Problems of Development of the Sea Coast and Islands of the European Arctic in the 16th - 18th Centuries

Russian pioneers first came to the shores of the Arctic Ocean in the 14th century. There is no evidence of earlier dates. We can only talk about development (that is settlement in the area and expansion to) of the Russian North and Siberia. This colonization had two main geographical directions - northern and eastern. In the first case it had industrial nature, in the second - fiscal one, it was aimed to subject local population to tax-collection. An important role was played by colonization by monasteries that sometimes outpaced industrial colonization. The matter of the discovery of Svalbard by the Pomors before Barents remains controversial and needs reinforcement with new facts. But appearance of Russian industrialists on Novaya Zemlya can be reliably attributed to the 16th century, it is confirmed by European and Russian written sources. Development of the islands of the European Arctic by the Pomors in the 18th - first half of the 19th century is inextricably linked with the Old Believers of the Russian North. On the basis of written and archaeological sources role of the “Danilova” hermitage (“Danilova pustyn”) in this matter appears to be crucial. Although seasonal industrial expeditions involved members of other split sects as well as representatives of the official Church. Loss of many artels on Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya during the wintering in the second half of 18th and earlier half of 19th centuries is largely explained by the peak of the Little Ice Age (LIA). In Greenland, it ended nearly 250 years earlier becoming the main cause of downfall of Norman settlements. Attempts by European seafarers of 16th - 17th centuries to discover the Northeastern passage were entirely unsuccessful. The reason of their failure was lack of knowledge of ice conditions in the Barents and Kara seas, which was well known to the Pomors. That allowed Russian ships from Pomorie to pass Vaigach eastward up to the Yenisei estuary. On the other hand, though the Europeans did not achieve their goal, they succeeded in entering in the 16th century vast Russian market. And thanks to the voyages near the coasts of Russia they soon found themselves in the waters of Svalbard, where they established economically profitable whaling. Polar expeditions of the 16th - 17th centuries also gave a powerful impetus to the development of European cartography. After stopping the search for the Northeastern passage and abandoning whaling, Europeans (the British and the Dutch) left the Arctic without attempting to annex polar territories as colonies to their metropolias.

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