad to be able to withstand such hardships."18 To endure the hardships of adventure and still be able to perform one's work becomes a double proof of manliness. Whether it had been at all wise to carry through the dangerous hunting trip in the first place is never questioned. The adventure is portrayed as end in itself and endurance as a virtue. In narratives such as this one, daily life in the mine was turned into a background, against which the adventures stood out. A person made of the right stuff should be able to live up to the heroic explorer ideal and yet, at the same time, manage to cope with the work in the mine. It is no surprise that there are also many examples of people who were not considered to be made of the right stuff. Helmer Johanson tells a story about a Swede who went to Spitsbergen in 1924. On his way there, he had told anyone who cared to listen about his plans and expectations, but after only two days at the mine the man had had enough and suffered a psychological collapse. He 17 Aktiebolaget spetsbergens svenska kolfält, Granholms handlingar, vol 180, Spetsbergenarkivet, Riksarkivet (Stockholm). 18 "Dagen efter var det bara att gå upp som till en vanlig arbetsdag. Jag gick inte och lade mig förrän klockan två påföljande natt, medan Plahn låg för ankare hela dagen och Persson blev sängliggande i flera dagar efteråt. Det låter kanske som om jag skryter, men då var jag glad över att kunna uthärda sådana strapatser." Resar-Herman Jakobsson & Roger Kellerman, Sveagruvan på Spetsbergen (1979), 90.

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Figure 2. Employees on the roof of a snow covered house at the Svea mine. The photo can be understood as a narrative, addressed to the audience back home, about the extreme weather conditions they encountered at Spitsbergen – conditions which they were able to master by engineering. Photo: Ingemar Pettersons photo archive.

spent the rest of his time on Spitsbergen restlessly waiting for the next boat arriving at the edge of the sea ice: "At this time he was not far from burnt-out and completely exhausted. His nerve system was torn apart and his eyes all red, like those of a wild animal. When the boat finally arrived, it was a very tired man who went on board; too tired and tormented by the solitariness, the desolate plains and the howls of wild animals in the night to be able to express the happiness and liberation, which he most likely felt. But he is an excellent example of the average person, who loves the adventure if in form of a chamber play and, impressed and overwhelmed by its decorative elements, wants to try it himself, but cannot foresee or understand, that the essence of the adventure lies in the multitude of trials."19 19 "Vid den tidpunkten var han icke långt ifrån utbränd och totalt slut. Hans nervsystem var upprivet och ögonen voro blodtrådiga som på ett vilt djur. När båten äntligen anlände, var det en mycket trött man, som gick ombord; för trött och plågad av ensligheten, ödevidderna och vildmarksdjurens tjut om nätterna, för att kunna visa den glädje och befrielse, som han sannolikt kände. Men han var ett utomordentligt exempel på den genomsnittsnatur, som älskade äventyret i dess form av kammarspel och, imponerad och överväldigad av det dekorativa inslaget, vill pröva det själv, men icke förutser eller förstår, att äventyrets kärna och tjusning inkrustreras i de mångfaldiga provningarna." Johanson (1929), 71ff.

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In other words, it was a normal, understandable reaction to surrender to the pressure; perseverance was an exception – the difference between an average person and an exceptional one. However, it was not only a matter of being able to withstand physical hardships that settled whether a person was made of the right stuff or not. Just as important was the ability to withstand the psychological strains in the Arctic environment. Isolation, homesickness and the long winter, with continuous storms from November to March and no less than three months of absolute darkness, all of this affected people's minds in varying degrees. It was believed that the dark period caused depressions, and the ability to withstand even this form of hardship is a recurring theme in many of the narratives. In some memory accounts, the ability to endure the hard life of Arctic mining was given a national explanation. A particularly good example is Helmer Johanson's comparison between the Scandinavians and the British: "While the Norwegians and Swedes built their houses with outmost care, the British team put together a house of thin boards and believed it would give them enough protection against the storms and the cold."20 The Scandinavians are portrayed as more knowledgeable and experienced, but also as mentally more suited for the Arctic environment: "The previously mentioned case with the two Englishmen at the English claim, who lost their minds, is enough evidence on, how two solid and strong men were annihilated spiritually, because they were not able to live up to the standard and to withstand the trials"21 What it meant to be made of the right stuff must be understood in the context of contemporary ideals of masculinity, to which polar exploration was closely linked. As Lisa Bloom and Lisbeth Lewander have both shown in a number of studies, the narratives of polar expeditions played a central role in the construction of masculinity at the turn of the century 1900.22 Polar travelling symbolized the struggle of men 20 "Då såväl norrmän som svenskar byggde sina bostäder med ytterlig omsorg, snickrade det engelska laget ihop ett hus av tunna plankor och trodde sig inom detta ha nog skydd för stormarna och kölden." Ibid, 35f. 21 "De i annat sammanhang omtalade fallen med de två engelsmännen vid den engelska inmutningen, vilka miste förståndet, utgöra tillräckliga bevis på, huru två solida och starka män andligen förintades, därför att de icke höllo måtten och stodo emot prövningarna." Ibid, 71ff. 22 Bloom, Lisa, 1993. Gender on ice: American ideologies of polar expeditions, American culture series, 10; Lewander, Lisbeth, 2002. Männen på isen: Bilder av manligheter ur Otto Nordenskjölds berättelse från den första svenska expeditionen till sydpolarområdet; Lewander, Lisbeth, 2004. "Gender aspects in the narratives of Otto Nordenskjöld's Antarctic expedition". In: Elzinga, Aant (Ed), 2004. Antarctic challenges: Historical and current perspectives on Antarctica on the occasion of the centenary of the Swedish Antarctic expedition 1901–1903.

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Figure 3. Heroism and masculinity in mine work at the Svea mine. The workers have agreed to be photographed in an extremely dangerous place: below pitprops that are in the process of collapsing. Photo: Ingemar Pettersons photo archive.

to become just that: real men. The polar regions were turned into mythical arenas, where men could perform and re-enact heroism and great achievements. The polar explorers, according to Bloom, represented the essence of manliness.23 Many examples of links between dangerous environments and the cultural construction of manliness can be found in the mining industry in general, not just in the Arctic context. Such notions were not least common among workers who, like a majority of the ones at the Svea mine, were members of the Anarcho-Syndicalist union movement in Scandinavia.24 Mine work took on a special position which was not only about dangers and hard work, but also about isolation – both because of the often remote location of mines and because the work was usually below ground, separated from the outside world. In comparison with the strict control and regulated work on the factory floor, the individual freedom in mine work was extensive. In the words of economic historian Maths Isacson, the mines constituted a "male free zone".25 The extreme conditions at the Svea mine meant that some of these characteristics were enhanced – mine work in a remotely located Arctic wasteland was easily 23 Bloom 1993, 6f. 24 Blomberg, Eva, 1995. Män i mörker: Arbetsgivare, reformister och syndikalister – politik och identitet i svensk gruvindustri 1910–1940; Blomberg, Eva, 1998. "Manlig politik och identitet i gruvindustrin", Arbetarhistoria 3–4. 25 Isacson, Maths, 2007. Industrisamhället Sverige: Arbete, ideal och kulturarv, 139ff. Compare for instance what Ella Johansson has described as a male "cabin culture" (kojkultur) among lumberjacks. Johansson, Ella, 1994. Skogarnas fria söner: Maskulinitet och modernitet i norrländskt skogsarbete.

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harmonized with masculine ideals in the labor movement and in society in general. In order to live up to those ideals, it was important to be made of the right stuff.

The scientific ideal A different, but closely related, ideal that appears in several narratives is what we could call the scientific ideal. It is hardly surprising that heroic aspects of science, and the scientist as a hero, is a central theme in the literature about the polar scientists of the time. That the same thing could be said about the accounts of the Arctic mine workers is more remarkable. Both white collar officials and mine workers seem to have looked upon their stay in Spitsbergen as part of a larger project with an essentially scientific content. Bror Granholm, the executive director of the Swedish mining company, placed the narrative about the Svea mine directly within the framework of the history of Swedish polar science on Spitsbergen. His account of the first year at the mine described a long and unbroken chain of Swedish accomplishments in the Arctic, from the scientific expeditions of Adolf E. Nordenskiöld and Alfred G. Nathorst to the Swedish researcher who he claimed had found the coal seam that was mined at the Svea mine. By establishing the Svea mine, Swedish industry merely continued what the scientists had started.26 Many of the employees at the mine also made it their task to conduct research of their own. The aerial ropeway operator Sture Elgstrand, working at Braganza bay 1918–1919, told about his Sunday excursions: "We also climbed several mountaintops. Up there we were reminded about the history of Spitsbergen, and about the tropical vegetation which was now the foundation for our possibilities to work here. We found petrified leaves which we thought we should take care of. By the way, in the coal seam in the mine, I found a stump from what had once been a tree. The year rings were still there and we could also see that resin had been running on the outside of the tree. Our doctor was so interested in the piece that he offered to buy it."27 Over the years when Stina Waldén, wife of a mining engineer, stayed on Spitsbergen, she conducted a systematic botanical collection activity. It is clear that her activity had more far-reaching scientific ambitions than to collect a simple, private herbarium. Before completing the collection, Waldén had it reviewed by renowned scientist Carl 26 Aktiebolaget spetsbergens svenska kolfält, Granholms handlingar, vol 180, Spetsbergenarkivet, Riksarkivet (Stockholm). 27 "Vi var också uppe på flera fjälltoppar. Där uppe kunde vi bli påminda om Spetsbergens historia, och om den tropiska växtlighet som nu var grunden för våra förutsättningar att jobba här. Vi hittade förstelnade blad som vi tyckte att vi skulle ta reda på. Förresten hittade jag i en kolflöts i gruvan, en stubbe från vad som en gång varit ett träd. Årsringarna fanns fortfarande kvar och vi kunde också se att det runnit kåda utanpå trädet. Denna bit intresserade vår läkare så mycket att han erbjöd sig att köpa den." Jakobsson and Kellerman 1979, 123.

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Skottsberg, manager of the Botanical gardens in Gothenburg and member of the legendary Swedish Antarctic expedition, under the leadership of Otto Nordenskiöld 1901–1903.28 The scientific ideal that was strived for by these persons was, however, of a special kind. The role model was not the learned theorist, sealed in his study office, laboratory and lecture hall. More close to the Arctic explorers, the role model was the empiricist, the field scientist, firmly rooted in material reality. This action-oriented, applied science ideal was in many ways close to that of engineering science. The dichotomy between theory and practice, desktop research and engineering knowledge, is nicely illustrated by an episode which has been re-told in many different versions by different persons – the finding of a second, huge coal seam at the Svea mine in the early 1920's. From the perspective of engineer Einar Berggren, this is what happened. The coal seam had been known many years before the Svea mine was established, through the scientific work of the Uppsala geologist Bertil Högbom, who mapped the geology of the Braganza bay for the Swedish mining company in 1910 and 1911.29 Bertil Högbom had found two large coal seams at the site and in one of these, the mining company started to extract coal in 1917. The second coal seam was, however, more difficult to re-locate and therefore it took several years before the company tried to utilize it. Berggren described how he personally succeeded to convince his boss that the second coal seam could and should be found and utilized. He claimed he was able to find it and received permission to start searching, with the help of some rather reluctant workers. In spite of strong efforts, Berggren failed to find the coal seam and the discouraging results were telegraphed to Stockholm. There, the company contacted Bertil Högbom, whose observations from 1910 and 1911 had been the starting point for the search. To the satisfaction of engineer Berggren, it turned out that the geoscientist Högbom had incidentally turned his profiles upside-down and therefore sent misleading information about the whereabouts of the coal seam. With the new information, Berggren triumphed: he was finally able to find the second coal seam and thereafter the company could start to mine it.30 In this narrative Berggren portrays himself as the energetic and untiring explorer, who despite of the lack of support from his superiors and colleagues stubbornly persists and in the end triumphs. It is his engineering knowledge that tips the scales, in clear contrast to the distanced theoretical knowledge of the scientist (Högbom). After the scientist admitted his mistake, the engineer was able to succeed and thereby create an invaluable resource for the mining company. Berggren's story, in the same way as several others, corresponds to an ideal picture of engineers – a construct that was closely related to the picture of the heroic explorer. Apparently there were many who experienced that their time at the Svea mine had a meaning in a wider context. Whether they practiced engineering methods in their daily work or mediated their experiences in writing, documented the mining settlement photographically or collected geological and botanical material, with or without scientific ambitions, they felt that their activities were parts of the same large 28 Familjen Walldéns privatarkiv. 29 Avango 2005, 102–123. 30 Jakobsson and Kellerman 1979, 80ff.

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Figure 4. Ski excursion to the edge of the Paula glacier. Glaciers are a common motive in the photo-albums of employees at the Svea mine – a symbol for the Arctic and the extreme. Excursions like this were often referred to as “expeditions”. Photo: Ingemar Pettersons photo archive.

project of building knowledge about the high Arctic. In a more or less modest form, they wanted to be involved in the same great mapping effort as renowned scientists like Nordenskiöld and Nathorst.

HoMecoMIng The époque of the Svea mine came to an abrupt end when the mines caught fire in May 1925. As an economic project the mine was a failure, but what did the time and effort spent at the mine mean to the people who had been employed there? Newspaper articles give some indications. From time to time, both engineers and workers from the Svea mine were interviewed in Swedish newspapers, coming home

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from employment periods at Spitsbergen. There were clear differences, however, in the way the home comers were portrayed. The magazine Veckojournalen brought public attention to the Svea mine engineer Paul Holmström, on a spread page with photos. The outline of the feature is comparable to the glorifying accounts of homecomings of hero scientists like Sven Hedin and A. E. Nordenskiöld. Holmström is respectfully interviewed about his experiences from the Swedish colony in the high north. In an easy-going way, he tells about hardships and adventures. To make the link to Arctic exploration even clearer, Holmström describes spare time as a time for expeditions: "Moreover, we have the expeditions, our most distinguished amusement. When you, after long ski tour, or after a hunting trip or a [dog] sledge expedition, erect your tent in the snow desert to take a break, take out the primus kitchen and put on some coffee to drink in a most beautiful landscape – then things are good!"31 The trivializing tone is one of the distinguishing features of the genre; thereby accomplishments are reinforced rather than reduced, making it even clearer that the narrator is made of "the right stuff". Another article tells the story of two mine workers who worked for a number of years at the Svea mine. In contrast to the article about engineer Holmström, the journalist doesn't mention the names of the workers and they are not portrayed on any photo. However, the article presents information about the mine and the mining community – spare time activities, housing, food, healthcare and salaries. Interestingly enough, the article brings up the scientific theme discussed in the above, and describes how the workers were engaged in amateur geological research and the collection of fossils: "The two workers brought a whole collection of such findings. They honoured the newspapers with, among other things, two petrified pearshaped fruits, which had ripened in a milder climate many thousands of years ago."32 What did these people bring home, apart from fossils and narratives about polar bear encounters? After all, most of them had earned a considerable amount of money over the years at the Svea mine, in many cases enough to build an economic buffer but not enough to change lifestyle in the long run after the return home. To work in the Arctic was not necessarily a resource that could be used in other circumstances. Maybe a part of the reason for this was the fact that the Svea mine project ended in a fiasco. To be associated with it was not necessarily the merit it could have been, if the project had turned out profitable. There were however exceptions. The engineer Einar Berggren, for instance, continued a successful career within the mining industry. After returning from Spitsbergen he worked as a prospector in central Africa.33 After a few years he returned again to Sweden, where he filled central positions within the Swedish mining industry.

31 "Vidare ha vi ju expeditionerna, våra allra förnämsta förströelser. När man efter en milafärd på skidor, efter en jakt eller en slädexpedition, slår upp sitt tält i snööknen för att rasta, plockar fram primuskök och sätter på kaffe att dricka i ett högst underbart landskap – då har man det gott!" Sign. Miggs, Veckojournalen, 14-12-1919. 32 "De två arbetarne medförde en hel samling av dylika intressanta fynd. De förärade tidningen bl. a. ett par förstenade päronformiga frukter, som en gång för många tusen år sedan mognat i ett mildare klimat." Veckojournalen, date unknown. 33 According to oral information from relatives of Berggren.

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The essence of the adventure It is a matter of course within historical research to consider other motives than the internal scientific ones, when explaining scientific activity in the Polar areas in the past. In marked contrast, wage labour and entrepreneurship has almost exclusively been portrayed as expressions of economic and rationalistic calculation.34 The narratives from the Svea mine clearly show that such explanations are not enough. To most of the narrators the economic motives were central, but they are not sufficient to explain the choice to go to the Arctic to work. There were also other factors, some on the collective scale and some on the individual that contributed strongly. The will to be a part of the great quest for the high Arctic was an important factor for many. To put oneself to the test in harsh polar conditions could be just as important as earning a lot of money. Going to work in Spitsbergen was an adventure akin to those of Arctic explorers, and the essence of that adventure, lied – like Helmer Johanson stated – in the multitude of trials. Going to work in Spitsbergen was also, in a way, the essence of manliness. The people working at the Svea mine did not describe themselves as Arctic heroes. However, they were conscious of, and affected by the nimbus of glory that encapsulated the Polar areas and polar exploration. In combination with the culture and the self-images which were bread within the mining industry at the time, this nimbus was a significant force forming their narratives. This is an important ground for understanding the form and content of the narratives from the Svea mine and most likely for high Arctic mining towns and other working communities in general. Both in text and in speech, they connected with the genre of polar exploration narratives. This genre, just like the contemporary discourse on masculinity, work, science and nation, became a cultural filter which shaped the experience of working at the Svea mine and in the Arctic. It is obvious that taking part in the great scientific project of mapping the Arctic had a nationalistic aspect to many of the people involved. It is equally true that the gender aspect was central – the strife portrayed in the narratives can be viewed as efforts to perform and live up to a certain masculine ideal. But most of all the motivation seems to have been found beyond these categories – in pursuit of self-realization on an individual level, and in the desire to be a member of an altruistic community on a collective level. Humans have always gone to search for themselves and for a deeper meaning of life in the remotest of places.

Literature Avango, Dag, 2005. Sveagruvan: Svensk gruvhantering mellan industri, diplomati och geovetenskap, Stockholm: Jernkontoret. 34 Regarding mine work on Spitsbergen, see for example: Evjen, Bjørg, 1995. Longyearbyen 1916–1975: Fra arktisk arbeidsplass til etablert industrisamfunn?; Jølle, Harald Dag and Einar-Arne Drivenes (Eds), 2006. Into the ice: The history of Norway and the polar regions,121ff; Vatten, Ole, 1980. Longyearbyen 1905–1935: Et norsk samfunns oppbygging og utvikling.

