The first of Barents’s journeys took place in 1594. Four ships put out to sea from Zealand on Denmark’s shores, he on board the Mercury and his partner, Corneilius Nai, on board the Swan. After a month’s sail they reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, where the group split up. Nai set course with two ships for the archipelago’s southern tip with the goal of securing the passage to Cathay from that direction, while Barents moved north to do the same on the opposite end. Nai successfully navigated through the southern strait and after working his way through the ice packs he reached a vast expanse of open water. “We met with no more ice, nor any sign of it,” the record for August 9 tells us, “… only a spacious open sea with a swell such as oceans have everywhere, and a great depth, for which we could not touch ground with the lead …”[9] There was no doubting it: they had at long last pried open the coveted northern door to Cathay — success at last. One can imagine the euphoria that must have descended on the ships’ crews … and the foaming tankards that no doubt were raised to celebrate their victory. With mission accomplished and the season rapidly advancing, Nai found no need for continuing farther east, and he ordered a turnabout and a course for home. Little did the poor man know that the “spacious open sea” with swells and depths were in no way a key to any doorway; it was an illusion, a mirage of sorts. Had he sailed east a few more days into the Kara Sea, he would have encountered the same irresolute ice barrier that would stymie more than one future traveller.
In the meantime, Barents was making his way up the coast, pressing ever more north. One highlight of that passage seems to have been their stumbling upon a herd of walrus — some two hundred of them. Knowledge of these “wonderfull strong sea monsters”[10] was already had, but now they came face to face with these “sea-horses … with two teeth sticking out of their mouths, one on each side, each being about halfe an elle long [fourteen inches].” We are told of a close encounter with one such animal, which, having “cast her young ones before her into the water,” attacked their ship’s boat … “the sea-horse almost stricken her teeth into the sterne of the boate, thinking to overthrow it.” The crew barely managed to ward it off with oars and “the great cry that the men made.”
Barents’s expedition proved inconclusive and on the whole uneventful. The vessels completed the passage to the most northerly point of Novaya Zemlya, where they were battered by a strong gale and where their progess was barred by thick ice packs. Unable to proceed farther and with the exhausted crews in a mutinous mood, there was no alternative but to return home. Whatever disappointment Barents may have suffered for his part of the venture, certain satisfaction was taken in the charting of much of the archipelago’s coastlines. All in all, he regarded the expedition as a glorious success — his partner travelling in the south, after all, had uncovered the elusive passage to the Far East, in the words of one contemporary, “a very broad claim.”
In the earlier part of the voyage, as the ships followed the Siberian coastline eastward, they made first European contact with “the strange people called ‘Samoyeds.’” Word of the existence of these primitive “wilde men” had already filtered to Europeans. Their culture was based entirely on reindeer — draught animals were reindeer; boats were of reindeer hide; their semi-underground homes were covered by reindeer hides; parkas were of reindeer (with the skin on the outside); their gloves and hoods also of reindeer, and their crudely carved idols were of reindeer skulls and bones. The other news of these people was not good: it was said that they engaged in cannibalism. One staggering Russian report of 1560 tells of a feast offered a visiting merchant in which a roasted child was the centrepiece. The same report asserted that should the merchant have died among them his body would also have been eaten — small wonder that the literal translation of Samoyed is “self-eater.” Barents’s chronicler makes only passing comment on the exchanges that took place between the Dutch and these singular natives. Today the descendents of the Samoyeds are called Nenets. In the 1870s the Russian government forcibly relocated some of them to Novaya Zemlya in a successful effort to wrest claim of the land from Norway.
Word of Barents’s success spread quickly through Holland. Prince Maurice, son of King William I, was particularly encouraged by the fruits of the initiatives and he became filled with “the most exaggerated hopes.” In his enthusiasm he caused a fresh expedition to be mounted which he, himself, helped to finance. Barents was awarded the title, “Chief Pilot of the States-General and Conductor” and urged to prepare promptly for a return to Siberia, this time with an enlarged fleet … and hopes assured.
Bathed in optimism and good cheer, six ships set sail in June 1595, heavily loaded with an array of goods for trade with the peoples of Cathay. They were accompanied by a seventh vessel, which was to return home to report on the expedition’s progress after it had rounded the Taymyr Peninsula, the massive body of land that serves as the Arctic Ocean’s east–west divide in that part of the globe.
In nearing 75°N the ships came across an unfamiliar island sided by high cliffs rising from the sea. An exploratory party was sent ashore to search out the place and as the men moved inland they were ambushed by a polar bear. The animal had snuck up stealthily behind them and grabbed a hapless sailor by the neck. The victim’s panicked companions ran for their lives, but shortly thereafter turned back “either to save the man or else to drive the beare from the body.”[11] As the group approached the animal with pikes and oars they were horrified to find the animal “devouring the man … the beare bit his head in sunder and sucked out his blood.” The feasting animal spotted the approaching party and charged. Again, the sailors scattered, but as they ran, one of them was caught by the enraged beast and killed by a single blow of a massive paw. From the deck of one of the nearby ships, the unfolding drama had been observed and boats were quickly lowered with reinforcements. The well-armed party engaged the “cruell, fierce and ravenous beast;” and after a frantic struggle managed to kill it without further casualty. Barents gave the name of Bear Island to the place where this fatal encounter occurred.
At this point it might be appropriate briefly to digress by putting Barents aside, and make a few introductory remarks on the polar bear in general. It is after all the iconic animal of the Arctic Ocean and sub-Arctic regions, and, given the rapidity of environmental changes, anxiety exists as to its future. The polar bear is the world’s largest land predator, reaching heights of as much as ten feet and weights of 1,500 pounds. Its preferred world, however, is the ice packs and the open waters where seals flourish, its principal source of food. Land becomes attractive in the absence of seals, and it is on land also that the female bear passes through her final stages of gestation and where, after burrowing into the permafrost, she delivers her newborns.
In addition to an exceptional sense of smell, the polar bear possesses a remarkable ability to hunt out its next meal by stealth; it approaches a target seemingly cloaked by invisibility, so well does its white coat blend with the terrain. It then usually seizes the victim’s head and crushes the skull with powerful jaws, the strength of which is capable of killing a mature walrus or a beluga whale. Although seals are undeniably the dietary preference, the bear’s tastes are remarkably eclectic with reindeer, rodents, birds, and shellfish acceptable substitutes. (In the garbage dumps of Churchill, Manitoba, bears have been observed ingesting Styrofoam, plastics, and a car battery.)
In bygone days, native bear hunters were handsomely rewarded for their successes for every part of the felled animal found use: food for nourishment, fur for trousers and footwear, sinews for thread, fat for lamp oil, bones for tools, and the heart and gallbladders for their medicinal qualities. Only the highly toxic liver was discarded. So valued and revered were the beasts that in certain societies — the Chukchi of eastern Siberia, for example — that they took on religious