VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



on seal and walrus hunting northward along the edge of 

 the ice in the Polar Sea, and in that case it was unavoidable 

 that they should arrive at Svalbard, or Spitzbergen. And when 

 it was once discovered they must often have resorted to it; 

 for the valuable walrus was at that time very plentiful there. 



As we nowhere find mention of these sealing expeditions 

 of the Norwegians in the Polar Sea, except in Ottar's narrative, 

 it may be difficult to show certain evidence of their having 

 taken place; but the Russians' seal hunting in the Polar 

 Sea, of which we hear as early as the sixteenth century, can in 

 my opinion scarcely be explained in any other way than as a 

 continuation, in the main, of the Norwegian's sealing. When 

 the English, and later the Dutch, came to the Murman coast 

 and the coasts eastward as far as the Pechora, Vaigach, and 

 Novaya Zemlya, they found fleets of Russian smacks engaged 

 in fishing and walrus hunting; most of them were from the 

 Murman coast, some from the White Sea, and a few from the 

 Pechora. Stephen Burrough thus found in June, 1556, no less 

 than thirty smacks in the Kolafjord, which had come sailing 

 down the river, on their way to fishing- and sealing-grounds 

 to the east. These smacks sailed well with the wind free, 

 could also be rowed with twenty oars, and had each a crew of 

 twenty-four men. 



Pistorius ^ refers to Andrei Mikhow as saying that the 

 " Juctri " (Yugrians in the Pechora district) and " Coreli " 

 (Karelians) on the coast of the Polar Sea hunted seals and 

 whales, of whose skins they made ropes, purses, and . . .? 

 ("redas, bursas et coletas"), and used the blubber (for light- 

 ing?) and sold it. They also hunted walrus (called by Mikhow 

 by its Norwegian name "rosmar"),- the tusks of which they 

 sold to the Russians. The latter kept a certain quantity for 

 their own use, and sent the rest to Tartary and Turkey. The 



1 Pistorius, Polonicae historiae corpus, 1582, i. 150. I have not had an oppor- 

 tunity of consulting this work. We saw above (p. 163, note) that Olaus Mag- 

 nus also quotes Mikhow. 



2 Cf. Noel, 1815, p. 215. 



^72> 