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Avango, D., L. Hacquebord, Y. Aalders, H. de Haas, U. Gustafsson, U. and F. Kruse, 2010. "Between Markets and Geo-Politics: Natural Resource Exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the Present Day", Polar Record, 47. Beckman, Svante, 1990. Utvecklingens hjältar: Om den innovativa individen i samhällstänkandet, Stockholm: Carlsson. Blomberg, Eva, 1995. Män i mörker: Arbetsgivare, reformister och syndikalister – politik och identitet i svensk gruvindustri 1910– 940, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Blomberg, Eva, 1998. "Manlig politik och identitet i gruvindustrin", Arbetarhistoria 3–4. Bloom, Lisa, 1993. Gender on ice: American ideologies of polar expeditions, American Culture Series, 10, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Eliasson, Pär, "Swedish Natural History in the Northern Space - from Lapland to the Arctic, 1800–1840". In: Sörlin, Sverker and Michael Bravo (Eds), 2002. Narrating the Arctic - a Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, Canton, Mass. Evjen, Bjørg, 1995. Longyearbyen 1916–1975: Fra arktisk arbeidsplass til etablert industrisamfunn? Tromsø: Universitetet i Tromsø. Isacson, Maths, 2007. Industrisamhället Sverige: Arbete, ideal och kulturarv, Lund: Studentlitteratur. Jakobsson, Resar-Herman and Roger Kellerman, 1979. Sveagruvan på Spetsbergen, Vagnhärad: Axplock. Johanson, Helmer, 1922. Tre år på Spetsbergen, Stockholm: Eget förlag. Johanson, Helmer, 1929. Fem år på Spetsbergen, Stockholm: T R. Boken. Johansson, Ella, 1994. "Skogarnas fria söner: Maskulinitet och modernitet i norrländskt skogsarbete", Nordiska Museets Handlingar, 118, Stockholm: Nordiska Museet. Jølle, Harald Dag and Einar-Arne Drivenes (Eds), 2006. Into the ice: The history of Norway and the polar regions Oslo: Gyldendal akademisk. Kjellman, Frans R., and Adolf E. Nordenskiöld, 1875. Svenska polar-expeditionen år 1872–1873 under ledning af A.E. Nordenskiöld. Lewander, Lisbeth, 2002. Männen på isen: Bilder av manligheter ur Otto Nordenskjölds berättelse från den första svenska expeditionen till sydpolarområdet, Karlstad: Karlstad University Studies. Lewander, Lisbeth, 2004. "Gender aspects in the narratives of Otto Nordenskjöld's Antarctic expedition". In: Elzinga, Aant (Ed), Antarctic challenges: Historical and current perspectives on antarctica on the occasion of the centenary of the Swedish antarctic expedition 1901– 1903, Göteborg: Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, 2. Loomis, Chauncery C., 1977. The arctic sublime. In: Knoepflmacher, Ulrich C. and G.B. Tennyson (Eds), Nature and the Victorian imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Nathorst, Alfred G, 1900. Två somrar i Norra ishafvet, Stockholm: Beijer. Nilsson Dahlström, Åsa, 2009. "The Two-Way Appropriation of Indigenous Knowledge. Environmental Management Policies and the Laponia Process", Journal of Northern Studies. Nordenskiöld, Adolf E., 1885. Den andra dicksonska expeditionen till Grönland: Dess inre isöken och dess ostkust, utförd år 1883 under befäl af A. E. Nordenskiöld, Stockholm: Beijer. Nordenskiöld, Adolf E., 1881. The voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe with a historical review of previous journeys along the north coast of the old world. Translated by Alexander

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Leslie. With five steel portraits, numerous maps, and illustrated, Vol. 2. London. Nordenskjöld, Otto, 1904. Antarctic: Två år bland sydpolens isar, Stockholm: Bonnier. Nansen, Fridtjof, 1897. "Farthest North", being the record of a voyage of exploration of the ship Fram 1893–96, Westminster. Paci, Chris, A. Hodgkins, S. Katz, J. Braden, M. Bravo, R.A. Gal, C. Jardine, M. Nuttall, J. Erasmus and S. Daniel, 2008. "Northern Science and Research. Postsecondary Perspectives in the Northwest Territories", Journal of Northern Studies. Rehnberg, Mats, 1956. "Gruvminnen", Svenskt liv och arbete 25, Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1960. Robinson, Michael F., 2006. The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Sawchuck, Christina, 2009. "Auktoritet och expertis: Forskning, lokal kunskap och politik i Kanadas nordområden", Ymer 2009. Sörlin, Sverker, 1988. Framtidslandet: Debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombrottet, Stockholm: Carlsson. Sörlin, S., 2002. Rituals and resources of natural history: The north and the Arctic in Swedish scientific nationalism. In: Bravo, M., and S. Sörlin (Eds), Narrating the Arctic: a cultural history of Nordic scientific practices, Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 73-124. Vatten, Ole, 1980. Longyearbyen 1905–1935: Et norsk samfunns oppbygging og utvikling, Trondheim: Universitet i Trondheim. Wråkberg, Urban, 1995. Vetenskapens vikingatåg: Perspektiv på svensk polarforskning 1860– 1930, Skrifter/Institutionen för idé- och lärdomshistoria, 12, Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet. Wråkberg, Urban, 2004. Polarområdenes Gåter. In Jølle, Harald Dag, Ketil Zachariassen and Einar-Arne Drivenes (Eds). Norsk polarhistorie: Ekspedisjonene, Oslo: Gyldendal Litteratur.

Heritage in our Wake: a review of Heritage Provisions Managing svalbard’s Industrial Past

cameron Hartnell Departement of Industrial Archaeology, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, USA

absTracT This paper explores LASHIPA’s potential role in promoting the protection of Svalbard’s industrial heritage. The discussion draws on characteristics of two legal frameworks. The environmental Protection act 2001 establishes the regulations and roles over managing the archipelago’s cultural heritage today. A World Heritage listing under consideration has the potential to expand and enhance heritage provisions. LASHIPA’s extensive research and growing publication record can have impact beyond expanding our understanding of the past. To do so, we must connect with those involved in heritage planning decisions. Simply identifying pre-1946 remains provides them an immediate level of protection. By explaining the significance of important industrial monuments, we can help set work priorities and highlight the impacts of change. Direct advocacy offers a third avenue of influence, adopted by the Michigan Technological University sub-project to promote preservation of the Arctic Coal Company’s coal hopper overlooking Longyearbyen.

InTroducTIon LASHIPA is now at the tail end of its Spitsbergen research, with student scholars completing their sub-projects and the project looking for the next avenue of investigation. Since 2004, we have collaborated in seven field campaigns that have supported intensive research efforts into the archipelago’s industrial past. The project’s research accomplishments are not in doubt. We have added extensive detail to an industrial history that was once patchy. Perhaps more importantly, we have helped bring multi-national perspectives to a past previously dominated by the views of single nations. Now is a good time to consider the heritage systems that will administer the focus of our study after our departure. As people who care about the industrial past and have devoted years to Svalbard, it is natural that we should give some thought as to ways of preserving these important landscapes for later generations. Our work can have impact beyond advancing the cause of historic research. It can play a role in future decisions if it reaches those involved in Svalbard’s landscapes: the Governor, tourism business, mining companies and local communities.

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Cameron Hartnell

This paper considers the heritage systems at play on Spitsbergen and LASHIPA’s potential impact in protecting Svalbard’s industrial remains. Two statutory frameworks will predominantly shape future management decisions: the Environmental Protection Act 2001 and a possible World Heritage inscription for the archipelago. Set within that context, the implications of LASHIPA’s work is explored and opportunities to extend our influence are identified, including a discussion of methods adopted by the Michigan Technological University sub-project team. This paper has been updated since its presentation at LASHIPA’s 2009 conference in St Petersburg.

Environmental Protection Act 2001 The Environmental Protection Act 2001 (the “Act”) is the statutory framework for management of Svalbard’s natural and historical environment.1 It aims to preserve the archipelago’s natural and cultural landscapes with a framework to manage settlement, research and commerce. The Act establishes the principles for protection, defines activities for regulation and identifies processes and the responsibilities of different parties. With little provided in the way of prescriptive measures, the Act serves as more of a high-level framework for specifically tailored plans of individual areas and features, such as land-use plans. Land-use plans are the primary mechanism for managing Svalbard’s areas of activity, including settlements, research sites and mineral extraction areas, with provisions that incorporate environmental and local community interests. The Act defines cultural heritage broadly as “traces of past human activity, including structures and sites of all kinds, on or below the surface of the land, in the sea, on the seabed and in watercourses.” Section 39 of the Act defines any structures, sites or moveable objects dating from 1945 or earlier as automatically protected. Remains post dating 1945 may also be recognized as cultural heritage when deemed to be of particular value by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. Furthermore, Section 19 gives the Norwegian King the right to recognize and protect cultural environments, and to make provisions for their management. Cultural remains on Svalbard currently receive statutory protection in two primary ways. Section 39 of the Act provides a 100m security zone around cultural heritage that forbids camping and fires unless otherwise specified by the Governor. Activities that would entail, or even risk damaging, exposing, concealing, moving or altering any cultural heritage are prohibited. Secondly, the Act requires that any ‘undertaking,’ such as a development, will necessitate investigation of potential impacts on cultural heritage. Where the undertaking is found to affect or potentially affect cultural heritage, the works require consent by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage either in line with the relevant land-use plan or by means of a permit.

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The Environmental Protection Act 2001, available online at

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World Heritage Inscription The Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management and the Directorate for Cultural Heritage put the Spitsbergen archipelago on Norway’s tentative World Heritage list on 21 June 2007. In doing so, it started down a long process towards inscription that may enhance the recognition and management of Svalbard’s industrial heritage. At its core, World Heritage Listing attempts to identify and protect places of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’. To achieve that, the World Heritage Committee leads an extensive and lengthy process that, if successful, results in defined obligations from host nations and stakeholders. The Committee asks that States prepare a tentative list as the first step in the process as a means to forecast future formal nominations. To achieve formal inscription status, Norway will need to submit a Nomination File for evaluation by independent advisory bodies before final consideration by the World Heritage Committee.2 The tentative listing recognizes both Svalbard’s natural and cultural values. Specifically, it cites culturally related criteria (v) and (vi), and natural criteria (vii), (viii), (ix) and (x).3 In respect to cultural significance, it cites the range of human activities undertaken since Willem Barentsz’s discovery of the islands in 1596, including whaling, hunting, exploration, science and mining; activities undertaken by peoples from many nations.4 Cultural heritage is defined on a very general level at this stage, requiring refinement in the future. The boundary for the proposed inscription is not yet finalized but the Norwegian Government is apparently considering two alternatives. The first would be to list the currently protected natural areas. These areas presently cover 65.3% of the archipelago, including seven national parks, six nature reserves, fifteen bird sanctuaries and one protected geotope.5 This approach would conveniently build upon management schemes and policies already in place for the protected areas. However, the majority of cultural sites, including all major historic mining areas and existing settlements, would be excluded. By extension, much of LASHIPA’s recent research would not apply within this boundary. The second alternative is to list the entire archipelago, including all of its cultural and natural heritage. Divergent provisions between the World Heritage Guidelines and the Environmental Protection Act 2001 may require management policies be upgraded to more actively manage deterioration of cultural heritage. The guidelines state that properties nominated under criteria related with historical significance (ie criteria i through vi), the physical fabric of a property and/or its significant features should be

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United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), “World Heritage List Nominations: Nomination Process,” , visited June 19, 2011. 3 UNESCO, Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Section 77. 4 UNESCO, “World Heritage Convention: Svalbard Archipelago,” , visited June 19, 2011. 5 Ibid.

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in good condition and the impact of deterioration processes controlled.6 In addition, section 77 states that, to be deemed of outstanding universal value, a property must meet the conditions of integrity and/or authenticity and must have an adequate protection and management system to ensure its safeguarding. In contrast with the Environmental Protection Act 2001, the guidelines have more active conservation requirements that may necessitate new or upgraded conservation programs at some sites. The guidelines also require a significant proportion of the elements necessary to convey the totality of the place’s values should be included.7 LASHIPA’s research has shown that the history of industrial mineral extraction on Spitsbergen involved many groups from different nations, who undertook aggressive political sparring over control of the archipelago. This supports the view that the World Heritage Listing should look beyond the most dominant mining groups, Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani and Arktikugol, to the broad range of groups, large and small, who together helped shape modern Svalbard.

Opportunities for LASHIPA With the Environmental Protection Act 2001 defining heritage remains as, effectively, any cultural evidence created before the close of the Second World War, the Norwegian Government has instituted a statutory framework that lends itself conveniently to historical research and survey. At the simplest level, historic remains simply need to be identified to gain some level of protection. LASHIPA’s survey results lend themselves to the protection of cultural landscapes because we have always looked beyond the main monuments of industrial heritage, such as mines and docks, to the wider physical environment. Dr Dag Avango’s work is notable in this respect, showing how seemingly minor physical features such as claim posts acted as important symbolic actors in the industrial-political landscape.8 My work with Seth DePasqual looked at mining test pits and claim huts across the Ice Fjord to explain the Arctic Coal Company’s strategy to claim and develop this isolated environment.9 LASHIPA’s has collectively laid the basis for the expansive recognition and protection of Svalbard’s industrial heritage resources. Sole identification of historic relics is inadequate since heritage provisions in the Act are only triggered if designated authorities know what has been found. LASHIPA’s strong publishing record has already done much to disseminate what we 6

Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, Section 89. 7 Ibid. 8 Avango, Dag, 2005. Sveagruvan: Svensk gruvhantering mellan industri, diplomati och geovetenskap. Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology. 9 Hartnell, C., 2009. Arctic Network Builders: The Arctic Coal Company Operations on Spitsbergen and its Relationship with the Environment. Doctoral Dissertation, Michigan Technological University. Available online at www.mtu.edu/library/); and DePasqual, Seth, 2009. Winning Coal at 78° North: Mining, Contingency and the Chaíne Opératoire in Old Longyear City, Master’s Thesis, Michigan Technological University.

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have learned. Our most effective information outlet in this respect is the publication of detailed survey reports on the project’s websites.10 This written record will grow as students complete theses and dissertations, and journals print our articles. LASHIPA’s GIS Mapping project is yet another promising avenue for promoting our research. That project aims to bring together the main field survey results into a single mapping system. When completed, it will offer a spatial overview of physical evidence identified by our surveys and point to related reports. In order for our research to influence cultural heritage outcomes, we need to keep in mind the various organizations implicated in the management provisions of the Environmental Protection Act 2001, some of whom will not know our work. I have already described the role of the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in authorizing particular activities around cultural heritage, probably in corroboration with the Governor. Other groups are involved in the development of land-use plans; key documents for number of major historic industrial sites. Kings Bay AS developed the land-use plan for Ny Ålesund and surrounds.11 The Longyearbyen Community Council is responsible for developing the plan in Longyearbyen.12 It is important our findings are available to inform these plans since they relate to lands most impacted by human induced change. LASHIPA’s publication strategy needs to reach beyond the traditional historic research audience to the wider community of Spitsbergen for it to influence local outcomes and impact ongoing World Heritage discussions. LASHIPA has available a few simple options to improve the visibility of its research. Our internet presence is extremely important since the web is increasingly the most effective way to disseminate information. While LASHIPA has posted substantial information on the web, it is not necessarily easy to find. The main website, lashipa.nl, is not readily picked up by major internet search engines. A review of the website’s terminology and improved links with other sites may help. I must admit my own weakness here since my dissertation on the Arctic Coal Company is available to download but is only found after searching the Michigan Technological University Library’s website.13 Similarly, historic company photos I uploaded at the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections are only accessible through that library’s website, rarely appearing in web searches.14 Svalbardarchaeology.org is our most visible website but only posts three of LASHIPA’s many reports. In short, we have established ourselves more as an information source accessed via word-of-mouth rather than one readily stumbled across on the internet. 10 Copies of all LASHIPA survey reports are published in the publications section of . Michigan Technological University publishes some reports at . 11 Kings Bay AS, Ny-Ålesund Hele Planen, , visited June 15, 2011. 12 “Information for foreign citizens living in Longyearbyen,” Office of the Sysselmannen, 2009. Available online at . 13 Hartnell 2009. 14 Keweenaw Digital Archives, , Michigan Technical University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections.

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LASHIPA’s internet options are not limited to improving our own websites as we can easily add links and data to other popular sites. The project would profit from posting a complete list of linked publications and resources onto a new Wikipedia page, along with a summary of the projects objectives and accomplishments. Wikipedia is now the most visited reference website in the world and features prominently in search engine searches. I would encourage LASHIPA members to consider establishing a page on the subject of their sub-project with links and references to important supporting documentation. Providing links to lashipa.nl on each Wikipedia page would also enhance the homepage’s visibility. In addition to the internet, local sources remain an important avenue for local information distribution on Svalbard. In this respect, the Governor’s office is a valuable information point on heritage matters, one that supports the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and can act as an advocate in community planning matters. LASHIPA members should ensure that office has ready access to all reports, preferably in hard-copy format, or at least has internet links to them. The Longyearbyen Public Library is another possible depository with links to the community, especially for student theses on particular aspects of the archipelago’s history. Identification of cultural heritage is an important but limited first step towards effective preservation; only by understanding the heritage significance of the remains in question are good outcomes reached. An appreciation of heritage significance is critical to prioritize works, develop conservation policies and propose mitigation measures for works. Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Act 2001 is particularly weak in this respect. The Act requires environmental assessments be completed prior to approval of an undertaking but does not define how cultural values or impacts are to be measured. Furthermore, it gives little guidance on the process the Directorate for Cultural Heritage should evaluate the proposals it is presented. The danger implicit in the law is that cultural heritage assessments are subject to the pressures of development. In my experience as a heritage officer, it is much more difficult for a consenting authority to give heritage advice after time and money has already been invested towards a particular development outcome. LASHIPA has contributed positively to future assessments by providing a readily accessible historical context to historical remains. Seth DePasqual and I pursued the issue of heritage significance more directly in a small project supported by the Environmental Protection Fund.15 The project report featured inventory cards of each site documented, including a history, description, site plan and photographs. We included a statement of heritage significance where heritage values were particularly notable, including for the remains of the Arctic Coal Company’s power house and their claiming hut at Elveneset. The inventory cards were designed as simple site management tools, usable for site monitoring or heritage impact assessments. In addition, I have written elsewhere on the significance of a small Arctic Coal Company

15 Hartnell, C., 2008. Arctic Coal Company Powerhouse inventory card. In: Hartnell, Cameron, Seth DePasqual, and Patrick Martin, Heritage Survey of the Arctic Coal Company, Svalbard: Svalbard’s Environmental Protection Fund Final Report, Houghton: MI: Michigan Technological University.

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mine overlooking Advent Valley16 and provided a dissertation chapter framing the heritage significance of the company’s remains across the Ice Fjord.17 Another gap in the Act is that it makes no provision for the active preservation and maintenance of historic remains of high significance. Its cultural heritage provisions are reactive to the activities people want to undertake and passive to long-term conservation requirements, which supplemental management plans and programs address for select sites. The major threat to Svalbard’s heritage is not development but the process of decay and pressures from tourism on relics outside settled areas. Large scale mining sites Pyramiden and Barentsburg are obvious examples of important historic sites at great risk. Those who have researched sites at risk on Svalbard should keep in mind that the law alone will not prevent the loss of sites, nor publication of our research. For these sites, LASHIPA’s work will only have limited impact unless it takes an advocate’s stance. Project participants from Michigan Technological University have made the case to the Governor for preserving the Arctic Coal Company’s coal hopper in Longyear Valley. The Governor’s office inspected the relic in 2008 and found its decay too far advanced to warrant preservation works. Following in person discussions with the government representatives, we wrote to the Governor’s office arguing the case for preserving this landmark. In our opinion, the hopper is amongst the most significant relics of the early-twentieth century coal rush era and warrants extended conservation efforts for the benefit of future generations. Given its state of decay and its position below unstable cliffs, we argued that alterations to the structure were acceptable, if necessary, with the exception of the front façade which is visible across the valley floor. We were pleased to hear recently that the Governor commissioned a study to investigate options for saving the hopper that we hope will lead to much needed preservation work.

Conclusions LASHIPA’s research on Svalbard’s industrial past will also promote heritage protection after we have left. Project findings during investigations of the western archipelago automatically trigger the cultural heritage provisions of the Environmental Protection Act 2001, particularly with submission of publications to Svalbard’s Governor and public libraries. The research will also improve local environmental impact assessments by providing historical context to investigations of heritage value. An improved internet strategy will help augment the project’s heritage impact by more effectively connecting research findings with those operating under the Act and in discussions over a possible World Heritage Inscription. The timing of LASHIPA’s work now appears fortuitous, given that major discussions over the heritage management of the archipelago have followed us. Project participants should also be aware of the window of opportunity to 16

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Hartnell, C., 2010. Deepening Preservation of Historic Mining Regions: Perspectives from High-Arctic Spitsbergen, digital conference proceedings, australia ICOmOs Conference, broken Hill, 22-25 april, 2010. The Heritage Significance of Arctic Coal Company Remains in Hartnell 2009.

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influence the Governor or the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in these discussions. Published articles both in journals and the internet, discussion in student theses or dissertations, or direct advocacy to the Norwegian Government are all ways to bring attention to the cultural values of Svalbard’s special industrial places that might otherwise be overlooked.

Literature Avango, Dag. 2005 Sveagruvan: Svensk gruvhantering mellan industri, diplomati och geovetenskap. Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology. DePasqual, Seth. 2009. Winning Coal at 78° North: Mining, Contingency and the Chaîne Opératoire in Old Longyear City. Master’s Thesis, Michigan Technological University. Hartnell, C. 2009. Arctic Network Builders: The Arctic Coal Company Operations on Spitsbergen and its Relationship with the Environment. Doctoral Dissertation, Michigan Technological University. Hartnell, C., Arctic Coal Company Powerhouse’ inventory card. In: Hartnell, Cameron, Seth DePasqual and Patrick Martin. 2008. Heritage Survey of the Arctic Coal Company, Svalbard: Svalbard’s Environmental Protection Fund Final Report. Houghton: MI: Michigan Technological University. Hartnell, C. 2010. Deepening Preservation of Historic Mining Regions: Perspectives from HighArctic Spitsbergen, Digital conference proceedings, Australia ICOMOS Conference, Broken Hill, 22-25 April, 2010.

