The Arctic Voyages of Olivier Brunel

by Andre Engels & Ray Howgego

Brunel was born at Louvain (or possibly Brussels) in about 1540. As one of the earliest Flemish navigators in the Arctic Ocean, he first sailed beyond Lapland in 1564 or 1565 in search of a northeast route to China, possibly in association with the company of Philips Winterkoning, who was already by that time established on the northern coasts. After placing a trading post at the mouth of the Dvina River, Brunel was taken prisoner at Kholmogory by the Russian government, having been denounced by agents of the English Muscovy company as a spy. (Records of Brunel's early voyages are fragmentary, and dates for his arrest as early as 1557 or 1558 have been given by various commentators.) He was imprisoned at Yaroslavl and eventually released in 1570 through the intervention of the Stroganovs, the wealthy Russian merchant family, for whom he went to work. As their agent he established regular trade between Russia and the Netherlands and travelled widely in Russia, at one time becoming the first European to make the overland journey from Moscow to the River Ob.

In July 1576, while still in service of the Stroganovs, and accompanied by two of their family members, he appeared back in Kola, an outpost on the Kola Peninsula, laden with hides and other merchandise. He left Kola on the 5th of August 1576, and by the 11th of September was in Dordrecht, from where he and the Stroganovs possibly continued to Antwerp and Paris to sell their furs and skins. In 1577 Brunel, accompanied by Jan van der Walle (an agent of the Dutch trader, Hoofman) left to trade on the Kola Peninsula (= Poluostrov Kol'skiy). Following complaints from Frederick II of Denmark and Norway, who regarded the region as under his jurisdiction, Jan van der Walle moved further east and established a trading post at Podesjemco, at the mouth of the Dvina. Six miles further upstream, at the Saint Michael's monastery, at the command of the tsar, a city would be built in 1583, called New Kholmogory, or, as it was soon to be popularly known, Archangel, for the archangel Michael.

The next record of Brunel's travels dates from February 1581 when, in a conversation with Johan Balakus, a merchant who lived in Arensberg, on the island of Osel in the Baltic, Brunel announced that he was on his way back to Antwerp to enroll sailors for an expedition to Cathay. Two ships were already being built at Kholmogory for a proposed voyage through the Kara Sea to the mouth of the Ob. According to Brunel, twelve days upriver on the Ob was a city, Yaks Olgush, which he had previously visited by an overland route. The people there claimed that three days travel further on they had seen richly loaded ships that had sailed up the "Ardoh River", which in turn flowed into the "Lake of Kithay", which in turn bordered the "Empire of Cathay".

Commentators seem to disagree on whether Brunel actually made this voyage in the summer of 1581. One account states that he sailed with one ship and was shipwrecked in Pechora Bay after unsuccessfully attempting to sail through the Yugorski Straits into the Kara Sea, but these events seem to have been transposed from those of his later voyage. Others suggest that he delayed the attempt until 1584, while he looked for suitable sponsors. It is clear, however, that the 1581 expedition was proposed by the Stroganovs as the northerly part of a two-pronged trading mission to Sibir.

In March 1583 Frederick II proposed to Brunel and his Norwegian business associate, Arent Meyer, that they should undertake, at the expense of the consortium of Balthasar de Moucheron, a voyage of discovery to Greenland. Their reward would be the reimbursement of their investments, a monopoly of trade with the country, and, if they were to establish themselves in Bergen for that purpose, six years freedom from taxation. Brunel and Meyer apparently sailed from Bergen and skirted the coasts of Iceland, but arrived off the coast of Greenland in thick mist and drift ice. Fearful of losing their lives, the voyage was aborted.

In the spring of 1584 Brunel left his wife, Suzanna, and sailed from Enkhuizen with a single ship loaded with merchandise valued at eight thousand Karolus guilders, bound for the River Ob. His partner, Arent Meyer, put up a sixteenth of the cost of the voyage, while the rest came from an Antwerp consortium backed by Balthasar de Moucheron. Brunel called at Kola (= Poluostrov Kol'skiy), then New Kholmogory, which by that time had two Russian-built inns, warehouses, a weigh-house and an office for receiving custom duties, and where a fort was being constructed. He then proceeded to the north side of Vaygats Island (= Ostrov Vaygach), but found the strait (Karskiye Vorota) blocked by pack ice. Continuing along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, he entered the bay of Costins Serch (= Kostin Shar), but found no passage to the east, or people to trade with. Brunel therefore retreated to the mouth of the Dvina where he wintered, either at New Kholmogory or Podesjemsco.

In the following year, 1585, Brunel made another attempt to enter the Kara Sea by way of the Yugor Strait (= Yugorskiy Shar) but once again found his way blocked by ice. Deciding instead to attempt to trade his goods with the Samoyeds, he sailed for Pechora Bay (= Pechorskaya Guba). This more easterly location was chosen in an attempt to outsmart the Russian, Danish and English traders, who normally chose the Colcolcova River (= Kolkolkova Guba), to the west of the Pechora. The ships boat was sent ashore and, after winning the trust of the Samoyeds, an exchange of goods was agreed. However, during the return to the ship, the boat was trapped in an eddy and capsized on a sand bank. Brunel and the boat crew drowned. The ship itself returned to Holland, but the cargo of rhinestones it carried, along with the sale of the ship, netted insufficient return to cover even the wages of the crew.

Bibliography:

Spies, Marijke: Bij noorden om. Olivier Brunel en de doorvaart naar China en Cathay in de zestiende eeuw (Amsterdam 1994).
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Horensma, P.: Olivier Brunel and the Dutch involvement in the discovery of the Northeast Passage (in The Journal of Polar Studies, 2, 1985).
Jansma, T.S.: Olivier Brunel te Dordrecht: de noordoostelijke doorvaart en het Westeuropeesch-Russisch contact in de zestiende eeuw (in Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis 59, 1946).
Jansma, T.S.: De economische opbloei van het Noorden (in Algemene geschiedenis der Nederlanden. Vol. V. De tachtigjarige oorlog, 1567-1609, Utrecht 1952).
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Braat, J.: Dutch activities in the North and the Arctic during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (in Arctic 37:4, December 1984).
Niedekker, D.B.: Benoorden Rusland om. Nederlanders op zoeck naar de noord-oostpassage (in Spiegel Historiael, 24, 1989).
Vries, Simon de [b. 1630]: De noordsche weereld; vertoond in twee nieuwe, aenmercklijcke, derwaerts gedaene reysen: d’eene, van de Heer Martiniere, door Noorweegen, Lapland, Boranday, Siberien, Samojessie, Ysland, Groenland en Nova Zembla … (Amsterdam 1685).
Ahvenainen, J.: Some contributions to the question of Dutch traders in Lapland and Russia at the end of the sixteenth century (in Acta Lapponica Fenniae 6).
Rey, Louis (ed.): Unveiling the Arctic (Calgary 1984).
Gad, F.: The history of Greenland (3 vols: I & II, London 1970, 1973; III, Copenhagen 1982 [for Brunel's' involvement in Greenland]).
Kernkamp, G.W.: Verslag van een onderzoek in Zweden, Noorwegen en Denemarken naar archivalia, belangrijk voor de geschiedenis van Nederland ('s-Gravenhage 1903).
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Other Internet resources:

• Marja Smolenaars: Boekbespreking Arctic Routes van M. Spies (in Dutch)

This page, part of Discoverers Web was created by Andre Engels and Ray Howgego.