ARCTIC Dutch Activities in the North and the Arctic during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

• Main Author: J. Braat
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.547.4035; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic37-4-473.pdf

The Dutch were engaged in important activities in the north and in the Arctic during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, particularly in the areas of commerce, exploration, whaling, and cod-fishing. Dutch commerce with northern Europe must have begun around the middle of the sixteenth century; their explorations were started in 1584, and they began whaling in 1612. All of these activities expanded during the seventeenth century, at a time when the United Provinces became the greatest commercial power in Europe. The Dutch continued whaling until the last quarter of the nineteenth cen-tury and took it up again for a short while after 1945 (de Jong, 1972, 1978a,b, 1979). Accounts of Dutch activities in the north and in the Arctic were popular in Holland from the very beginning. Manuscripts, printed works, and illustrations con-cerning our Arctic past are numerous. Also, since the