A Science & Technology Studies (STS) Approach on the Evolution of the Modern Whaling Industry

Ulf I. Gustafsson Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

Abstract The development and evolution of technologies are the result of complex processes which involve a multitude of actors and factors. In spite of this, there are narratives and research on technological development which have favoured more narrow perspectives. A representative example of this is the modern whaling industry, whose development commonly has been awarded the Norwegian Svend Foyn. This article uses the approach offered by Science and Technology Studies (STS) to show that the evolution of the modern whaling industry involved a multitude of actors, ideas, and factors. The article also discusses why and how this perspective has endured for more than one century.

Introduction The power of myths, legends and heroic actors to drive and sustain a sense of communal identity and national narrative has been central in the creation of the self-image of many nations.1 In the case of Norway, whose northerly oriented image of a polar nation has been the focal point for several researchers, scientists such as Nansen, Sverdrup and others played vital roles in creating and cultivating this self-image.2 Friedmann has illustrated how the scientific achievements of Nansen and Birkeland were central in designing and cultivating this image by for example transforming the aurora borealis from a regional phenomenon to a national symbol.3 1

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Legends and actors such as King Arthur, James Cook, Isaac Newton and Ernest Shackleton can been linked to important narratives in Great Britain. In Norway Fridtjof Nansen, Roald Amundsen and Otto Sverdrup played similar roles in creating and sustaining a national self-image as a Polar nation. A similar image in Sweden was upheld by actors such as Salomon August Andree, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and Otto Nordenskiöld. Barr. S., 2003. Norway - A consistent Polar Nation?; Berg. R., 1995. Norge på egen hand 1905-1920. Vol: 2. In: Norsk UtenriksPolitikks Historie. Mathisen. T., 1954. Svalbard in International Politics 1871-1925: The solution to a unique International Problem. Avango, D., 2005. Sveagruvan: Svensk gruvhantering mellan industri, diplomati och geovetenskap. Wråkberg, U., 1999. Vetenskapens Vikingatåg: Perspektiv på svensk Polarforskning 18601930 Friedmann, R.M., 2004. “Nansenismen”. In: Drivenes. A.E & H.D. Jølle (Eds), Norsk Po-

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The construction of linkages between science, heritage, the perception of nature and national identity were central components in the creation of northerly oriented national narratives and self-images both in Norway and in Sweden at the turn of the twentieth century.4 The development of these self-images was not restricted to scientific achievements and the accumulation of knowledge; it also included music, literature, technological development and natural resource exploitation which fitted contemporary Darwinian ideals and imperialistic ambitions. These ideals were fuelled rhetorically by proud Viking heritages which linked up with contemporary masculine ideals. This was a development which in many ways intertwined with the Scandinavian industrialisation process; a process in which the nationalisation and domestication of peripheral resource frontiers in Sweden and Norway played important roles.5 In Sweden, the discovery and exploitation of valuable iron-ore deposits in Gällivare, Malmberget and Kiruna resulted in government confiscation of traditional Sami territories and the establishment of hydro-power plants along the northern river systems, which was vital for supplying an expanding mining and forestry industry with energy.6 It was in the north, as Sörlin has demonstrated, where the future and the key to unlocking the past lay.7 During the nineteenth century Norway’s northern regions still remained loosely connected to the remainder of the nation.8 Here industrial exploitation of marine resources played a larger role in the industrialisation process then elsewhere in Scandinavia through fisheries, sealing expeditions, and whaling. Few actors could stand alongside Svend Foyn in this process.9 He became a national icon in his time and was depicted by contemporary media as a courageous hero-capitalist who single handedly created an industrial branch for the nation which had a great socio-economic impact on towns like Tønsberg, Sandefjord and

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larhistoria, vol. 2, 107-174. Sörlin, S., 1993. Framtidslandet: Debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombrottet;. Wråkberg, U., 1988. Vetenskapens Vikingatåg: Perspektiv på svensk Polarforskning 1860-1930. Liljequist, G.H., 1993. High Latitudes: A History of Swedish Polar Travels and Research. Sörlin 1988; Brunnström, L., 1981. Kiruna- ett samhällsbygge I sekelskiftets Sverige; Niemi, E., 1979. Streiftog gjennem Finmarks Historie. In: Hirsti, R.(Ed), Finnmark; Niemi, E., 1983. Vadsøs Historie. Vol: 1. Lunde, A., 1979. Sør-Varangers Historie; Wik, H., 1950. Norra Sveriges sågverksindustri från 1800-talets mitt till 1937; Bergström, S.O., 1979. Kolonisationen på kronoparkerna i Norrbotten 1894-1950. Sörlin, S., 2002. Rituals and resources of Natural History: The North and the Arctic in Swedish Scientific Nationalism. In: Bravo, M. and S. Sörlin (Eds), Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, 73-124; Sörlin 1988; Ahnlund, M. and L. Brunnström, 1992. The company town- Architecture and society in the early industrial age; Brunnström 1981. Sörlin 1988. Bottolfsen, Ø., 1990. Finnmark Fylkeskommues Historie 1840-199; Niemi 1979; Niemi 1983; Lunde 1979. Berg-Eriksen, T. 1999. Nasjonal stolthet og selvhevdelse. In: Rogan, B.(ed). Norge Anno 1900: kulturhistoriske glimt fra et århundreskifte,32.

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Larvik.10 Much like his scientific counterparts in the north, he became a symbol linking the nation’s Viking heritage to contemporary masculine and Darwinian ideals, technological progress and industrial exploitation which fitted the image of a progressive and civilised nation state. It has been said about Foyn and the evolution of the modern whaling industry that: “The modern whaling industry was established at a time when strong forces within the Norwegian people were working hard for national independence. In the national liberation year of 1905, it symbolised something for the Norwegian people’s belief in themselves, and one example was the national success of the modern whaling industry. This industry was created and developed by Norwegians. Other nations who initially had been involved within the industry, had to give up. The Norwegian knew this, and this knowledge contributed to an increase in their self-respect. Svend Foyn had become an industrial national hero, and his industry was a victory for Norway”.11 Others have said that: “One’s eyes had been opened to the fact that Norway actually was one of the World’s foremost seafaring nations, and it was an easy task to see that the vicinity to the sea was something which had dictated the nation’s history all the way back to the Viking age. Just as important was that Foyn fitted the vision of a modern Norway. He was a rare example showing that Norwegians could make a difference in a time of industrialisation. He had made pioneering inventions which, when applied to the catching of sea-mammals, had put Norway in the foremost line of the European nations and which had made him famous in many nations. The message that comes back is that there were close links between the Viking legacy and the Norwegian ability to contribute to the new society”.12 Svend Foyn was undoubtedly central in shaping the modern whaling system. Nevertheless this simplistic and narrow evolutionary view of technology raises important questions. How should we understand developments, choices and the shaping of technology, technical networks and systems?13 Are they born by a stroke of genius, or do they develop in complex webs which consist of a multitude 10 Johnsen, A.O and J.O.H. Tønnesen, 1959-1970. Den Moderne Hvalfangst Historie: Opprinnelse og utvikkling. Vol 1-4; Risting, S., 1922. Av Hvalfangstens Historie. 11 Johnsen, A.O., 1959. Finnmarksfangsten. In: Johnsen, A.O. and J.O.H. Tønnesen, 19591970, Den Moderne Hvalfangst Historie- Opprinnelse og utvikkling.Vol. 1, 639. 12 Nielsen, J.P.,2004. Ishavet er vår åker, 107. 13 System approach signifies, and varies between disciplines and traditions. However, the general foundation is that all technologies consist of dense or loosely joined components which form an integrated and coordinated unit. These components are not exclusively technical, but also incorporate actors, organisations, various forms of knowledge, environments and much more. For further reading see: Summerton, J. 1998. Stora Tekniska System: En introduction till forskningsfältet. In: Blomquist, P. and A. Kaijser (Eds), 1998. Den Konstruerade Världen: Tekniska system I historiskt perspektiv, 19-44.

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Figure 1. The 200 year anniversary of the birth of Svend Foyn in 2009, illustrating the role he still plays in contemporary narratives in Norway. Header from the programme of Tønsberg County celebrations of Svend Foyns birth. See: http://www.tonsberg.kommune.no/cms/cms.nsf/%28$all%29/ F1F7F6E36CBD49F7C12575D3003E19B1.

of variables- human and non-human- all of which provide vital contributions to the creation, evolution and shaping thereof? Furthermore, is technological development a linear process, or is it an integrated part of sociocultural contexts, political processes, market networks and organisations in which it is shaped, interacts with, and constantly altered? If this is the case, why does the image of the single innovator of technologies and industries, in this case of the modern whaling industry, continue to exist? The purpose of this paper is to discuss and analyse the development of one of mankind’s most controversial industrial ventures; the modern whaling industry, the evolution of which has commonly been attributed to the Norwegian entrepreneur Svend Foyn.14 Despite having been constructed more than a century ago, this narrow image of technological development persists, and has become something of a technical canon. However, if we are to achieve a satisfactory analysis and understanding of the processes and relations between technological innovation, design and evolution, we must incorporate cultural, environmental, market, political, economic and social aspects in addition to technical ones. In an attempt to achieve this and to challenge accepted ideas, this article takes a starting point within the research of science and technology studies (STS), where singular evolutionary myths and conceptions have been challenged and de-constructed through actor network- and system theories.15 14 See Tønnesen and Johnsen, 1959-1970; Jackson, G.. 1978. The British Whaling Trade. Nielsen 2004; Matthews, L.H., 1968. The Whale; Jacobsen, A.R., 2008. Svend FoynFangstpioneer og nasjonsbygger. 15 Hughes, T.P., 1989. The Evolution of Large Technological System, 51-82; Callon, M., 1989. Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis, 83103; Law, J., 1989. Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion. In: Bijker, W.E., T.P. Hughes, T.J. Pinch, 1989. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Law, J., 1988. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930 and Law, J., 1998. Rescuing Prometheus; Law, J and M. Callon, 1992. The Life and Death of an Aircraft: A network Analysis of Technical Change. In:Bijker, W.E. and J. Law (Eds), Shaping Technology/ Building Society.

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Approaches such as these have illuminated and demonstrated the complexity of technological innovations, and the multitude of variables which are involved in their development and shaping. It is illustrative that the definition of the modern whaling industry has revolved exclusively around technical aspects16 without incorporating other variables such as organisational, specie-diversity and utilisation aspects17 which separate the modern whaling industry from the old whaling industry,18 and which indeed define it as a technical network and system.19 Unlike its older counterpart, the technologies employed by the modern whaling industry functioned like a fishing rod, where the grenade-harpoon, which was fired from a steam-powered catching boat by the captain and gunner, acted like the hook which connected the whale to the whale catching boat by a line that was connected to a compensator and a steam-winch which enabled the crew on board the boat to salvage the sinking whale once dead. In order to catch, kill and salvage fast swimming rorqual whales, all the separate parts had to function and operate as one system. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether historians have been too focused on the hows of the modern whaling industry rather than the whys, where explanations have favoured singular model rather than network or system approaches, in which Foyn creatively assembled what others before him had not.20 One explanation of why this view may have prevailed is that it is the result of nationalistic sentiments which preceded Norway’s independence from Sweden and the breakup of the union in 1905, when several actors became role-models and symbols for a new, independent and progressive industrialised nation that sought to create a national identity. This was a process in which Foyn fulfilled the role of heroic actor characterising Norway’s aptitude for innovation and industrialism, and who single handedly had transformed an uncultivated wilderness into an area for a nationalisation and industrialisation process, generating economic profit and employment. 16 Johnsen, and Tønnesen, 1959-1976. Vol 1-4, Risting 1922; Jackson 1978; Webb, R.L, 1988. On the Northwest: Commercial whaling in the Pacific Northwest 1790-1965. 17 The modern whaling industry can be defined as the use of a steam or diesel-powered whale catcher equipped with a stern mounted harpoon-cannon, a compensator and powerful winches (technological) which allowed the whalers to hunt, kill and salvage whales such as blue, fin, humpback, sei, brydes, right-whales and other rorqual whales (speciediversity), and tow them back to a permanent whaling station (organisational), where the whole carcass was processed into whale-oil and by-products (utilisation). 18 The old whaling industry was exclusively focused on a single whale type (right-whales) which are slow swimmers and float once killed, and could as such be hunted using hand powered small boats and hand-held harpoons. Once caught, the blubber and baleen of these whales were processed at provisional camps. 19 Although technical systems consist of physical components such as engines, transmission lines and winches, they also incorporate knowledge, natural resources, workers and environments which are necessary for the system to function as intended. See Hughes1989, 51-82. 20 Law, J. 1991, Introduction: Monsters, machines and sociotechnical relations. In: Law, J. (Ed), 1991. A Sociology of Monsters. Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, 10.

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Figure 2. The European Greener Gun (left) and the North American Darting Gun (Right) (from Goddard 1997 A Window of whaling in British Columbia).

The birth and evolution of a technical system Throughout the nineteenth century a series of inventions and ideas were introduced as the whaling industry sought to evolve and adapt to meet the demands of the industrialised markets for its products. Some of these inventions and ideas were successful, while others were not. What they have in common, is that they all represent small and vital steps in the modernization process of the whaling industry. The idea of using harpoon-cannons to kill whales was an idea that had already been attempted and initially failed in 1784.21 Throughout the nineteenth century developments took two different paths; North American hand-held devices, and European fixed harpoon-cannons. The hand-held devices included innovations such as the Pierce Gun, the Cunningham Gun, the Brand Gun, the Darting Gun and the Rocket Harpoon, which entered the market in the 1850s.22 The limiting factor of these new types of killing devices was that salvaging the sinking carcass from the water posed a serious problem. A solution to this problem; the whale-raiser and compensator23 was developed and introduced onto the market by Thomas W. Roys in the late 1850s. Fifteen years later, Roys established a whaling station in Iceland together with a companion, basing their operations on the rocket-harpoon and the whale- raiser, weighing approximately 90 kilos. 24 In the 1860s the Roys whaling enterprise was visited and meticulously studied by Foyn.25 While shoulder-held solutions dominated North American directions in adapting to 21 Webb 1988, 122. 22 Davis, L.E, R.E. Gallman, K. Gleiter, 1997. Pursuit of Leviathan; Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816-1906, 283f. See also Spence, B., 1980. Harpooned; the story of whaling, 94f.; Bockstoce,. J.R., 1986. Whales, Ice, & Men; The history of Whaling in the Western Arctic, 58f.; Matthews,. L.H. (Ed),. 1968. The Whale, 126f. 23 In 1857 Thomas Welcome Roys patented his invention. For further reading see: Johnsen 1959, 179 and 288. 24 Webb 1988, 125. 25 Jacobsen 2008, 185; Johnsen 1959, 79; Risting1922, 111.

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market demands, the harpoon-cannon underwent further development in Europe. In 1837 the Brit William Greener introduced an updated version of the harpoon-cannon which was fitted with an explosive tip. Due to problems in solving ballistics and harpoon trajectories it was regarded as a failure.26 The idea of designing and developing a functional system which allowed the whalers to kill and salvage the whale carcasses, re-surfaced in Norway during the 1840s with Jacob Nicolai Walsøe. This innovator experimented initially with toxic harpoons which did kill the whales, but the side effect was that the whalers had to await decomposition and resurfacing of the carcass before they could tow it to land and process it. Furthermore, handling large quantities of toxins was not only hazardous for the persons involved; it made the meat unsuitable for human consumption, restricting its use and distribution potential. In 1849 Walsøe received funding from Selskapet for Norges Vel (The Society for the benefit of Norway), which granted him the necessary space to develop his idea of designing a functional system. A few years later, he demonstrated a device which fired an arrow shaped projectile equipped with a delayed explosive charge.27 Foyn, who at the time was a successful sealing entrepreneur, attended one of these demonstrations and expressed his enthusiasm for the system by stating: “I believe that the system would be functional for whaling. If the inventor is willing to correct the negative effects that might become visible during practical use, I am if the inventor so wishes, more than willing to contribute with 100-150 Speciedaler as it is my firm belief that a positive result is achievable”.28 In addition to this financial contribution, Walsøe received another 300 Speciedaler from the Norwegian government.29 Three years later Walsøe conducted large scale testing of the system in northern Norway where he managed to successfully kill one whale. More importantly in this context, Walsøe realized and suggested that in order to make the system successful it had to be combined with steam powered boats which would give the whalers the capability to hunt the fast swimming rorquals. This idea was adopted by Svend Foyn in 1863 when he designed and commissioned the building of the world’s first purpose built whale-catcher; the Spes et Fides (Hope and Faith).30 Another contemporary actor was A.C. Dahl, who in 1857 had initiated whaling in northern Norway using a technical solution which incorporated a grenade-harpoon fitted with a line that was fired from stern mounted cannon.31 A few years later, the Dane Gaetano Amici designed and developed a four barrelled harpoon-cannon 26 27 28 29 30

Jacobsen 2008, 115. Johnsen 1959, 96. . Jacobsen 2008, 154. A conversion on 450 Speciedaler in 1850, is estimated at Kr 123 683 in 2010. (http://www. norges-bank.no/templates/pricecalculation_25576.aspx) Risting 1922, 110. The name which means Hope & Faith reflected with Foyn’s religious

31

conviction and functioned as a tool for his belief that it was mankind’s task to exploit God’s creation. Johnsen 1959, 93f.

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which fired grenade and harpoon separately.32 Subsequently numerous actors across Europe and North America were actively contributing ideas, designs and solutions which were all aimed at exploiting fast swimming rorquals such as blue and fin whales to supply the industrialised market with ever increasing demands for cheap whale-oils and by-products.

A system-builder & a heterogeneous engineer? From the 1850s onwards Foyn established himself as one of the most successful sealing entrepreneurs in Norway.33 He constantly sought new ways for exploiting the riches of the seas in order to generate economic wealth. One aspect of this, as shown earlier, was to stay updated about ideas and technical advances which potentially could be transferred and adopted in sealing.34 As seal stocks declined in the late 1860s due to competition and overexploitation, Foyn abandoned the industry in favour of whaling.35 Like many of his time Foyn believed that it was mankind’s task to subdue the World and dominate all creatures within it. Believing themselves so empowered they often fell into the habit of exploiting nature and its resources for their own immediate material gain. Marine resources were at that time, and for a long time thereafter, in many ways exploited from an abundance perspective with little regard to the rejuvenation of populations and effects on the ecosystem. Foyn, who was very much a religious man, regarded the natural world as created by God and exploitable. According to Jacobsen, he saw whales as “a pesticide which is of no use for mankind. On the contrary they disturb the activities of the fishermen and cause the demise of boats and crews”.36 In this context, technology represented a divine tool which transformed the World into the Garden of Eden.37 Throughout the 1860s Foyn adopted and experimented with numerous technical solutions, and it was not uncommon for him to equip the Spes et Fides with several cannons which fired harpoons and grenades separately. The problem was not only to combine the two into one unit, like Walsøe and Dahl had done with relative success, but also to delay the explosion of the grenade until it had penetrated the whales’ body to effectuate the kill. Together with a local priest named Esmark, Foyn worked energetically and invested substantial amounts in finding a solution to these problems. A few years later the two came up with a solution to the problem which 32 33 34

35 36 37

Johnsen 1959, 291. In 1867, Amici was granted Danish patent for his system. Jacobsen 2008. He had given financial support to Walsøe and he had visited both Roys & Liliendahls whaling enterprise in Iceland and with Amici in Denmark. During these meetings, Foyn curiously made notes and sketches in his diary. Svend Foyn had completely abandoned the sealing industry in 1867 in order to focus his attention on whaling. For further reading, please see: Johnsen 1959, 200f. Jacobsen2008, 144. Hughes, T.P., 2004. Human-Built World: How to think about Technology and Culture, 10.

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Figure 3. The modern whaling industry was not always a welcome element in northern Norway. Local fishermen believed that whales scared fish into shallower waters which was to their advantage. However, when the whaling industry hunted and killed the whales, a vital component of their network vanished. By 1903, these frustrations resulted in an attack by more than 800 fishermen on Mehamn whaling station in northern Norway. Photo courtesy of Gamvik Museum. Norway.

completed the system as it made all the technical artefacts and elements operate as one. Foyn’s greatest contribution was therefore not in the direct invention and design of individual technical artefacts, but rather in shaping these individual entities to function as a unified and functional system. The design of a system is “the design of the whole as distinct from the design of the parts, and is inherently interdisciplinary because its function is to integrate the specialised separate pieces of a complex of apparatus and people-the system-into a harmonious ensemble that optimally achieves the desired end”.38 Unlike other entrepreneurs before him, Foyn had the ability, interest and financial possibilities to create unity from diversity and to achieve what others had not because he was not focused in a one-sided way on the individual elements; which had been invented, designed or suggested by others, but rather on the interfaces of these individual components to form an integrated system. Perhaps then a more suitable

38 Statement by Simon Ramo in: Thomas P. Hughes’ book Rescuing Prometheus, 1998, p. 69.

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title for Svend Foyn would be that of a system-builder or heterogeneous engineer,39 which would allow us to illuminate all actors and variables contributing to the step-bystep and trial-and -error evolution of the system, rather than awarding one actor the title of its creator. Despite the existence of this complex web of actors, only a few of which have been mentioned here, the view of Svend Foyn as the single creator has prevailed. The question is: Why? One explanation for this honorary title may perhaps be found in the ten year patent right that Foyn was awarded by the Norwegian authorities in 1872 for having developed the industry.40 The background for this patent can be linked to the industrialisation process of northern Norway, as it was strategically awarded by the Norwegian authorities in order to keep German actors from establishing a whaling enterprise in the region, motivated by rhetorical arguments that this was a direct threat to economic and industrial efforts made by Norwegian nationals. In political circles nationalistic and protectionist arguments won support for awarding Foyn a ten-year exclusive patent right in Norway for having developed the industry.41 Another aspect for the sustainment of this view might have been a result of societal currents where nationalistic ideas intertwined with social-Darwinian values. These promoted peaceful competitiveness among civilised nation states, and represented an ideal in which art, science, exploration, industrial development, conquest and physical strength played vital roles. In addition to these, Christian values and technological development were factors which separated civilised Europeans from indigenous people.42

Domesticating the north In this process Svend Foyn became a hero-capitalist and a symbol for the Norwegian seaman who challenged the Polar seas and the environment by carrying out a divine quest to exploit God’s creation for the greater benefit of the nation.43 From the mid-nineteenth century the industrialisation process in both Sweden and Norway developed at a rapid pace. Within a few decades the latter became one of Europe’s leading suppliers of wood and iron. While southern Norway experienced a wave of emigrants headed for America as a result of the push & pull effect where scarcity of land, failed crops and unemployment at home stood against the beliefs of a better life made possible through the Homestead Act of 1862, northern Norway experienced the opposite. The region saw a positive population growth through migration from southern Norway and of kvener from Finland. By 1875 this latter group comprised 24% of the entire population in Finnmark, while the other two groups were indigenous 39 40 41 42 43

Law 1987, 111- 134; Hughes 1989, 52f.; Summerton 1998, 25f.. Johnsen 1959, 208. Johnsen 1959, 218-220. Friedmann 2004, 111. Hougen, E., 1891. Digte, 74f. The author wrote a poem in the honour of Svend Foyn, entitled Til Svend Foyn. Hilsen fra Tønsbergs arbeidere/ To Svend Foyn. Greetings from the workers of Tønsberg.

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Sami (34%) and Norwegians (42%).44 As a consequence a Norwegianization strategy aimed at integrating the region to the remainder of the nation was initiated in the 1870s. Strategies included the nationalisation of school language, as well as making the teachers the bearers and promoters of Norwegian culture.45 To restrict land ownership for Finnish and Sami population groups, the authorities introduced a law under which only Norwegians and Swedish nationals could gain ownership of land, and in order to gain citizenship one had to be fluent in the Norwegian language.46 The background for these strategies was not exclusively that they formed part of a nationalising and integration process, they were also the result of SwedishNorwegian fears of a Greater Finland which contemporary politicians regarded as an autonomous extension of Russia.47 Furthermore, in the 1850s Norway and Sweden had signed the November Treaty which was aimed at limiting Russia’s access to territories in the north following the Crimean War.48 Simultaneous to these developments Svend Foyn established his industrial project in north-eastern Norway, and it was this that transformed him into a heroic actor who industrialised, cultivated and enhanced the nationalisation process of the northern resource frontiers for the greater benefit of Norway. Over the last few decades of the nineteenth century the modern whaling industry developed into a successful and competitive industry which throughout the twentieth century had a positive economic feedback on those who participated in it, and a likewise negative effect on the ecosystem.

The Heterogeneous Engineer By following Svend Foyn in his quest to develop a functional system which would allow him to exploit marine resources, a complex network of actors, elements, inventions, technologies and ideas have been revealed; variables which represented small yet vital steps in the evolution and development of the modern whaling system. These inventions and ideas supplied the bulk which the system-builder and heterogeneous engineer Foyn moulded into the technical system we know today as the modern whaling industry. By using the approach offered by Science and Technology Studies (STS), an alternative perspective which illuminates the multifaceted and complex evolution of this controversial system has been presented.

Literature Ahnlund, M. and L. Brunnström, 1992. The company town- Architecture and society in the early industrial age.

44 45 46 47 48

Niemi 1979, 177. Bottolfsen, Ø., 1990. Finnmark Fylkeskommues Historie 1840-1990, 171f. Ibid., 172. Niemi 1979, 178. Ibid. 1979, 179f.

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Avango, D., 2005. Sveagruvan: svensk gruvhantering mellan industry, diplomati och geovetenskap. PhD Thesis. Barr, S., 2003. Norway- A consistent Polar nation? Bergström, S.O.. 1979. Kolonisationen på kronoparkerna i Norrbotten 1894-1950. Bockstoce, J.R., 1986. Whales, Ice & men; The history of whaling in the western Arctic. Bottolfsen, Ø., 1990. Finnmark Fylkeskommunes historie 1840-1990. Brunnström, L., 1981. Kiruna – ett samhällsbygge I sekelskiftets Sverige. Callon, M., 1989. Society in the making: The study of technology as a tool for sociological analysis. In: Bijker, W.E., T.P. Hughes, T.J. Pinch.T.J (Eds), 1989. The Social construction of Technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 83-103. Davis, L.E, R.E. Gallman, K Gleiter, 1997. In pursuit of leviathan: Technology, institutions, productivity, and profits in American whaling 1816-1906. Friedmann, R.M., 2004. Nansenismen. In: A.E. Drivenes and H.D. (Eds), Norsk Polarhistorie, Vol 2, 107-174. Goddard, J.A., 1997. A window of whaling in British Columbia. Hughes, T.P., 1988. Networks of power: Electrification in western society 1880-1930. Hughes, T.P., 1989. The evolution of Large Technological systems. In: Bijker, W.E, T.P. Hughes, T.J. Pinch Eds), 1989, The Social construction of Technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 51-82. Hughes, T.P., 1998. Rescuing Prometheus: four monumental projects that changed the modern world. Jacobsen, A.R., 2008. Svend Foyn- Fangstpioneer og nasjonsbygger. Johnsen, A.O J.O.H. and Tønnesen, 1959-1970. Den Moderne Hvalfangst Historie: Opprinnelse og utvikkling. Vol: 1-4. Law, J., 1989. Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The case of the Portuguese expansion. In: Bijker. W.E, T.P. Hughes, T.J. Pinch (Eds), 1989. The Social construction of Technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 111-134. Law, J., 1991. Introduction: Monsters, machines and sociotechnical relations. In: Law, J. (Ed), 1991. a sociology of monsters: essays on power, technology and domination, 1-23. Law, J. and B. Callon, 1992. The life and death of an aircraft: A network analysis of technological change. In: Bijker, W.E, and J. Law (Eds), 1992. shaping technology/ building society, 2152. Liljequist, G., 1993. High latitudes: a history of swedish Polar travels and research. Lunde, A., 1979. sør-Varangers historie. Mathisen, T., 1954. svalbard in international politics 1871-1925: the solution to a unique international problem. Matthews, L.H., 1968. the Whale. Nielsen, J.P., 2004. Ishavet er vår åker. In: Drivenes. A.E and H.D. Jølle (Eds), 2004. norsk Polarhistorie, Vol: 3, 47-109. Niemi, E., 1979. Streiftog gjennem Finmarks historie. In: Hirsti, R. (Ed), 1979. finnmark. Niemi, E., 1983. Vadsøs historie. Risting, S., 1922. av Hvalfangstens Historie. sociological review monograph 38, London: Routledge, pp 1-23 Spence, B., 1980. Harpooned; the history of whaling.

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Summerton, J., 1998. Stora tekniska system: En introduktion till forskningsfältet. In: Blomquist, P and A. Kaijser (Eds), 1998. Den Konstruerade Världen: Tekniska system i historiskt perspektiv, 19-44. Sörlin, S., 1993. Framtidslandet: Debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombrottet. Sörlin, S., 2002. Rituals and resources of natural history: The north and the Arctic in Swedish scientific nationalism. In: Bravo,M and S. Sörlin (Eds), 2002. Narrating the Arctic: A cultural history of Nordic scientific practices, 73-124. Webb, R.L., 1988. On the Northwest: Commercial whaling in the Pacific northwest 1790-1965. Wik, H., 1950. Norra Sveriges sågverksindustri från 1800-talets mitt till 1937. Wråkberg, U., 1999. Vetenskapens vikingatåg: Perspektiv på svensk polarforskning 1860-1930.

The History of Exploration and Exploitation of the Atlantic Arctic and its Geopolitical Consequences

Louwrens Hacquebord Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

Abstract Already in the end of the 16th century flags and arms were planted to mark the possession of a place. European explorers claimed their discoveries and their rights to exploit potential resources in the Arctic in this way. In 2007 the planting of the Russian flag on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean under the North Pole made very clear that this 400 years old strategy to claim land is still in use in the Arctic. In 2002 and 2005 the same strategy was used by Denmark and Canada on Hans Island in Nares Street. It looks like nothing has changed in all those centuries. This article will discuss the history of European exploration and exploitation in order to extent our understanding of the recent claiming activities in the Circumpolar region. This article will address resource development and its consequences for the geopolitical balance in a Resource Frontier Region that has already produced raw materials for the industrial centers of the world for centuries. It is a product of the IPY endorsed research project LASHIPA (Large Scale Historical Exploitation of Polar Areas). The article will begin with an analytic description of the history of exploitation of natural resources and its relation with the geopolitical balance in the Arctic. It will proceed with a discussion of the present resource development and its geopolitical consequences and it will finish by considering some possible future developments.

Introduction On July 28 2007 on television all over the world, the special envoy of the Russian President for International Cooperation in Polar Regions Artur Chilingarov could be seen holding a photograph of a Russian flag.1 This flag was placed on the sea floor at the North Pole to mark the Russian territorial claim on the slope of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean. By doing this, he continued a tradition of more than four hundred years and showed that not so much has changed in the use of symbols in the global political arena since the heyday of Western European exploration and exploitation of the Arctic. As early as the end of the 16th century flags and arms were planted to mark the possession of a place. In this way, the European explorers 1

The expedition was made possible by some very wealthy men such as Fredrik Poulsen, Mike McDowell and an unknown Arabian Sheik who paid to participate in this expedition.

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Figure 1. Cornelis de Man (1639), painting of a Dutch whaling station in the Arctic. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (photo Arctic Centre, RUG).

claimed their discoveries and potential resources in the Arctic, but they did more. They also mapped and named characteristic parts of the newly discovered land. Some well-known early maps of the area are the map of Cornelisz Claesz (1594), Jodocus Hondius (1594), Willem Barentsz (1598) Hessel Gerritsz (1613), Joris Carolus (1614), Thomas Edge (1625) and Gerard van Keulen (1707-1714). The map-makers sometimes even drew and painted their possessions in the area. Some practical drawings of the coast were published in the atlases of Willem Jansz Blaeu (1628), Joannes Blaeu (1662) and Johannes van Keulen (1728) and some drawings and paintings were made for illustration and decoration purposes. Two 17th century oil paintings are known depicting the same whaling station and the same geography but different flags (Figure 1 and 2).2 Together with many geographical maps and names, these drawings and paintings are indicators of a large-scale historical process of European expansion into the Arctic in which exploration; colonization, resource exploitation and nationalism all played a role. Although not new, the act of planting the Russian flag in 2007 awakened the world and drew attention to the Arctic and the resources expected to be found there. It also made clear that a new race for the natural resources in the North Pole region was to be expected. It places similar flag planting incidents by two other so called coastal states Denmark (2002) and Canada (2005) on Hans Island in the Nares Strait in a different perspective. The Russian action also explains the significance of a Danish

2

Abraham Speeck (1634), painting of a Danish whaling station, Skokloster, Stockholm and Cornelis de Man (1639), painting of a Dutch whaling station in the Arctic Ocean, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 2. Abraham Speeck (1634), painting of a Danish whaling station in the Arctic. Skokloster, Stockholm, Sweden (photo Arctic Centre, RUG).

geological North Pole expedition3, which was carried out two weeks after the Russian expedition. This article will discuss the history of four hundred years of European exploitation of natural resources in the Atlantic Arctic in order better to understand present events and predict the future. Much is known about the history of exploration of the Arctic but the history of exploitation is relatively unknown. This article will address the relation between world market prices for raw materials and resource development in the Arctic. It will discuss resource development and its consequences for the geopolitical balance in a frontier region that has already produced raw materials for the industrial centers of the world for centuries (Hacquebord and Avango 2009). This article is a product of the IPY endorsed research project LASHIPA (Large Scale Historical Exploitation of Polar Areas).4 The article will begin with an analytic description of the history of exploitation of natural resources and its relation with the geopolitical balance in the Arctic, proceed with a discussion of present resource development and its geopolitical consequences, and it will finish by considering some possible future developments.

The Arctic as resource frontier region Many people have heard of the heroic voyages of discovery in the North Pole region: the long lasting search for a Northeastern and Northwestern sailing route to Asia, the crossings of the Greenland icecap and the struggle for the discovery of the North Pole. Not so many people know that the North Pole region has a long history as a 3

4

The name of this Danish expedition was the Lomonosov Ridge off Greenland 2007 or LOMROG expedition. It was carried out with the Swedish icebreaker Oden, supported by the Russian nuclear icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy. IPY # 10 LASHIPA

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Figure 3. Remains of a seventeenth century blubber oven in Smeerenburg, Amsterdam Island, Spitsbergen (photo author).

Resource Frontier Region. In the seventeenth century, some years after the first European attempts to find a northern passage to Asia the exploitation of the natural resources in the region began. This exploitation lasted more than four hundred years. Products as whale oil, furs, and ivory were transported to the European harbors where they were used in the developing industry of the first half of the seventeenth century. After the industrial revolution coal was added to the extraction products of the Polar Regions, which was especially important for Scandinavia, and Arctic oil and gas have to provide answers to the world demand for energy nowadays. In the beginning of the seventeenth century high prices for grain resulted in the stagnation of production of vegetable oils and fats. The increasing demand for these products caused merchants to decide to switch to animal oils and fats. Only when the supply of whale oil from the original areas of production dried up did merchants in England and the Netherlands decide to explore the possibilities of bowhead whaling. Beside whale oil, baleen became valuable but the meat was not used. It was not even eaten by the whalers. Whaling was organized in chartered companies and whaling stations were built on the coast of Spitsbergen to melt the blubber of the whale into oil and to cut the baleen (Figure 3). In the beginning stations only had an industrial function but soon this function became strategic and political as well. Archaeological excavations have showed that some stations functioned as anchor points for territorial claims. Remains of fortresses and pole holes in front of the houses proved the strategic and political role of some whaling stations. Around 1650, changes in the ice situation in the bays of Spitsbergen moved whale hunting

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Figure 4. Seventeenth century Dutch canons on the weather station on Jan Mayen Island. These canons were used to protect the Dutch whaling settlement (1614-1642) in the Noordbaai on the west side of the island (photo author).

to the open sea and the production of whale oil to the home countries of the whalers. The companies were closed down, stations abandoned and no territory was needed to be claimed anymore; whaling became once again driven by market forces and accessible for everybody. A period of unlimited whaling finally exhausted the source. In the first half of the seventeenth century Spitsbergen was claimed for the whaling companies by the English and Danish Kings. Colors and arms were placed to confirm this territorial claim. Based on the ideas of Hugo de Groot5 the Dutch eventually chose not to claim the land but claimed free use of the Spitsbergen waters and the living resources in these waters. However, at the same time the Dutch Noordse Companie marked its possessions by hoisting flags and defended its installations by building fortresses. The 1979-1981 excavations of Smeerenburg showed the pole holes of a flag standard in front of one of the houses and the remains of a fortress (Hacquebord 1984). On Jan Mayen Island two canons were found on the beach, which originally had been placed on a fortress in the North Bay of the island (Hacquebord 2004; Figure 4).

5

Hugo de Groot, Mare Librum 1609 and Mathisen, T. 1954. Svalbard in international politics 1871-1925. The solution to a unique international problem. Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter no. 101, Oslo.

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During an archaeological survey on Edge-point, an English whaling station in the Joseph Bay (Recherche Fjord) on Spitsbergen, the foundations of a Dutch house were discovered in an English context6. This house was built and used by Dutch whalers to show their presence and to claim free whaling in the bay (Hacquebord et al, 2003). In the period of the settlements on Spitsbergen (1611-1660) whaling was very well controlled by the chartered companies with whaling stations on the west coast of Spitsbergen. One could call this whaling sustainable and the territorial division was clear after 1623. The Dutch were whaling in the north and the English in the south of Spitsbergen. This changed as soon as the whalers left the bays and boiled the blubber in their home countries. Whaling became free for everyone and only market driven. At Spitsbergen bowhead whaling continued until the bowhead population was exhausted by the beginning of the 19th century. In the 18th and 19th centuries besides European bowhead whaling walrus hunting took place on Spitsbergen by Pomor hunters from the Russian White Sea region. They built their stations on the coasts and marked them with a wooden Russian Orthodox cross. These crosses were erected to show their possessions to the whalers and to function as beacons for their ships. The archaeological excavations in 2007-2008 on Kokerineset in Green-harbor showed very clearly that the Pomor hunters did not exploit the natural resources of Spitsbergen very efficiently. Study of the excavated bone material has made very clear that walruses were killed only for their teeth (ivory). The meat, skin and blubber were not used at all, because they did not have any economic value. This shows that walrus hunting was also market driven. In Archangelsk foreign trade caused an increasing demand for objects made of ivory. Although cultural and ideological factors may have played a role, the Pomor hunting activities were largely stimulated by their proceeds. The final outcome of this exploitation was the same as that of whaling: it exhausted the walrus population in the waters in the Spitsbergen archipelago almost completely in the end. Coal-mining in the 19th and 20th centuries on Spitsbergen was a result of high prices on the world coal-market. The industrial revolution caused an increasing demand for coal and high coal prices. Around the turn of the century a mining industry developed on Spitsbergen. Although the presence of coal on Spitsbergen was already known to English and Dutch whalers the proper mining was started by Norwegian arctic sea skippers as a source of extra earnings. They were digging the coal at places where coal seams were outcropping and coal could be mined in an easy way. However, soon commercial mining companies from the USA and the UK became active in coal mining on Spitsbergen. Companies from other countries such as Sweden, Russia, Norway and the Netherlands soon followed (Avango 2005, Avango et al 2011). When the transport of coal became a major factor in the economy of the companies, mining moved to the coast. The competition between the different companies became harder and harder. They claimed their possessions by using claim poles, claim ditches and claim huts but since Spitsbergen was no-man’s land and no government was protecting the claims, the number of conflicts between 6

Edgepoint nowadays is called Laegerneset and is situated in the Recherché fjord which was called Joseph Bay by the English whalers and Schoonehaven by the Dutch in the seventeenth century.

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Figure 5. Former entrance of mine number 4 in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen in 1979 (photo Ben Bekooy).

the miners of the various companies increased enormously. The call for governance became louder and louder in this area. The governments of Sweden, Norway and Russia were most involved in the Spitsbergen sovereignty discussion. When coal prices went down and companies got into difficulties these governments decided to support the companies financially (Figure 5). In this way the mining companies and mining settlements became political tools in the hands of national governments and the mining activities became increasingly politically driven. The same happened with the Norwegian whaling companies. These companies moved from Northern Norway to Bear Island and Spitsbergen in 1904 to avoid the governance of the Norwegian government. This government namely had banned whaling along the Norwegian coast. In 1905 therefore, seven whaling companies operated in the waters of Spitsbergen and one at Bear Island. Two of the companies established shore stations, one at Finneset on Spitsbergen and the other on Bear Island (Gustafsson 2010). The primary reason for the whaling companies to move their whaling activities to Spitsbergen and Bear Island was economic. It was the only way to continue their activities nearby. Therefore it can not come as a surprise that the whaling companies were not very enthusiastic about supporting the attempts of the Norwegian government to acquire sovereignty over Spitsbergen. Norwegian sovereignty could mean an extension of the 1904 ban to Spitsbergen and Bear Island (Gustafsson 2008). Most of the whaling companies terminated their activities in Spitsbergen and Bear Island when the results of the companies turned out to be uneconomical. Only two whaling companies remained on Spitsbergen in 1909 and despite unsatisfactory economic results these two companies invested in their stations and increased their territorial claims. It seems that to support Norwegian sovereignty these two remaining whaling companies maintained their claims until the Spitsbergen Treaty was signed in 1920.7 In 1911 the Norwegian government 7

Bogen, H. 1937. Firma Thor Dahl, Sandefjord. Oslo: Norsk Polar Institutt library, 154-155.

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established a radio station near one of the whaling stations in order to support its claim on Spitsbergen.8

Present resource development Nowadays, the arctic region is becoming more and more important as an energy producing area. In the first years of the 21st century high prices for crude oil on the world market stimulate multinationals to explore the possibilities to produce oil and gas in Arctic regions.9 The expectations concerning resource development in the Arctic are very high: 13% of the potential world oil reserves and 30% of the potential world gas reserves are expected to be found there, according to the US Geological Survey (Figure 6).10 At the moment oil and gas exploitation is concentrated in areas inside the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of Russia, Norway, USA and Canada with enormous potential development: the Barents Sea/Kara Sea region and the Beaufort Sea region. In the Barents Sea region, oil and gas exploitation is very promising. The biggest offshore gas field in the world is to be found in the Barents Sea. It is called the Shtockman field. This field is estimated to contain 3.8 trillion cubic meters of gas and 37 million tonnes of gas condensate.11 Although the Russian gas company Gazprom has signed an agreement for the first phase with Total, Statoil, and Norsk Hydro to develop the field, the work is proceeding very slowly, partly because of the slackened Russian governmental policy and partly because of the Russian lack of technological capacity.12 In 2011 a final investment decision (FID) is expected leading towards real development but the production of natural gas is not expected before 2016. However, the preparations for the exploitation of the resources in the Barents Sea have started and will continue in the near future. Gazprom has much experience on land but needs the assistance of western oil and gas companies and contractors for offshore drilling and development. The company needs assistance to build an offshore infrastructure to transport the oil and gas to the existing pipelines to the European market in the south. The infrastructure needed consists of pipeline connections with the already existing pipeline system and an LNG loading platform near Murmansk. At the moment in cooperation with the Russian company MRTS,13 Dutch firms such as Royal Boskalis Westminster NV are already dredging in 8 9 10

11 12 13

Hoel, A. 1966. svalbard. svalbards historie 1596-1965. Part 1, Oslo: Sverre Kilodahls Boktrykkeri, 71. In 2008 before the financial crisis the price for one barrel of crude oil rose to 147 dollars. As a consequence of the financial crisis prices fell about 100 dollars a barrel. US Geological Survey factsheet 2008-3049, July 2008. US Department of the interior, US Geological Survey, Washington. Gautier, D.L. et al. 2009. “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic», science 29 May 2009. Vol. 324. no. 5931, 1175-1179. According to AMAP Oil and Gas assessment 2008, www.amap.no/oga (17-01-2011) and Reuters 06-01-2008. Nicoll, A. (Ed), 2008. strategic survey 2008, 58-71 MezhRegionTruboprovodStroy (MRTS).

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Figure 6. Map of the resources in the Arctic (Nord Regio).

preparation for the construction of pipelines (Baydaratskaya Bay) and an oil terminal in the Pechora region in Northern Russia called Varanday Oil Terminal, that was launched in 2008.14 The expectation is that Murmansk will develop into the offshore harbor for the prospecting and exploitation of the resources in the Russian part of the Barents Sea. At present government-to-government discussions are taking place between some European countries and Russia to create a local knowledge infrastructure necessary for offshore industry. The Russian authorities are 14 www.boskalis.nl 08-03-2009

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Figure 7. In the harbor of Murmansk (Russia) the GBS drilling/production platform for the Prirazlomnoye oilfield in the Pechora Sea (photo author).

concentrating on scientific cooperation, transfer of technical knowledge, business support and education. Russia needs safety and health regulations and trained technical staff and that takes time. These aspects have to be solved before the exploitation of the Shtockman gas field can begin. The first oil from the Barents Sea will come from the Prirazlomnoye oil field in 2011 (Figure 7).15 On land, the current Russian oil and gas exploitation is concentrated in the Nenets Autonomous District of the Archangelsk region, in the Komi Republic along the Pechora River and in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District in Western Siberia. The estimated yearly production in these three regions is 93 million tonnes of crude oil and 742 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.16 Most of this oil and gas is transported to the European market by pipelines. Since 2008 when the oil terminal Varanday was finished, tankers have transported (in 2009) 2 million barrels of oil to Rotterdam and this transport will increase to 40 million barrels in 2020.17 However, because of the recent drop in oil prices, the Russian economy is suffering under the world financial crisis at the moment and so is their investment activity in energy production. With an expected decrease in oil production of the existing Siberian oilfields in the near future and an economy dependent on oil and gas, Russia has to go offshore. It is

15 Bambulyak A. and Frantzen, B. 2009, Oil transport from the Russian part of the Barents Region. Status per January 2009. The Norwegian Barents Region Secretariat and Akvaplan-niva, Norway. 16 Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) 1998, 666. 17 Info Port of Rotterdam 2009.

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trying to do so with the expertise and the money of foreign partners18. “It is difficult to survive in the Arctic when you are alone: it is a well-known time-tested fact. Arctic nature itself makes individuals, groups of people and entire countries dependent on each other.” as Prime Minister Putin said at the International Arctic Forum in Moscow in September 201019. Last month the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft signed a contract with British Petroleum to explore a great part of the Kara Sea. This is a notable event, being at a moment when because of the BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico the United States and Canada are very reserved in allowing resource development to proceed in the Arctic and with exactly the same company that caused that accident. It is expected that now Russia has decided to go offshore to search for oil the Russian interest in the Arctic Ocean will increase. Recently considerable oil and gas reserves have been identified in the Canadian Arctic. They are located both on land and on the continental shelves. In the 1960s, substantial reserves of gas and some small oil fields were discovered in the Sverdrup Basin and in the following decades new discoveries were made in the Mackenzie/ Beaufort Basin. Especially the gas deposits discovered in the Mackenzie were huge. An economic exploitation of these gas deposits needs however stable oil prices over a relatively long period. In the Mackenzie delta and the Arctic Islands in total 1,665 million barrels of crude oil and 1,157 billion cubic meters of natural gas were discovered. This quantity of oil is found in 45 fields and the gas is spread over 84 fields.20 Because of the costs for both oil and gas, the extraction is currently small scale. The exploitation of many of these fields was considered to be uneconomical in the 1990s market conditions but the increases in oil and gas prices in the first years in the 21st century have made it attractive. The 2008 financial crisis however has decreased the attraction again. It will take some time before attention is once more focused on these oil and gas deposits. The Prudhoe Bay Oil Fields were discovered at the end of the sixties. These oil fields were assessed as containing 20 billion barrels of oil. In 1977 when the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was finished the Prudhoe Bay oil fields were connected with Port Valdez in South Alaska. In 1989 when the production of these fields declined, plans were made to exploit the small fields in the neighborhood including the oil fields in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).21 The decision to start exploration drillings in the ANWR raised much discussion in and outside the USA. However, the exploration continued and three offshore drillings were successful, one of them located 12 miles offshore of the ANWR. Consequently, the state authorities of Alaska have recently given permission to explore within the 3 mile zone along the coast of the ANWR.22 The energy production in this part of the Arctic is unlikely to cause a significant increase in transport in the Arctic waters because much oil and gas is transported 18 Kramer, Andrew E. and Clifford Krauss, “Russia Embraces Offshore Arctic Drilling”, International Herald Tribune, Febr. 15, 2011. 19 Speech of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin on the International Arctic Forum, 22-23 September 2011 in Moscow, Russia. 20 AMAP 1998, 664 21 AMAP 1998, 664-665 22 www.arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ANWR/

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by the TAPS. Owing to all the resistance by local people the Mackenzie Pipeline has not yet been constructed.23 This lack of a pipeline might cause an increase in LNG transport from the Canadian Arctic gas fields in the long term. However, the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year has created much discussion about the consequences of a catastrophic ocean spill in the Arctic. Sea ice and icebergs are seen as potential threats to drilling platforms and if oil is spilled it will take a long time before the sea has been cleaned up. If such an accident takes place in the winter the cleanup will have to take place in total darkness or be postponed until the following summer, with all the consequences for the vulnerable Arctic flora and fauna. That is why the United States and Canada have already decided to reduce their drilling activities in the Arctic for the time being. This is such a serious question that Royal Dutch Shell postponed plans to drill off Alaska‘s Arctic coast earlier this month. Together with Russia, Norway is preparing to open new Arctic areas for drilling and Greenland has allowed a private Scottish company to search for oil within their territory.

Other natural resources Besides oil and gas, there are more minerals to be exploited in the Arctic. The rising economies in the world, China and India, have caused an increasing demand for metals with high world market prices for metal as a consequence. Iron, lead/zinc and diamond mines are under development in several Arctic regions. Transportation by ship is often the only way to transport the products from the mines to the market. At this moment transport of minerals in the Arctic is limited but this might increase soon. Year-round transport of nickel, palladium, copper and platinum has taken place from Norilsk/Dudinka to Murmansk from 1978-1979 onwards.24 Plans have been made to redevelop a high-grade iron-ore mine in Mary River in Nunavut, Canada and a zinc/ lead mine, the Black Angel Mine, in Greenland. The expectations for both mines are high, the feasibility studies promising and the environmental impact assessments acceptable.25 The ore will be shipped on a year-round basis in ice-strength cargo carriers which have been proven cost effective and reliable for well over 20 years at Arctic mines such as Polaris in Resolute and Nanisivik in Arctic Bay. The ore from both new mines will be shipped to Europe, which makes it very competitive because of the shorter distance between the mines and the market. The distance between Rotterdam and Steensby (Mary River) is 3100 nautical miles and the distance between Rotterdam and the alternative production region Brazil is 5000 nautical miles. The same is true for the Greenland Black Angel mine and Rotterdam. This mine is owned by a British firm and the products are meant for the European market.26 In Scandinavia, a reopening of the Sør-Varanger iron-ore mine in Kirkenes is expected. The production of 23 24 25

Bone, R.M., 2003. the geography of the Canadian north. Issues and challenges, Oxford: OUP, 148-149. Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report. Arctic Council, April 2009, 82-83. www.Baffinland.com (24-04-2009) and www.zemek.com/black-ang/pages (20-05-2009)

26

www.zemek.com/black-ang/pages (20-05-2009).

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this mine will increase the number of bulk carriers in the Norwegian Sea. The great media attention for the natural beauty of the Pole placed the Arctic on the agenda of the tour operators and in the tourist brochure. However, it did not in fact introduce the region to tourists for the first time because the region and its attractions were already known a century ago but it did cause an increase in interest by the general public and increased prosperity did the rest. Climate change has taken the tourists to places not visited by ships before. Every summer large cruise ships sail to Spitsbergen, Greenland, Canada and Alaska. The Bering Sea, Beaufort Sea, Davis Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea are the targets of the modern tourist and an increased number of ships have been counted in the last five years. Between 2003 and 2008 the number of cruise ships making port calls in Greenland increased from 164 to 375 bringing 22,000 passengers ashore.27 The same development is to be seen in Spitsbergen. There the number of tourist landings increased from 40,000 to 80,000 between 1996 and 2006.28 The financial crisis will however have a negative effect on this development and will lead to a decrease in the number of ships and the number of tourists soon.

Present geopolitical situation Increasing interest in the Arctic has led to more cooperation between the eight Arctic countries. This cooperation started already with the speech by Mikhail Gorbachov in Moermansk in Northern Russia in 1987. His speech opened the Russian Arctic to foreign researchers and offered the possibility to cooperate in protecting the vulnerable natural environment against unlimited resource development. In 1991 in Rovaniemi in Finland the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) was established to develop an environmental policy to protect the vulnerable natural environment in the Arctic. Within the AEPS four working groups were set up: Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), Conservation Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), Protection Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) and Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR). In 1996 the Arctic Council was established by the eight Arctic countries and the AEPS working groups were placed under this newly established council. Although the Arctic Council tried to come to grips with the environmental problems in the Arctic it did and does not have a clear political mandate. It may be a good platform for communication with the indigenous peoples but it does not have any political power and the USA especially wants to keep it this way.29 After the flag planting incident action was taken by the five Arctic coastal states (Russia, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the USA). In May 2008, on the initiative of Denmark the five coastal states organized a meeting in Ilulisat in Greenland to discuss their sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the Arctic Ocean. In the Ilulisat 27 Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report. Arctic Council, April 2009, 79. 28 Roura, R., 2007, Cultural heritage tourism in Antarctica and Svalbard (Spitsbergen): Patterns, impacts and policies. In: Proceedings International Conference on Tourism and Global Change in Polar Regions, 2007, Oulu Finland, 54-66. 29 White House paper published on 9 January 2009

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declaration of May 2008 the five claimed the main stewardship role in protecting the Arctic Ocean based on the existing legal framework offered by UNCLOS which they consider to be a solid foundation for responsible management by the five states.30 Within the Arctic Council this attitude however, has caused a division between five claimant and three non-claimant states, which does not strengthen the political position of the council. The political position of the Arctic Council will soon be influenced by the increase in indigenous self- government (home-rule). The Canadian territory of Nunavut with internal Inuit self-government newly established in 1999, and the 2008 decision of Greenland to become more independent of Denmark may cause a new situation to arise in the near future as far as the political balance in the Arctic is concerned.31 Although the Arctic states work together in many projects it looks as if every state is following a very individual strategy. Most of the states have formulated their own strategy on Arctic policy. For example, the USA formulated its Arctic policy in the White House paper in January 2009 as one of the last directives of the Bush administration. Russia “highlighted its commitment to its obligations under the international treaties and agreements related to the Arctic” in the document “Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic up to 2020 and Beyond” which was adopted in September 2008 and published in March 2009.32 Most recently Norway and Iceland have also formulated an Arctic strategy and Canada, Sweden and Finland already did so some time ago. The non-Arctic states are trying to strengthen their position firstly by increasing their scientific presence in the Arctic and secondly by formulating their own strategy on Arctic policy. An increasing number of countries, Arctic and non-Arctic, have recently established a research station in Ny Ålesund on Spitsbergen (Svalbard). There Norway, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, China, Italy, the UK and India are conducting research in many disciplines and waving their flags. Many of the research activities in the settlement are financed by the European Union. In the framework of the International Polar Year, more expeditions to the Arctic were organized than ever before. Ice core drillings in the Greenland ice sheet, seaice research in the Arctic Ocean, ecological research on the continents around the Ocean, geological research in the rocks in and around the Arctic Ocean and human and social research on the surrounding continents are being carried out with an increasing intensity. Drillings were even conducted in the middle of the Arctic Ocean to collect information about the geological consistence of the Ocean bed. Besides the individual states, the European Union has also shown its interest. The Union presented and discussed its Arctic ambitions at the Arctic Conference of the Nordic Council of Ministers in Ilulisat in Greenland in September 9-10, 2008.33 30 Ilulissat declaration, Arctic Ocean Conference in Ilulissat, Greenland, on May 28 2008. 31 The establishment of Nunavut was based on the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA), Van Dam 2008 and the independence of Greenland was voted for in the referendum of October 2008. 32 White House paper published on 9 January 2009; Russian Arctic Policy Paper September 17 2008 published on March 26 2009 33 Airoldi, Adele, 2008. The European Union and the Arctic. Policies and actions. ANP: 729, Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen. Nordic Council of Ministers, Report of the

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According to the conclusions of that meeting the Union should “get deeply involved in matters relating to the Arctic” but it is very debatable if all Arctic countries will share this conclusion.34 On October 9, 2008 a Resolution on Arctic Governance was adopted by the European Parliament.35 On November 9-10, 2008 the European Union organized a conference in Monaco to discuss Arctic strategy and in Brussels on November 20 the European Commission Communication proceeded with its strategy that in December 2008 finally led to a formulation of some conclusions concerning its Arctic policy.36 The final declaration of the Monaco conference stated very clearly that to play a role in the Arctic political arena the EU has to develop an Arctic Policy that takes away all doubt about the interest of the EU in the Arctic. Such a policy should be based on the recognition of indigenous rights to hunt seals, on scientific research and on the protection of the vulnerable Arctic environment.37 The European Union has asked to become an observer at the Arctic Council but without success so far. At the beginning of April 2009, the European Parliament approved a resolution in which the Parliament asks the European Council and the European Commission to start negotiations to realize an Arctic Treaty. However, on April 29, in the same year at the Ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Tromsø, Norway no readiness to talk about an Arctic Treaty could be perceived among the eight Arctic Countries.38 In September 2010 the Russian Geographical Society took an important initiative by organizing an International Arctic Forum in Moscow. With heavy support from the Russian government the Geographical Society invited politicians and scientists from the eight arctic countries and three non-arctic countries (France, Italy and the Netherlands) to a meeting of the International Arctic Forum called “The Arctic, Territory of Dialogue” in Moscow. At the conference Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin gave a speech in which he called the Arctic “a zone of peace and cooperation” with a “unique nature and fragile ecosystem” and vulnerable “indigenous and small Arctic nations’ socioeconomic infrastructure and traditions”. The central overall message of this gathering was one of cooperation and collaboration.39 It seems that Russia that owns about half of the coastal area in the Arctic, has taken the lead in the debate about the territorial division of the Arctic Ocean and future resource development in the Arctic. The recent political behavior of Russia and that of the other coastal

34 35 36 37 38 39

Conference arranged by the Nordic Council of Ministers, 9-10 September 2008, Ilulissat, Greenland. Corell, Hans, September 10, Conclusions by the Chairman of the Conference, Ilulisat, Greenland European Union Brussels, 9 October 2008, European Parliament Resolution on Arctic Governance Final declaration of the Monaco Conference 9-10 November 2008. The Arctic: Observing the environmental changes and facing their challenges. Hacquebord, L., Resource Exploitation and Navigation in a Changing Arctic, Lecture in Berlin, New chances and new responsibilities in the Arctic Regions. 11-13 March 2009. Arctic Council, Ministerial Meeting in Tromsø, Norway on April 29, 2009. International Arctic Forum; The Arctic, Territory of Dialogue in Moscow, Russia on 22-23 September 2010. Text of the speech of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on September 23 2010.

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states points in a direction of excluding other (non-Arctic) countries from the future management of the Arctic Ocean.40 This is surprising because so far the history of exploration and exploitation of resources in the Arctic has been very international. The discovery and use of the Arctic was an endeavor of explorers and entrepreneurs from arctic and nonarctic countries. Scientific research in the Arctic has always been an example of international cooperation. All conflicts over polar territories have been solved by peaceful means so far. They were settled by negotiation with all international participants, through treaties and court rulings. Because the Arctic is connected by pathways with the temperate zone, protection of its fragile natural environment is only possible through international negotiation. This international approach points in the direction of a global responsibility for the future of the Arctic, a responsibility that it is only possible to enforce with an agreement to regulate resource development and transport in the North Pole area in the future. Therefore all interested parties should be given a voice in this agreement just like in the past.

Conclusions For more than four hundred years European merchants have already been active in the Atlantic Arctic. After every voyage of discovery in the Arctic, merchants discussed the sailing and trading possibilities with the explorers. They sometimes even went to a public notary to record the experiences and discoveries of the explorer and his crew. When a dearth of raw materials caused rising world market prices for a certain product European ships headed north to try to obtain these products. The activities were undertaken to supply the markets for whale oil, furs, ivory, coal, oil and gas. In most cases, only the most economically important products were exploited and when the exploitation was not profitable anymore because the source was exhausted or prices had dropped, activities were stopped. In this sense the Arctic behaved as a real resource frontier region (RFR) in the core/periphery model (Sugden 1982). But it would be wrong to conclude that market prices alone were important. The different governments were following the companies and tried to support them as much as possible. In the 17th century the governments made available men-of-war and canons for the fortresses and gave the whaling companies letters of support and charters to protect them. The British and Danish Kings even claimed the sovereignty of Spitsbergen. In the 20th century governments used diplomacy to help mining companies from their nations. These were political activities taken on behalf of economic interest. Sometimes government support of private companies went further and the exploitation of natural resources was continued for purely political reasons. In such cases a national government is willing to invest a great deal of money in a non- profitable company. This was the case with some 20th century mining projects on Spitsbergen. Here the Swedish, Norwegian and Russian governments invested in private mining companies for political reasons. The Norwegian whaling companies also played a role in the policy of the Norwegian government to obtain sovereignty 40 Ilulissat declaration, Actic Ocean Conference in Ilulissat, Greenland, on May 28 2008.

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over Spitsbergen. In the 17th century whalers used poles, flags, huts and fortresses to mark and defend their claims and one can interpret the Russian crosses also as symbols of their presence in the 18th century. The 20th century mining and whaling companies raised sign boards and huts to designate their possessions. The establishment of a radio station at the whaling station of Finneset can also be seen as a symbol of the Norwegian policy aimed at acquiring the sovereignty of Spitsbergen. Nowadays governments are taking the initiative. The increasing demand for raw materials and high prices have made governments interested in the Arctic Ocean without their knowing if there are resources actually available for exploitation, but expectations are great. Based on UNCLOS the coastal states are trying to extend their EEZ before they really know if there are resources available. National expeditions place flags on the bottom of the ocean and on small islands to show their intensions. The whole discussion is conducted at governmental level and industry comes into the picture when the territories have already been divided and the concessions can be issued. Oil and gas companies are mostly multinational and they start their prospecting after they have received a concession. In some countries the oil companies are national ones, like Gazprom, Rosneft, Primigen and Statoil and that may lead to conflicts of interest. However, it can also make the exploitation of the natural resources in the North Pole Region easier. However, the Russian companies lack expertise and money for offshore exploitation of Arctic resources, which is why they have to contract foreign partners like Statoil, Total and BP. The most recent contract between the Russian state-owned Rosneft and BP to explore a great part of the Kara Sea shows that Russia wants to continue offshore drilling where, because of the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year, the United States and Canada are showing reluctance in giving permission for offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic. The fundamental difference between the early exploitation of natural resources and the present situation is that in the past, companies had more possibilities to exercise power in remote places such as the Arctic, where state power was limited. Therefore they were more ready to take the risk of investing in exploration and exploitation. Today companies start prospecting and exploitation after the political issues have been settled because they do not want to risk their investments. However, sometimes companies lose parts of their investment despite having shown caution, as was the case with Royal Dutch Shell in Sachalin. This has made the multinationals even more careful in their investments.

Literature Airoldi, Adele, 2008. The European Union and the Arctic. Policies and actions. ANP: 729, Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, 2004. CUP Cambridge. Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, 2009 Report. Arctic Council. AMAP Assessment Report, 1998. Arctic Pollution Issues. AMAP Oslo, Norway 1998. AMAP, Arctic Oil and Gas Assessment, 2007. AMAP Oslo, Norway. Avango, D., 2005. Sveagruvan. Svensk gruvhantering mellan industri, diplomati och geovetenskap. (Jernkontorets Bersghistoriska Skriftserie, 44), Stockholm

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Avango, D., L. Hacquebord, Y. Aalders, H. de Haas, U. Gustafsson U. and F. Kruse 2011. Between markets and geo-politics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day. Polar Record 47 (240), 29-39. Bambulyak A. & B. Frantzen, 2009. Oil transport from the Russian part of the Barents Region. Status per January 2009. The Norwegian Barents Region Secretariat and Akvaplan-niva, Norway. Bogen, H., 1937. Firma Thor Dahl, Sandefjord, Oslo, Norway: Norsk Polar Institutt Library. Bone, R.M. 2003. The Geography of the Canadian North. Issues and challenges, Oxford: Oxford University Press. European Union, 2008. Final declaration EU Monaco Conference November 9-10, 2008. Gautier, Donald L., Kenneth J. Bird, Ronald R. Charpentier, Arthur Grantz, David W. Houseknecht, Timothy R. Klett, Thomas E. Moore, Janet K. Pitman, Christopher J. Schenk, John H. Schuenemeyer, Kai Sørensen, Marilyn E. Tennyson, Zenon C. Valin and Craig J. Wandrey, 2009. “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic”, Science, 29 May 2009, Vol. 324, no. 5931, 1175-1179. Gustafsson, U.I., 2008. Modern Whaling Industry in Spitsbergen as a tool for terrestrial; claiming and national sovereignty strives. Industrial Patrimony –Resources, Practices and Cultures 19, 17-25. Gustafsson, U.I., 2010. Industrialising the Arctic: settlement design and technical adaptations of modern whaling stations in Spitsbergen and Bear Island. In: Ringstad, Jan Erik (Ed). Whaling and History III, Kommandor Chr. Christensens Hvalfangstmuseum Sandefjord. Publication nr. 33, 47-58. Hacquebord, L., 1984. Smeerenburg. Het verblijf van Nederlandse Walvisvaarders op de westkust van Spitsbergen in de 17de eeuw. PhD thesis, Amsterdam. Hacquebord, L., F. Steenhuisen and H. Waterbolk, 2003. “English and Dutch Whaling Trade and Whaling Stations in Spitsbergen (Svalbard) before 1660”, International Journal of Maritime History, XV, No. 2, 117-134. Hacquebord, L., 2004. The Jan Mayen Whaling Industry. Its Exploitation of the Greenland Right Whale and its Impact on the Marine Ecosystem. In: Skreslet, S. (Ed). Jan Mayen Island in Scientific Focus, 229-238. Hacquebord, L and D. Avango, 2009. “Settlements in an Arctic Resource Frontier Region”, Arctic Anthropology. Vol. 46, Nos 1-2, 25-39. Hoel, A., 1966. Svalbard. Svalbards historie 1596-1965. Part 1-III. Sverre Kildahls Boktrikkeri, Oslo. Kramer, A. E. and C. Krauss, 2011, “Russia Embraces Offshore Arctic Drilling”. International Herald Tribune, Febr. 15, 2011. Mathisen, T., 1954. Svalbard in international politics 1871-1925, the solution to a unique international problem. Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter no. 101, Oslo. National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder (http://nsidc.org) Nicoll, Alex (Ed), 2008. “Strategic Survey 2008, Towards a Wider High North? Strategic Issues in a Changing Arctic”, IISS, 58-71. Richter-Menge, Jacqueline A., James E. Overland, Andrey Proshutinsky and Vladimir E. Romanovsky, 2006. State of the Arctic Report. (NOOAA OAR Special Report. NOAA/OAR/ RMEL, Seatle). Roura, R., 2007. “Cultural heritage tourism in Antarctica and Svalbard (Spitsbergen): Patterns, impacts and policies”, Proceedings International Conference on Tourism and Global Change in Polar Regions, 2007, Oulu Finland, 54-66.

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Russian Arctic Policy Paper of September 17, 2008 Moscow, published March 26 2009. Sugden, D., 1982. Arctic and Antarctic. A modern geographical synthesis, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 23-24. White House Paper, 2009. Arctic Region Policy; Washington January 9 2009.

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Cold Conflict: The Pentagon’s Fascination with the Arctic (and Climate Change) in the Early Cold War

Ronald E. Doel Department of History, the Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA*

Abstract U.S. military interest in the earth sciences - the physical branches of the environmental sciences – expanded rapidly in the decade following World War II. As the prospect for war with the Soviet Union escalated in the early Cold War era, Pentagon officials came to regard the Arctic (centered between North America and Eurasia) as a potential battlefield and region of great strategic importance. Civilian scientists joined their military counterparts in the military’s Research and Development Board to assess the Arctic environment as a national security concern. In the process, they amassed evidence of polar warming while deepening scientific understanding of the physical environment in the far north. When did U.S. military planners first become interested in climate change? By the beginning of the 21st century, their concern had become increasingly visible. Senior Pentagon planners in late 2003 issued an unclassified but controversial report on sudden climate change. Their report urged defense policymakers to anticipate potential economic and political disruptions around the globe if certain climate model predictions came true, including persistent drought in the American heartlands and Africa, as well as violent storms capable of breaching Holland’s sea levees.1 Although this report did not alter U.S. President George W. Bush’s opposition to legislation to address climate change, the military’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, prepared under the Barack Obama administration, reiterated that climate change could accelerate international conflict.2 *

1

2

This research was supported by NSF SES 9112304, SES 9511867, ACR 922651, and the BOREAS initiative of the European Science Foundation, 2006-2010. The author served as Project Leader of “Colony, Empire, Environment: A Comparative International History of Twentieth Century Arctic Science,” the 9-member, 7-nation team whose work is represented in this volume. He thanks particularly his CEE colleagues and Kristine C. Harper for extended discussions and advice. ‘Pentagon’s Weather Nightmare,” Fortune Jan 26 2004 online at http://wysiwyg://130/http:// www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935.582584,00.html [accessed 19 May 2011]; see also Keay Davidson, “Pentagon-sponsored-climate report sparks hullabaloo in Europe – But new ice age unlikely, Bay Area authors of study say,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 25, 2004, online at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/25/MNG0O57R4R1. DTL [accessed 19 May 2011]. Nancy A. Youssef, 2011. “Pentagon Budget Multiplies as Security Threat List Grows,”

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Yet this was far from the first time that the Pentagon had expressed serious interest in global climate change. The first known discussions had taken place more than half a century earlier, in secret meetings at the start of the Cold War. Back then, evidence of a warming climate at high latitudes left military authorities worried about advantages that polar melting might provide for its emerging adversary, the Soviet Union. Would warming temperatures mean longer ice-free months for highlatitude Soviet ports, and increase the USSR’s agricultural output, strengthening its population? Would increased chances of hot conflict with the Soviet Union, a short distance away from North America across the North Pole, make this region a potential battleground? By the late 1940s the far north had become, as never before, a potential theatre of war. All this made climate change a national security concern for the U.S. long before the issue became a global issue in the 1980s and 1990s.3 Indeed, all aspects of the Arctic environment became a key American concern in the early Cold War years.

Military Interest in Climate Change: The Arctic as A Geographic Crossroads After World War II Pentagon officials learned about the potential significance of polar climate change from earth scientists – specifically meteorologists and climatologists – shortly after World War II ended. The most direct communication came through the Research and Development Board, established under the Joint Chiefs of Staff to encourage close cooperation between military officers and civilian scientists on issues affecting national security. In June 1947, the influential Swedish-American meteorologist Carl-Gustav Rossby, who had organized the rapid training of thousands of new meteorologists during the Second World War, forcefully argued that arctic climate variation threatened U.S. strategic interests. Strong evidence indicated recent warming at high latitudes – including Scandinavian fishing fleets operating near Spitzbergen for the first time since the sixteenth century, and Soviet steel-hulled ships easily navigating the Arctic Ocean. “These things,” declared Rossby, “can only be the result of a long period change in the climate of the high places.”4 Rossby also highlighted recent findings by the University of Stockholm glaciologist Hans

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The Olympian, Olympia, Washington, Feb. 10, 2011, online at http://theolympian. com/2011/02/10/v-print/1542310/pentagon-budget-multiplies-as.html [accessed 18 May 2011]. On this issue, see Doel, Ronald E., 2009.”Quelle place pour les sciences de l’environment physique dans l’histoire environmentale?” Revue d’histoire modern et contemporaine 56(4), 137-164; Doel, Ronald E., 2003.”Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA After 1945”, Social Studies of Science 33(50), 635-666; Weart, Spencer R., 2008. The Discovery of Global Warming, revised and expanded edition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press and Edwards, Paul N., 2010. A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. “Second Meeting of Committee on Geophysical Sciences,” p. 41, Box 20, RG 330, Entry 342, Transcripts of RDB meetings, 1946-1951, National Archives, Washington, DC.

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Figure 1. U.S. Navy Index Map, 1946. Even before the Cold War intensified, Pentagon officials began producing new, detailed maps emphasizing the Arctic. In this projection, the Danish possession of Greenland—which the U.S. government attempted to purchase from Denmark to buttress North American continental defense—is centered between the United States and Canada [left] and northern Europe and the Soviet Union [right]. Source: http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~202934~3001259:-Index-Lining--to--Ice-Atlas-of-th?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_ No&qvq=q:1103.000;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_ No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=1&trs=104 [US government document: no copyright.]

W:son Ahlmann, then the foremost international authority on high-latitude glaciers, that many glaciers were in rapid retreat, another sign of rapid climate change. Rossby found the implications of this long-range change “enormous,” adding that “lands might become habitable which are not habitable now; other lands which are now habitable might become desert [if] as a matter of fact, there is a change of atmospheric circulation.”5 While knowledge of arctic warming was hardly secret – 5 Ibid.

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Ahlmann was then lecturing on the subject in the U.S., and the New York Times had published a story on arctic warming based on Ahlmann’s work – Rossby drove home the connection between climate variation and its military, political and economic implications.6 By 1947 US military officials were becoming increasingly aware of the Arctic’s importance for national security policy. Concern with the arctic as a potential theatre of war had first taken form in World War II, when Japanese successes in occupying the western islands of the Aleutian chain had raised anxieties about possible Japanese incursions into Alaska.7 But these concerns escalated rapidly after 1945 and particularly as the Cold War began. Geopolitics were at the heart of this issue: the Arctic lay midway under the great circle routes marking the shortest distances between the principal cities and industrial areas of the Soviet Union and the United States.8 As tensions escalated between Moscow and Washington, the newly formed Strategic Air Command (SAC) began patrolling the northern fringes of the Arctic Sea along the borders of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland in converted B-29 aircraft. Although an increasingly crucial part of U.S. national defense – SAC aircraft carried atomic weapons and remained alert for incoming Soviet bombers – the challenge of maintaining patrol aircraft in frigid sub polar climates proved an unprecedented challenge, as did the logistics of potential search and rescue missions.9 Military interest in the Polar Regions also took root because of related geopolitical concerns involving the southern pole, on the far side of the globe. The status of Antarctica remained unresolved immediately following World War II, which worried strategists at the Pentagon and State Department diplomats who anticipated that the southern continent would become ever more important for international relations. Seeking to enhance the Navy’s postwar mission, to maintain American political and diplomatic standing in Antarctica – US expeditions had been a dominant but not exclusive presence on the continent in the 1920s and 1930s – and to gain greater familiarity with the polar environment, the Pentagon authorized Project Highjump, which began in December 1946. Made possible by the large numbers of still-commissioned World War II vessels, aircraft, and enlisted personnel, Project Highjump became the largest expedition ever undertaken to Antarctica. Under the 6

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Hill, Gladwin, “Warming Arctic Climate Melting Glaciers Faster, Raising Ocean Level, Scientist Says,” The New York Times, May 30 1947, 23; on Ahlmann, see Sörlin, Sverker, 2009.” Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change: North Atlantic Glaciology and Meteorology, ca 1930-1955”, Journal of Historical Geography 35(2), 237-255 and Doel, “Quelle Place” [note 3]. Naske, Claus-M. and Herman E. Herman, 1987. Alaska, A History of the 49th State, second edition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Farish, Matthew, 2010. The Contours of America’s Cold War, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Leffler, Melvyn P. and David S. Painter, 1994. Origins of the Cold War: An International History, New York: Routledge; see also Fogelson, Nancy, 1989. “Greenland: Strategic Base on a Northern Defense Line,” Journal of Military History 53(1), 51-63, on p. 51. Committee on Geophysics and Geography, 8th Meeting, March 30, 1950, RG 330, Entry 342, Box 21, U.S. National Archives, College Park, Maryland [hereafter National Archives II].

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Figure 2. U.S. Pentagon, southeast of Washington, DC, aerial view, 1947. At the start of the Cold War, leading civilian researchers in the earth sciences met with military counterparts in the Research and Development Board. Their mission: to identify the major ‘unsolved problems’ in the physical environmental sciences that might affect national security interests. Source: http://popartmachine.com/item/pop_art/LOC+1076048/%5BAERIAL-VIEW-OF-THE-PENTAGON,ARLINGTON,-VA.-1947?]-U.S.-GEOG-FILE--... Detail: Photo by U.S. Air Corps. This record contains unverified, old data from caption card. Caption card tracings: Shelf. REPOSITORY:Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA DIGITAL ID:(digital file from b&w film copy neg.) cph 3a50437 CONTROL #:2006682713 [non-copyrighted image].

command of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the veteran Antarctic explorer, Highjump involved some 13 ships, 23 airplanes, and 4700 individuals. Research was a negligible component of Highjump. On the eve of the mission, Byrd remarked that understanding how to operate in the more politically sensitive Arctic region was the paramount concern, adding, “The shortest distance between the new and old worlds is across the Arctic Ocean and the north polar regions. It is freely predicted that here will be one of the great battle areas of future wars.” Nevertheless, Highjump illustrated the military’s inexperience with operating in polar climates and the need for improved understanding of climatological conditions.10 10 A historical overview of Operation Highjump is “Operation Highjump II: An Exercise in Planning”. Washington, D.C.: History and Research Division, U.S. Naval Support Force,

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Indeed, learning how to operate effectively in the Arctic (along with the added challenge of climatic variation) became one of the central concerns of the U.S. military in the immediate postwar years. Already by 1943 Pentagon leaders became aware that military suppliers were inept in providing quality cold-weather clothing for troops operating under arctic conditions, a problem compounded by American unfamiliarity with the Arctic environment.11 Yet the larger issue facing military authorities was the grim prospect that the Arctic might become a literal battleground between American and Soviet troops.12 Most Pentagon officials acknowledged as did researchers from across the spectrum of the environmental sciences – that the Soviets knew a great deal more about the Arctic than U.S. scientific experts did. Soviet authorities had dispatched numerous research expeditions to the Arctic since the early twentieth century, and had first occupied stable, massive chunks of ice known as ice islands in 1937 – using them as drifting meteorological and oceanographic research stations. By contrast, American scientists had largely ignored the region.13 By the late 1940s U.S. unfamiliarity with basic Arctic conditions, from the bearing strength of sea ice to its flow patterns and general circulation, became a serious issue for the Army and for the Pentagon in general. As one worried official noted, “[t]he pendulum of Army thought is swinging from the earlier idea that fighting in the Arctic was no different than fighting anywhere else, to the opposite extreme that fighting in the Arctic on the ground is next to impossible. If this swing to defeatism continues it may have serious consequences to the United States’ ability to fight Russia.”14 While gaining familiarity with basic Arctic conditions was a

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Antarctica, March 1970; see also Elzinga, Aant, 1993. Antarctica: The Construction of a Continent by and for Science. In: Crawford, Elisabeth et al., Denationalizing Science: The Contexts of International Scientific Practice, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 73-106 as well as Howkins, Adrian, 2006. “Icy Relations: The Emergence of South American Antarctica during the Second World War”, Polar Record 42(2), 153-165. For Byrd’s views, see “Byrd Stresses Use of Arctic in War,” New York Times, Nov. 18, 1947, p. 13 and [for quotation] http://www. south-pole.com/homepage.html [accessed 23 May 2011]. Sfraga, Michael P., 2004. Bradford Washburn: A Life of Exploration, Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 100-126. See among many instances Robert B Simpson, Committee on Geographical Exploration, to ‘Shelly’ [Dr M.C. Shelesnyak], May 10, 1948, classified Secret, RG 330, RDB records, Box 452, folder 2, National Archives II; see also Shelesnyak, M.C., 1947. “Some Problems of Human Ecology in Polar Regions,” Science 106 (31 Oct. 1947), 405-409. A helpful overview is Korsmo, Fae L. and Michael P. Sfraga, 2003. “From Interwar to Cold War: Selling Field Science in the United States, 1920s through 1950s”, Earth Sciences History 2003(22), 55-78. Ibid. McCannon, John, 1998. Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939, New York: Oxford University Press; further details on Soviet postwar research appears in Burkhanov, Vasily, 1956. New Soviet Discoveries in the Arctic, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Robert B. Simpson to M. C. Shelesnyak, May 10, 1948, Box 452, folder 2, National Archives II. Pessimism about U.S. ability to fight in the Arctic had already become public knowledge through reporting in the New York Times; see Baldwin, Hanson W., 1947. “Tests of Men and Material in Cold to Continue in Canada and other Areas,” New York

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primary concern for information-starved officials, concern about possible climatic variations, in particular polar warming, added to fundamental uncertainties. An RDB panel survey of ‘Arctic Environmental Factors’ of concern to the National Military Establishment found that climatic variation was ranked sixth on a list of dozens of major topics.15 Rossby’s warning about rapid climate change thus resonated well with Pentagon officials already contemplating conflict in the arctic region and concerned about understanding an unfamiliar and perhaps unstable environment. Within a year, still other military leaders voiced support for expanded research on polar warming.16 All of these issues served to make the Arctic region in particular – and the issue of polar climate change in particular – of considerable military interest as the Cold War intensified.

Earth Science and Military Patronage: Creating the ‘Arctic Environment’ as a Geographic and Scientific Space Well before the start of the Cold War, geographers and explorers certainly had considered the Arctic a distinct entity. Various U.S. institutions – including the American Museum of Natural History in New York – had long sponsored research expeditions to this region, and the Arctic Institute of North America had been founded in 1945, before the Soviet Union had emerged as America’s cold war nemesis.17 But military concern about the strategic importance of the Arctic region, including the possibility of rapid polar warming, served to define the Arctic in new ways after 1947. The Arctic’s heightened strategic importance made this region a focus of intense scientific interest, and heightened government financial support made such work possible. An important example of this escalating interest took shape within the U.S. military’s RDB itself. In late 1948, responding to increased military concerns about uncertainties in knowledge about the Arctic, leaders of the RDB’s Committee on Geographical Exploration created a new working subgroup, the Panel on Arctic Environments, which began meeting the following year.18 In contrast to the Times, April 20, 1947, 27. 15 See Environmental Protection Section, R&D Branch, OQMG, “Analysis of Check-list on Arctic Environmental Factors,” circa June 1947, RG 330, RDB, Box 161, folder 13, National Archives II. 16 Comments by Dr James Lemons, Army Quartermastergeneral Office, Committee on Geophysics and Geography, RDB, Dec. 3, 1948, p. 33, RG 300, Entry 342, Box 21, National Archives II. 17 Fresh perspectives on late nineteenth and early twentieth century expeditions appear in Sachs, Aaron, 2006. The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism, New York: Viking, 273-337; Robinson, Michael P., 2006. The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Bloom, Lisa, 1993. Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 18 Finn Ronne to Sidney Paige, Nov. 4, 1948, RG 330, RDB, E341, Box 169, Folder 2, Panel

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Figure 3. Early in the Cold War, the U.S. military began testing German-built V-2 missiles, aware that guided missiles would become a crucial defensive and offensive capacity against the Soviet Union. This 1947 test flight, launched from New Mexico, produced one of the earliest views of Earth from space (right).

Pentagon’s panels on oceanography, meteorology, hydrology, terrestrial magnetism and other geophysical fields (which covered these subjects globally), the Panel on Arctic Environments was the first to address a particular geographical region. As a result, it was one of relatively few RDB panels to address both the physical and biological environmental sciences, encouraging research in ecology and human adaptation to cold climates alongside better-supported military concerns involving the earth sciences (including sea ice, ionospheric properties, and physical oceanography), all of immediate concern to developing weapons such as guided missiles as well as submarine and anti-submarine warfare. While its members treated a wide range of geophysical subjects, what particularly intrigued them was atmospheric science and climatology, including climate change.19 To gain insights, panel members reviewed far northern research by scholars in the West as well as in the Soviet Union, including a 1948 Soviet volume Arctic Ice and the Warming on Arctic Environments Agenda; the first meeting of the Panel occurred the following January; see Minutes from the First meeting, Jan. 27, 1949, RG 330 RDB E341 Box 169, Folder 4, both National Archives II. 19 See for instance Directive, Panel on Arctic Environments, Dec. 13, 1948, RG 330, RDB E341, Box 169, Folder 1, “Panel on Arctic Environments Directive, GAE-GG,” and Committee on Geophysics and Geography, Panel on Arctic Environments, Technical Estimate FY 1951, June 1, 1951, RG 330, E341, Box 171, folder 1, both National Archives II.

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Figure 4. U.S. Cold War defense strategy relied not only on guided missiles but submarine and antisubmarine defenses. Knowledge of the Arctic environment was crucial. In 1959, just after the end of the International Geophysical Year, the U.S.S. nuclear submarine Skate surfaced beside ice island T-3, a crucial outpost for U.S. investigation and surveillance. Photo: Source: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/uss-skate-ice3.jpg and also http:// www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZjrrYYuebok/SyZl4TIXeJI/AAAAAAAAAUo/ rSYTYeS80S8/s640/USS_Skate_%28SSN-578%29_surfaced_in_Arctic_-_1959.jpg&imgrefurl=http:// oldironsides-thesilentmajority.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-often-does-mother-earth-get-hot_14.html&usg=__ c5iYoya7IHobkGzn8Wikyy27-Lg=&h=447&w=640&sz=74&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=quDqx8EP0bhRk M:&tbnh=136&tbnw=162&ei=FI7QTYenG4nDgQfVsuTRDA&prev=/search%3Fq%3D1958%2Bskate%2Bsurf acing%2Barctic%2BT-3%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1280%26bi h%3D578%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=358&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0&tx=110& ty=105

of the Arctic. “[I]n recent years,” it declared, Soviet scientists “have witnessed a general warming in the Arctic, which began approximately in 1920 and manifested itself in higher air and sea temperatures, and in a decreased amount of ice.”20 Members of these panels also sought new information about polar climate change from the Norwegian-British-Swedish Expedition (1949-52), founded in part because of Ahlmann’s insistence that new research was needed to verify findings of the 20 In the Center of the Arctic: An Outline of the History of Arctic Exploration and of the Physical Geography of the Central Arctic, chapters 6 and 7, “Arctic Ice and the Warming of the Arctic,” translated by E.R. Hope [Moscow/Leningrad: Northern Sea Route Directorate Press, 1948]; quote on p. 65.

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German Antarctic Expedition of 1938-39, whose aerial photographic surveys of glacier fields had suggested rapid polar warming was occurring.21 The RDB did not directly distribute funds to researchers or institutions; rather, it advised the Pentagon on research needed to address “critical unsolved problems.” But many RDB recommendations were acted on by military agencies in the early Cold War years, and the RDB encouraged new research programs on polar climate variation in several ways. One immediate manifestation of U.S. military interest in the far north was the creation of two new institutions devoted to studying the arctic environment: the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, established in Barrow, Alaska, and the Army’s Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment [SIPRE], initially located at the Army Corps of Engineering District in St. Paul, Minnesota.22 Additional research programs to assess the Arctic environment were launched by other military agencies. For instance, in the late 1940s, Charles Bates and Gordon Lill (both Navy geophysicists) began studying the stability of polar ice, with the intent of changing the Arctic Ocean “from a useless ocean to a useful one.”23 Equally significant was the flow of military funds that, in the late 1940s, launched new geophysical institutions at several U.S. universities with a mandate to explore research problems in the earth sciences that addressed issues crucial for American Cold War defenses, including ballistic missile design and anti-submarine warfare. Climatic change investigations were part of these larger efforts to understand the physical environment through which missiles and weapons (and armed personnel) were intended to travel – as such, they were a subset of a far larger transformation

21 Roberts, Peder, 2011. The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan; for primary accounts of this undertaking (the first international expedition to Antarctica) see Giæver, John, 1969. The White Desert; The Official account of the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, New York: Greenwood Press and Swithinbank, Charles, 1999. Foothold on Antarctica: the first international expedition (1949-1952) through the eyes of its youngest member, Lewes: Book Guild. On the 1938-39 German Schwabenland expedition, see Hoheisel-Huxmann, Reinhard, 1993. Die deutsche antarktische Expedition 1938/39, Bremerhaven: Alfred Wegener Institut. 22 Ibid. See Korsmo, Fae L., 2007. The Early Cold War and U.S. Arctic Research. In: Benson, Keith R. and Helen Rozwadowski, (Eds), Extremes: Oceanography’s Adventures at the Poles, Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 173-200. In-house histories of NARL include Reed, John C. and Andreas G. Ronhovde, 1971. Arctic Laboratory: A History (1947-1966) of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory at Point Barrow, Alaska, Washington, D.C.: Arctic Institute of North America; and Norton, David W. (Ed), 2001/ Fifty More Years Below Zero: Tributes and Meditations for the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory’s first Half Century at Barrow, Alaska, Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press / Arctic Institute of North America; on SIPRE (and its subsequent institutional incarnations), see CRREL’s First 25 Years, 1961-1986, available at http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/crrel/CRREL_First25Years. pdf [accessed 20 May 2011]. 23 Bates, Charles C. and Gordon G. Lill, 1950. “Current Naval Research in Land and Sea Ice,” Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 31(2), April 1950, 278-281, cited on p. 281 (I thank Bates for providing a citation to this work).

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of the earth sciences that occurred in the U.S. in the years after World War II.24 The influence of military patronage in making polar studies a high priority is not hard to discern. For instance, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a broad spectrum of polar studies was instituted in response to military concerns.25 Similar programs emerged at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Lamont Geological Observatory of Columbia University. At Lamont, founding director W. Maurice Ewing, a geophysicist seeking to gain government support for a broad menu of earth science programs, initiated studies of fundamental characteristics of Arctic ice helpful to military agencies.26 While not as intimately involved in the RDB as some of his earth sciences colleagues, Ewing – a major figure in the Undersea Warfare Symposium of the National Academy of Sciences – was well aware of the major unsolved problems involving the Arctic region. Within a few years Ewing (together with William Donn of Brooklyn College) developed a new theory of arctic climate change, one that sought to explain cyclical climate change as a result of the melting of the Arctic ice cap.27 The Ewing-Donn theory was the first to suggest natural causes for rapid climatic changes in the far north. Their work was a response to ample military funding for studies of the physical environment of the far north, an issue that continued to engage Ewing well into the 1960s.

Conclusion One point is worth stressing: official U.S. government interest in the prospect of global warming was not a late twentieth century development, but one with strong roots half a century older. Pentagon concern with polar melting in the Arctic emerged not from anxieties about global sustainability, but from utilitarian concerns – specifically related to national security priorities – in the years immediately following World War II. Its leaders in the late 1940s accepted that direct warfare between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was a distinct possibility, and that a principal theatre of 24 Doel, Ronald E., 1997. The Earth Sciences and Geophysics. In: Krige, John and Dominique Pestre (Eds), 1997. Science in the Twentieth Century, London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 361-388, and Doel 2003 “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences,” note 3. 25 Weir, Gary, 2001. An Ocean in Common: American Naval Officers, Scientists, and the Ocean Environment, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 264-67. 26 Ewing, W.M., W.S. Jardetzky, and F. Press, 1957. Elastic Waves in Layered Media, McGraw-Hill, New York; on the Lamont Geological Observatory of Columbia University [later renamed], see McCaughey, Robert A., 2003. Stand Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, New York: Columbia University Press; Levin, Tanya J. and Ronald E. Doel, 2000. “The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project: A Preliminary Report.” Earth Sciences History 19(1), 26-32; and Doel, Ronald E. Tanya J. Levin and Mason K. Marker, 2006. “Extending Modern Cartography to the Ocean Depths: Military Patronage, Cold War Priorities and the Heezen-Tharp Mapping Project, 19521959”, Journal of Historical Geography 32, 605-626. 27 Ewing, M. and W.L. Donn, 1956. A Theory of Ice Ages, Science 123, 1061-63; Weart 2008. Discovery of Global Warming [note 3]: 53-55.

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that conflict was likely to be the Arctic. For this reason, assessing climate change in the poles emerged as a Cold War concern – even though these investigations did not seek to assign causes to warming then observed.28 In seeking a definition of the environmental sciences, the eminent historian Peter J. Bowler some years ago noted that “at one level the ‘environmental sciences’ represent an artificial category – a collection of distinct specializations that have no unity beyond that thrust upon them by public concern over the environment.”29 In making this assertion, he is entirely correct. But well before the popular environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, there was a different set of concerns – all related to national security issues as the global East-West conflict emerged in the early Cold War – that also served to unify the environmental sciences. They succeeded in doing so, although in a quite distinct and much less familiar fashion.30

Literature Baldwin, Hanson W. 1947. “Tests of Men and Material in Cold to Continue in Canada and other Areas”, New York Times, April 20, 1947, p. 27. Bates, Charles C. and Gordon G. Lill, 1950. “Current Naval Research in Land and Sea Ice,” Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 31(2), April 1950, 278-281 Bloom, Lisa. 1993. Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bowler, Bowler, J. 2000. The Earth Encompassed: A History of the Environmental Sciences. New York: Norton. xvi. Burkhanov, Vasily. 1956. New Soviet Discoveries in the Arctic. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Doel, Ronald E. 1997. The Earth Sciences and Geophysics. In: Krige, John and Dominique Pestre (Eds.), Science in the Twentieth Century. London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 361-388. Doel, Ronald E. 2003. “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA After 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33(50, 635-666. Doel, Ronald E., Tanya J. Levin and Mason K. Marker, 1966. “Extending Modern Cartography to the Ocean Depths: Military Patronage, Cold War Priorities, and the Heezen-Tharp Mapping Project, 1952-1959,” Journal of Historical Geography 32, 605-626.

28 Weart 2008 Discovery of Global Warming, and Edwards 2010, A Vast Machine (both note 3). 29 Bowler, Peter J., 2000. The Earth Encompassed: A History of the Environmental Sciences, New York: Norton, xvi. 30 For more on this issue see Vance, Tiffany C. and Ronald E. Doel, 2010. “Graphical Methods and Cold War Scientific Practice: The Stommel Diagram’s Intriguing Journey from the Physical to the Biological Environmental Sciences,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40(1), 1-47.

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Doel, Ronald E. 2009. “Quelle place pour les sciences de l’environment physique dans l’histoire environmentale?” Revue d’histoire modern et contemporaine 56(4) 137-164. Edwards, Paul N. 2010. A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Elzinga, A. 1993. Antarctica: The Construction of a Continent by and for Science. In: Crawford, Elisabeth et al, Denationalizing Science: The Contexts of International Scientific Practice. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 73-106. Ewing, W.M., W.S. Jardetzky, F. Press, 1957. Elastic Waves in Layered Media. McGraw-Hill, New York. Ewing, M. and W.L. Donn, 1956. “A Theory of Ice Ages,” Science 123, 1061-63. Farish, M. 2010. The Contours of America’s Cold War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Fogelson, N. 1989. “Greenland: Strategic Base on a Northern Defense Line,” Journal of Military History 53(1), 51-63. Giæver, John. 1969. The White Desert; The Official account of the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition. New York: Greenwood Press. Hill, G. 1947. „Warming Arctic Climate Melting Glaciers Faster, Raising Ocean Level, Scientist Says,“ The New York Times, May 30 1947, 23. Hoheisel-Huxmann, Reinhard. 1993. Die deutsche antarktische Expedition 1938/39. Bremerhaven: Alfred Wegener Institut. Howkins, A. 2006. “Icy Relations: The Emergence of South American Antarctica during the Second World War,” Polar Record 42(2), 153-165. Korsmo, Fae L. and Michael P. Sfraga, 2003. “From Interwar to Cold War: Selling Field Science in the United States, 1920s through 1950s,” Earth Sciences History 22, 55-78. Fae L. Korsmo, 2007. The Early Cold War and U.S. Arctic Research. In: Benson, Keth R. and Helen Rozwadowski (Eds.) Extremes: Oceanography’s Adventures at the Poles. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 173-200 Leffler, Melvyn P. and David S. Painter, 1994. Origins of the Cold War: An International History. New York: Routledge. Levin, Tanya J. and Ronald E. Doel, 2000. “The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project: A Preliminary Report,” Earth Sciences History 19(1); 26-32. McCannon, John, 1998. Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939 New York: Oxford University Press. McCaughey, Robert A., 2003. Stand Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York. New York: Columbia University Press. Naske, Claus M. and Herman E. Slotnick, 1987. Alaska, A History of the 49th State, second edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Norton, David W. (Ed.) 2001. Fifty More Years Below Zero: Tributes and Meditations for the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory’s first Half Century at Barrow, Alaska. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press / Arctic Institute of North America. Reed, John C. and Andreas G. Ronhovde, 1971.Arctic Laboratory: A History (1947-1966) of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory at Point Barrow, Alaska Washington, D.C.: Arctic Institute of North America. Roberts, Peder. 2011. The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Robinson, Michael F. 2006. The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Sachs, Aaron. 2006. The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism. New York: Viking, 273-337 Sfraga, Michael P. 2004. Bradford Washburn: A Life of Exploration. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 100-126. Shelesnyak, M.C. 1947. “Some Problems of Huma Ecology in Polar Regions,” Science 106 (31 Oct 1947), 405-409. Swithinbank, Charles, 1999. Foothold on Antarctica: the first international expedition (19491952) through the eyes of its youngest member. Lewes: Book Guild. Sörlin, S. 2009. “Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change: North Atlantic Glaciology and Meteorology, ca 1930-1955,” Journal of Historical Geography 35(2). Weart. Spencer R. 2008. The Discovery of Global Warming, revised and expanded edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Weir, Gary. 2001. An Ocean in Common: American Naval Officers, Scientists, and the Ocean Environment College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 264-67.

Euroarctic Strategies and Synergies

Urban Wråkberg The Barents Institute, University of Tromsø, Kirkenes, Norway

Abstract A comparative discussion is held on contemporary national and organisational strategies on Northern and Arctic Europe to identify common interests in the EuroArctic region and to evaluate how some of these interests may relate to the global context. This dialogue will be considered in relation to the post-Cold War transition from Realist to geo-economic perspectives on the world.1 My tentative conclusion is twofold. First, the social science communities committed to northern research do not receive as much credit and funding as they should for providing businesses, administrators, and various stakeholders with data and interpretations of use in their lobbying and undertakings in the Arctic and Subarctic. Second, because the established organisations and multinational institutions now claiming expertise on the High North are mainly closed forums with little policy-maker turnover, there is room for more studies focussing on the neglected issues of this part of the world. One way to fill these needs is to expand universitybased research networks conducting diversified analyses and to facilitate their outreach.

The Great Game of the Arctic That global warming is melting the sea ice of the High North has been making headlines for a long time. Some commentators have drawn further media attention by claiming that this melting is also eroding the hitherto stable number and positions of the northern geopolitical players. These alarmists have predicted a global scramble of national agents and private enterprises for newly accessible natural resources, particularly after a Russian flag was planted on the sea bottom at the North Pole in 2007 (a geopolitical stunt that some Russian individuals pulled while charting the seabed for the submission of Russia’s Arctic Exclusive Economic Zone to the United Nations). The idea has been propagated that the Arctic coastal states (and perhaps others) are competing to “claim sectors” of the Arctic. Many new map designs are circulating in the news and online attempting to demarcate actual and possible 1

Browning, C.S., 2005. ‘Westphalian, Imperial, Neomedieval: The Geopolitics of Europe and the Role of the North’, in: Browning, C.S. (Ed)., Remaking Europe in the Margins Northern Europe after the Enlargements, Aldershot: Ashgate, 85-104; Sparke, M., 1998. ‘From Geopolitics to Geoeconomics: Transnational State Effects in the Borderlands’, Geopolitics 3, 62-98.

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claims for Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in the Arctic. Judging from discussions on blogs and in the media, because these maps are often unclear or viewed only casually, and the accompanying text incomplete, many readers seem to confuse the EEZ with some kind of sectorial claim similar to the polar sectorial claims made by certain states in the 1920s. Some sectorial claims exist in the Polar Regions but are not generally acknowledged ¾ those in the far south were deactivated under the Antarctic Treaty. The EEZ, on the contrary, is a well-defined and accepted concept of international law.2 Several observers have presented Arctic outlooks based on military or Realist perspectives without heeding the novel dynamics that are important in the Arctic today.3 There is arguably a common northern interest in the multilateral development of knowledge and in the pooling of resources to improve environmental protection, run sustainable fisheries, expand logistical systems (such as new maritime routes), and invest in offshore industry. These major opportunities are of interest to all Arctic coastal states (as well as to global agents with the resources to conduct business in the far north) and provide the rationale for collaboration. The UN began work on its Convention on the Law of the Sea in the 1950s, which several states ratified in 1994. Its Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) became operational in the late 1990s. This means that now when the polar ice melt is making Arctic sea routes and raw materials accessible we fortunately already possess suitable tools of international law to regulate maritime business, and establish the EEZs of the Arctic coastal states. It should also be noted that the Arctic’s disputed maritime zones have so far been co-managed with remarkable success.4 The EEZ of a coastal state is not an extension of its territory in any common sense. Rather, it is a set of zones beyond the state’s shoreline that the state controls to varying degrees based on the UN Commission on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Law of the Sea is regarded as a major international achievement, furthering accountability and sustainability in the management of the world’s resources. It applies to the Arctic Basin and is acknowledged by all Arctic coastal states except 2

3

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Byers, M., 2010. Who owns the Arctic? Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; Corell, H., 2009. The Arctic: An Opportunity to Cooperate and Demonstrate Statesmanship, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 42, 1065-1079; Haftendorn, H., 2011. NATO and the Arctic: Is the Atlantic Alliance a Cold War Relic in a Peaceful Region Now Faced with Non-Military Challenges?, European Security 20, 337361. Borgerson, G.S., 2008. Arctic Meltdown – the Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming, Foreign Affairs 87, 63-77; Alexandrov, O., 2009. Labyrinths of the Arctic Policy: Russia Needs to Solve an Equation with Many Unknowns, Russia in Global Affairs 7, 110-118. Cf. Berkman, P.A. and O.R. Young, 2009. Governance and Environmental Change in the Arctic Ocean, Science 324, 17 April: 339-340. Wråkberg, U., 2010. ‘The Great Game of the North: A Global Scenario for Domestic Use?,’ in: Bones, S. and P. Mankova (Eds), Norway and Russia in the Arctic: Conference Proceedings from the International Conference: Norway and Russia in the Arctic, Longyearbyen 25-28th August 2009, Speculum Boreale no. 12, Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 152-163.

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Figure 1. Exclusive Economic Zones of the EU states, and of others in the European Arctic. Map: Arctic Portal.

the United States (which does, however, accept its relevant provisions as customary international law). UNCLOS also codifies such principles as the freedom of the sea and the right-of-way at sea, many of which were already accepted in international maritime practice.5 The Law of the Sea recognises three zones of diminishing national control beyond the shore of a coastal state. First, there is the territorial sea, which extends 12 nautical miles (nm) (22 km) and where the state regulates the use of natural resources on the sea surface, down the water column, on and beneath the seabed. However, even in this inner coastal zone, the state has no legal grounds to interfere in the “innocent” passage of foreign vessels. A coastal state may extend an EEZ outside of its territorial waters to a distance of 200 nm (370 km) beyond the shore. 5

Figenschou Raaen, H. 2008. Hydrocarbons and Jurisdictional Disputes in the High North: Explaining the Rationale of Norway’s High North Policy, Fridtjof Nansen Institute Report 11, 18f; Ocean Futures 2007. ‘Maritime Jurisdiction and Commercial Activity’, The Norwegian Atlantic Committee: Focus North 6.

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Within the 200 nm EEZ, the state is free to regulate the use of all natural resources. Thus, only the coastal state can fish, drill for oil or gas, and grant permission to a foreign agent to do the same in this area. International shipping that is not exploiting resources is, however, free in the EEZ outside of territorial waters. Article 76 of UNCLOS specifies a new mechanism for lengthening the boundaries of an EEZ where there is a continental shelf that extends further than 200 nm from the shore. Later versions of the convention (UNCLOS III) have specified that the shelf band may not exceed 350 nm (648 km) and have included definitions on submarine ridges, natural submarine elevations, distant islands, and larger bays (which are subject to interpretation in actual evaluations and negotiations). In the area of the EEZ beyond 200 nm, the coastal state controls only the resources of the seabed. An EEZ cannot apply to the abyssal ocean plain, including its ridges of non-continental geological origin, nor to the water volumes or the surface of the high seas. Any state, landlocked or not, has equal rights in these areas. The Norwegian claim on an EEZ was approved by the CLCS in 2010.6 The other Arctic coastal states, with the possible exception of the U.S., are expected to submit national claims on EEZs and will need to pursue extensive scientific mapping of the seabed in the process. The UNCLOS articles and scientific criteria mentioned so far apply only when establishing the limits of an EEZ on the high seas. More often than not, a coastal state must negotiate the borders of its EEZ with its neighbours and consider other borderline arbitration principles used in international law based on, for example, the shape of the coast of the borderlands and on the outlying islands. If diplomatic negotiations turn into business-minded bargaining common geo-economic interests could appear and turn the key. Arctic melting may well increase the prospects for settling EEZ issues because improved accessibility of northern natural resources means expanded possibilities for future economic gain for the nations involved, provided that agreements on their borders at sea are reached. Norway’s concerted conciliations with all of its neighbours made it possible to close the several bilateral deals necessary to settle its EEZ, including an accord on the long sea border between Norway and Russia, which was agreed upon in 2010 after 40 years of negotiations.7

The Political Landscape of the Arctic In his famous speech in Murmansk on 1st October 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev proposed extensive disarmament in the Arctic as part of his Perestroika programme and invited discussion on a new policy of joint industrial development and international research cooperation. The Murmansk initiative was the beginning 6

7

Cf., among the documents leading up to this: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Summary of the Recommendations of the CLCS in Regard to the Submission Made by Norway in Respect of Areas in the Arctic Ocean, the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea on 27 November 2006, Annex VI, adopted by CLCS on 27th March 2009. Neumann, T., 2010. ‘Norway and Russia Agree on Maritime Boundary in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean’, The American Society of International Law: Insights 14, 34.

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Figure 2. Prof. Vladimir Kalinnikov briefing Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 on the work of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ branch the Kola Science Centre in Apatity, NW Russia. Photo: Kola Science Centre.

of the end of the Cold War stalemate in the Arctic. It opened new prospects for economic growth in the Euro-Arctic, improved the rights of its indigenous peoples, and made possible partnerships for managing environmental hazards, such as the proper disposal of nuclear waste in Russia. The Murmansk initiative also included a suggestion on multilateral cooperation in Subarctic and Arctic research. Gorbachev introduced the idea of a joint Arctic research council, which became a reality in 1996 when the Arctic Rim states signed the Ottawa Declaration and founded the Arctic Council.8 Several foreign policy innovations have been tested since the end of the Cold War, opening the way for cross-border interaction among former Warsaw Pact states, old and new European Union member states, and their neighbours. In 1993, for example, Norway inaugurated the cross-border cooperation of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region, based on agreements with the foreign ministries of Russia, Finland, and Sweden. Barents cooperation encourages mutual endeavours between local institutions and individuals for the common good. The Barents Region is part of the post-Cold War organisational landscape of the Euro-Arctic, but is also based on traditional patterns of trade, migration, and cultural contacts across the borders of northern Scandinavia

8

Gorbachev, M., 1987. The Speech in Murmansk at the Ceremonial Meeting on the Occasion of the Presentation of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star Medal to the City of Murmansk, October 1, 1987. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 23-31; Åtland, K., 2008. “Mikhail Gorbachev, the Murmansk Initiative, and the Desecuritization of Interstate Relations in the Arctic,” Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association 43, 289-311.

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and north-west Russia.9 Barents cooperation has encouraged science-based environmental stewardship and cross-border partnerships in the public, education, and cultural sectors, although it has been far less effective in the business and infrastructure development sectors.10 The Arctic Council has admitted representatives of indigenous peoples as non-state actors to its high-level forum on northern policy-making, showing itself to be a geopolitical innovator. The council has devoted most of its attention to environmental issues based on its strong component of natural science experts. But several observers argue that it needs to be more efficient in imposing its own recommendations concerning the practices and policies of its member states and other nations in situations of discord.11 The council’s membership is limited to the Arctic Rim states, and attempts by several other countries to join as observers have been thwarted. This slim membership casts doubt on whether the council will be able to undertake greater tasks; it is likely that larger constellations of states and agents would prove more beneficial geo-economically l in dealing with the opportunities and problems of the Arctic. Sweden’s declaration, on assuming its chairmanship of the Arctic Council in 2011, was a well-considered attempt to improve the council’s public outreach efforts and to open it to new observer states with more clearly defined roles.12 The states and state unions (such as the E.U.) considered by some of the Arctic coastal states to have inconsistent Arctic policies (and whose Arctic Council membership has been frozen due to this and other reasons13) must pursue their interests by using their own northern instruments. In the case of the E.U., this includes furthering the work of its Northern Dimension partnerships and providing more funding for its new research coordinator in northern socio-economic sciences at the Northern Dimension Institute. It will be of interest to some of the world’s major economies – China, , Japan, and South Korea - if Arctic melting persists and Russia adheres to its present policy of trying to develop the Northern Sea Route into an internationally competitive sea link connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the Arctic. But opening the Northern Sea Route will hinge upon big investments being made in northern harbours and different infrastructure and on developing cold region technologies in shipping 9 10

11

12 13

Jackson, T.N. and J.P. Nielsen, (Eds), 2005. Russia-Norway: Physical and Symbolic Borders. Moscow, Languages of Slavonic Culture. Heininen, L. and H.N. Nicol, 2007. A New Northern Security Agenda. In: Brunet_Jailly E. (Ed), 2007. Comparing Border Security in North America and Europe, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 117-163; Browning, C.S. and P. Joenniemi, 2003. “The European Union’s Two Dimensions: The Eastern and the Northern”, Security Dialogue 34, 463-479. Koivurova, T. and Md. Waliul Hasanat, 2009. “The Climate Policy of the Arctic Council”. In: Koivurova, T., E.C.H. Keskitalo and N. Banks (Eds), 2009. Climate Governance in the Arctic, Dordrecht: Springer, 70-72. Bergh, K., 2011. ‘Arctic Cooperation Must Become More Inclusive’, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Newsletter July/August. Cf. Østhagen, A., 2011. “Debating the EU’s Role in the Arctic: A Report from Brussels”, message posted on the web site by staff of the non-governmental Arctic Institute: Center for Circumpolar Security Studies at http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2011/10/2472-european-arctic-ambiguity.html.

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Figure 3. The Chinese polar research vessel Xue Long, “Snow Dragon”. Photo: Yong Wang, State Ocean Administration of China.

and navigation. Especially if the financial crisis persists, comma non-Arctic major economies will be the players best fitted to making this possible, as investors and by entering joint ventures.14 Other major northern development plans in mining and offshore hydrocarbon extraction, would equally benefit from widespread international enterprise. Foreign direct investment and other forms of business partnerships could offer short cuts to diversifying the industries and labour markets of many northern company towns, making them more attractive and socially sustainable societies. Unfortunately, geopolitical conservatism eschews such global, business-minded perspectives in most of the decision-making processes on the Arctic, particularly in the Russian High North. It remains to be seen when – and if – new resourceful economic players will be welcomed from beyond the Arctic Circle.

Expert Advice and Northern Policy Making Scholarly research is based on the principles of free speech and democratic dialogue among peers. An open exchange of ideas and factual information can, through reason, produce consensus that transcends individual interests. Scientific discourse demands sharing knowledge on theory, methods, and data. Through publications and reviews, imperfections and lacunas in our present knowledge can be identified and new research conceived. When results are pooled and analysed jointly and individually, an agreement can be reached on the best practices for solving pressing human problems.

14 Jakobson, L. 2010. China Prepares for an Ice-Free Arctic, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Insights on Peace and Security 2, 5-9; Kim, K.-S., 2010. Policy Report: Natural Resources Development and Environmental Issues of the Arctic, Dokdo Research Journal 11, 81-93.

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Figure 4. In March 2011 the exploration rig Polar Pioneer made the largest find of oil so far on the northern part of the Norwegian shelf, at Skrugard in the Barents Sea. Photo: Harald Pettersen, Statoil.

Jürgen Habermas has demonstrated the democratic importance of the public sphere, and proved the epistemological significance of what he has called the ideal act of communication. In an “ideal speech situation,” participants are socially equal, are having the same capacity for discourse, and their words are not confused by ideology and error. In defining the prerequisites of an ideal act of communication Habermas moved theoretical philosophical reasoning into the sociological sphere without joining post-modern deconstructionists in denying the viability of a project striving towards consensus on truth through the open exchange of arguments.15 Habermas’ ideal act of communication is related to the norms of modern science, but it does not imply traits or tendencies of real science and technology such as reductionism, secular modernism, or technocracy. Sciences and scholarship often inform political decision making. Political evaluations based on comprehensive pools of reliable data should identify progressive strategies aiming for sustainable economic development and a fair standard of living for everyone. Thus, scholarship, science, and technology have the potential to improve the very social context of which they are a part. For this reason, research cooperation was a crucial component of the Murmansk initiative that helped transform the Arctic after the Cold War. 15 Payrow Shabani, O. A.. 2003. Democracy, Power and Legitimacy: The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 44-50; Habermas, J., 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

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The roles of science and technology in modern industrial societies are, of course, complex, and have been recurring topics for research, particularly the problematic relationship between expert advisors and politicians in democracies.16 At a time when many new and old northern stakeholders are establishing or updating their Arctic agendas, there is good reason to discuss whether there is a balanced supply of knowledge and expert advice on the polar regions. In transparently addressing this issue, the ministries of education, polar research institutes, and universities with Arctic ambitions should consider, for example, if the distribution of funding between the natural sciences and technology on the one hand, and the social sciences (including economic geography and multidisciplinary studies) on the other, is balanced, given that several important Arctic issues are multidimensional, with large components falling within the scope of the social sciences. The cost of field stations, ice-going research vessels, monitoring facilities, and communication networks are, of course, high, but largely motivated by the necessity to scrutinize the impact of human activity on the polar regions. However, countering global warming and polar melting not only depends on monitoring and forecasting climate change and developing alternative energy sources, but also on finding the optimal rates and measures for cutting emissions to avoid depriving societies of the economic resources necessary for achieving such cuts.17 Finding a balance involves socio-economic discounting, scenario building, modelling, and evaluation on a global scale to produce a new policy consensus based on natural and social sciences, technology, macroeconomics, political science, and cultural studies. This reality is not sufficiently mirrored today in political allocations of research funding in, for example, polar research. Other policy issues worthy of debate pertain to the ways in which research funding is distributed inside any relevant discipline. Europe and the U.S. are trending back toward the traditional internalistic academic system of distributing the main part of available funds among competing research projects and individuals based on previous achievements measured by scientometric means. In practice, this method is reduced to simple bibliometric rankings of quality and productivity based on the number of publications in a closed set of peer reviewed journals and citations within the literature. The system is known to augment the so-called Matthew Effect in science; its drawbacks were discussed during the advent of social studies of science and have been recognised within the relevant research communities ever since.18 One of the consequences of the Matthew Effect is that excellence in research may be achieved but can lack continuity over time in a given social setting, subject area, or speciality, which can be detrimental to the national, regional, and local availability of expertise. It is difficult to build sufficient research expertise to address the multi-factorial issues of certain geographical areas, such as the Arctic, under the 16 Fisher, E., 2007. »Upgrading» Market Legitimation: Revisiting Habermas’s »Technology as Ideology» in Neoliberal Times, Fast Capitalism 2, 2. http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/2_2/fisher.html. 17 Nordhaus, W., 2008. A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cf. Stern, N., 2007. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press. 18 Merton, R.K., 1968. “The Matthew Effect in Science”, Science 159, 56-63.

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present funding system. This system works against the kind of instant service from the research sector that most political decision-makers, administrators, stakeholders, and the media would like to have in exchange for the funds spent on research. Calling the “research brigade” in times of urgent need, only to learn that we do not have any experts because no local personnel was “excellent” enough to fund, is not always easily solved by going on turning to the international knowledge market or determining what readings we should try to download or find at the nearest library. In any case, this is not the way to build a convincing global, regional, or national leadership on northern matters. Sufficient continuity, a reasonable breadth of national expertise, and a stronger articulation of strategic goals in distributing research funding are the solutions to this problem. However, the limited political appeal, at least in Europe and Scandinavia, of maintaining and expanding budgets for research on the High North hinders those very actions. A related phenomenon is apparent in some countries where a historical unwillingness to fund permanent polar research institutes has resulted in their absence today. The task of finding experts when preparing policies on the High North will, as a result, be slow and costly, while seeking them out abroad could be complicated by issues of language, trust, and culture. Several other political issues pertaining to northern research deserve discussion but are outside the scope of this paper. In conclusion, however, it is worth noting a tension inside academia itself, embodied in the question of to which of the two stereotypical visions of the future of the High North any researcher is committed. On the one extreme is the view of the north as a pristine nature reserve where human

Figure 5. Keeping continuity in Arctic expertise; renovation work in the summer of 2011 on the research station of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Barentsburg, Spitsbergen. Photo: Urban Wråkberg.

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impact is minimised through regulations and surveillance; on the other no comma is that of the north as a developing region where the presence not only of indigenous peoples but also of recent settlers and even of short-term labourers and tourists is accepted and regarded in a favourable light.

Literature Alexandrov, Oleg, 2009. “Labyrinths of the Arctic Policy: Russia Needs to Solve an Equation with Many Unknowns”, Russia in Global Affairs 7, 110-118. Bergh, Kristofer, 2011. Arctic Cooperation Must Become More Inclusive, July/August. Berkman, Paul Arthur and Oran R. Young, 2009. “Governance and Environmental Change in the Arctic Ocean”, Science 324, 17 April 2009, 339-340. Borgerson, Scott G., 2008. “Arctic Meltdown – the Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming”, Foreign Affairs 87, 63-77 Browning, Christopher S., 2005. Westphalian, Imperial, Neomedieval: The Geopolitics of Europe and the Role of the North. In: Christopher S. Browning (Ed), 2005. Remaking Europe in the Margins Northern Europe after the Enlargements. Aldershot: Ashgate, 85-104. Browning, Christopher S. and Pertti Joenniemi, 2003. The European Union’s Two Dimensions: The Eastern and the Northern, Security Dialogue 34, 463-479. Byers, Michael. 2010. Who owns the Arctic? Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. Corell, Hans, 2009. The Arctic: An Opportunity to Cooperate and Demonstrate Statesmanship, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 42, 1065-1079. Figenschou Raaen, Håvard, 2008. Hydrocarbons and Jurisdictional Disputes in the High North: Explaining the Rationale of Norway’s High North Policy, Fridtjof Nansen Institute Report 11 Fisher, Eran, 2007. »Upgrading» Market Legitimation: Revisiting Habermas’s »Technology as Ideology», In: Neoliberal Times, Fast Capitalism 2, 2. http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/ fastcapitalism/2_2/fisher.html. Gorbachev, Mikhail, 1987. The Speech in Murmansk at the Ceremonial Meeting on the Occasion of the Presentation of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star Medal to the City of Murmansk, October 1, 1987. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency. Habermas, Jürgen, 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Haftendorn, Helga, 2011. „NATO and the Arctic: Is the Atlantic Alliance a Cold War Relic in a Peaceful Region Now Faced with Non-Military Challenges?”, European Security 20: 337361. Heininen, Lassi and Heather N. Nicol, 2007. A New Northern Security Agenda. In: Brunet-Jailly, Emmanuel (Ed), 2007. Comparing Border Security in North America and Europe, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 117-163. Jackson, Tatjana N. and Jens Peter Nielsen (Eds.), 2005. Russia-Norway: Physical and Symbolic Borders. Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Culture. Jakobson, Linda, 2010. China Prepares for an Ice‑Free Arctic, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Insights on Peace and Security 2. Kim, Ki-Sun, 2010. “Policy Report: Natural Resources Development and Environmental Issues of the Arctic”, Dokdo Research Journal 11, 81-93.

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Koivurova, Timo and Med. Waliul Hasanat, 2009. The Climate Policy of the Arctic Council. In: Koivurova, Timo, E. Carina H. Keskitalo and Nigel Banks (Eds), Climate Governance in the Arctic, Dordrecht: Springer, 51-75. Merton, Robert K., 1968. “The Matthew Effect in Science”, Science 159, 56-63. Neumann, Thilo, 2010. “Norway and Russia Agree on Maritime Boundary in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean”, The American Society of International Law: Insights 14, 34. Nordhaus, William, 2008. A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ocean Futures. 2007. “Maritime Jurisdiction and Commercial Activity”, The Norwegian Atlantic Committee: Focus North 6. Payrow Shabani, Omid A. 2003. Democracy, Power and Legitimacy: The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sparke, Matthew, 1998. “From Geopolitics to Geoeconomics: Transnational State Effects in the Borderlands”, Geopolitics 3, 62-98. Stern, Nicholas, 2007. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Summary of the Recommendations of the CLCS in Regard to the Submission Made by Norway in Respect of Areas in the Arctic Ocean, the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea on 27 November 2006, Annex VI, adopted by CLCS on 27th March 2009. Wråkberg, U., 2010. The Great Game of the North: A Global Scenario for Domestic Use? In: Bones, Stian and Petia Mankova (Eds.) Norway and Russia in the Arctic: Conference Proceedings from the International Conference: Norway and Russia in the Arctic, Longyearbyen 25-28th August 2009, Speculum Boreale no. 12, Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 152-163. Åtland, Kristian, 2008. “Mikhail Gorbachev, the Murmansk Initiative, and the Desecuritization of Interstate Relations in the Arctic”, Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association 43: 289-311. Østhagen, Andreas, 2011. Debating the EU’s Role in the Arctic: A Report from Brussels, message posted on the web site by staff of the non-governmental Arctic Institute: Center for Circumpolar Security Studies. http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2011/10/2472-europeanarctic-ambiguity.html.