- Email: [email protected]
Industrial heritage sites in Spitsbergen (Svalbard), South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula: Sources of historical information
Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Polar Science j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : h t t p s : / / w w w . e v i s e . c o m / p r o fi l e / # / J R N L _ P O L A R / l o g i n
Industrial heritage sites in Spitsbergen (Svalbard), South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula: Sources of historical information Louwrens Hacquebord a, *, Dag Avango b a b
Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 24 November 2015 Received in revised form 7 June 2016 Accepted 8 June 2016 Available online 11 June 2016
Industrial heritage sites in Polar Regions are very important as sources of historical information. Together with archival documents this information gives us the possibility to complete the picture of the exploitation of natural resources in those regions. Thirty years of historical-archaeological field research at whaling and mining sites in Spitsbergen (Svalbard), South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula has shown that these sites can provide unique evidence about the driving forces behind industrial development, the design of industrial technology, the structure of the settlements, strategies to control natural resources and achieve political influence, and the impact of resource extraction on the local environment. In this article we will give examples of the results of our research at these sites. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. and NIPR. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Historical archaeology Industrial heritage Natural resource extraction Arctic Antarctic
1. Introduction The Polar Regions have a long history of exploitation and many abandoned extraction sites and settlements bear witness to these activities. The exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic began in the seventeenth century, some years after the first European attempts to find a northern passage to Asia. Through boom and bust periods, this exploitation lasted more than four hundred years. Products such as whale oil, furs and ivory were transported to European harbors where they were used in the developing industries of the first half of the seventeenth century. After the industrial revolution coal and other minerals was added to the list of natural resources extracted in the Arctic, which companies sold on energy markets in Scandinavia, and nowadays Arctic oil and gas is seen as potentially important to meeting demand for energy. All these activities have left traces in the landscape, which give evidence on the history of the quest for raw materials to supply the
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Hacquebord). 1 To avoid confusion and because most of the sites were in use at a time that the archipelago was named Spitsbergen we use the name Spitsbergen. That’s the historical name of the archipelago that is indicated in the documents. Where relevant we use the name Svalbard, which the Norwegian government introduced after the ratification of the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen In 1925. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polar.2016.06.005 1873-9652/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. and NIPR. All rights reserved.
needs of economic and political centers in the western world. By studying these traces, we can obtain unique information about the process of exploitation of natural resources and its local consequences in different parts of the Polar Regions. We can use the remains to explain the development of different industries there and to get more insight on the geo-political role of these economic activities.1 (Fig. 1, Spitsbergen, Svalbard). In the International Polar Year project LASHIPA (Large Scale Historical Exploitation of Polar Areas), archaeologist collected data in a sequence of surveys at sites with remains from various extractive industries from several historical periods, both in the Arctic and Antarctic (Fig. 1, Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Fig. 2, Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands and Fig. 3, South Georgia). Most of these sites we documented in the form of mapping, using gps-technology or total stations, digital photography, measured drawings and text descriptions. In some cases, when sub-surface data was needed, archaeological excavations were conducted e from small scale test excavations to a complete excavation of a settlement (Hacquebord, 1984; Aalders et al., 2007, 2008). During these excavations artifacts were registered and collected to analyze human behavior. Animal bones were collected and identified to get an impression of the hunting and feeding behavior of the people who left the bones behind (Aalders, 2012). Discoloration in the soil indicating turf, plank and brick walls and fire places were carefully excavated, drawn and photographed to get insights regarding the
434
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
Fig. 1. Map of the production and extraction sites on Spitsbergen (Svalbard).
structure of buildings and production facilities. Historical data were collected in archives in several countries. Flora and fauna were studied to get an impression of the recent vegetation and animal life. Soil samples were taken and analyzed on pollen to reconstruct the paleo-vegetation and to study the impact of the extracting activities on the vegetation concerned (Van der Knaap, 1985). Through these different archaeological methods, we collected data which we could use to address core questions of the LASHIPAproject: what were the driving forces behind industrial development in the Polar Regions, how did companies design technology suitable for northern environments and how did they structure their settlements and organize the production and which strategies did they use to secure control over natural resources and build political influence, and what was the impact of the industry on the local natural environment (Avango et al. 2010-1). In order to address these research questions, the LASHIPA project focused on three case study areas e Spitsbergen/Svalbard in the Arctic, and
South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula in the Antarctic. Our motivation for selecting these case study areas is the fact that a) they have been subject to large scale natural resource exploitation by actors from outside the polar areas for a long period of time, b) they contain well-preserved archaeological remains, c) they have been subject to geo-political conflict between the nations from where the industrial companies originated and d) there are archival documents pertaining to their histories available. Thus, as a consequence of the obvious need for delimitation in the vast Polar Regions, the LASHIPA project did not study resource oriented industries in Greenland, the North American Arctic and the Asian Arctic. 2. Driving forces behind industrial development There was never one single factor driving the development of industry in Polar Regions. It was always a combination of factors
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
435
Fig. 2. Map of the whaling stations and whaling infrastructure on South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula.
that brought merchants and entrepreneurs to venture to the northern and southern ends of the globe. Economic factors together with politics, knowledge, cultural and ideological trends as well as environmental possibilities encouraged these actors to conduct hunting, whaling and mining activities there. Without knowing how they designed their production facilities or the character of the local natural environment in which they operated, it is difficult to sufficiently describe and explain the development of these industries. That’s why field research is important. The remains of these industrial activities give additional and often different data, compared to the information we can get from written sources. By combining these forms of data, we increase our capacity to deal with our research problems in a holistic and comprehensive way (Avango and Hacquebord, 2012; Hacquebord, 2012; Avango, 2013; Avango et al., 2014, Hacquebord, 2015). In the 16th century an increasing demand for oil in Europe
encouraged the Basques to engage in whaling off the coast of Labrador. The Basques knew what they were doing, based on experience from hunting Northern right whale in the Bay of Biscay since the 12th century. In the 17th century expanding cloth, leather, soap and candle making industries in Western Europe, needed increasing amounts of oil as raw material, which together with high prices for corn led to rising prices for vegetable oils and fats (Hacquebord, 1984). Whale oil was considered to be a substitute for vegetable oils, but the supply of whale oil from the Basque whalers was drying up. Therefore the recently discovered whaling grounds off the coasts of Spitsbergen were seen as an opportunity, encouraging merchants in England and the Dutch Republic to explore the possibilities of bowhead whaling there. The archaeological remains of a great number of whaling stations along the western coast of Spitsbergen, give ample evidence on the rapid growth of this industry, reflecting the enormous
436
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
Fig. 3. Whaling stations and whaling stations surveyed by LASHIPA on South Georgia.
demand for oil in Europe in those days. In the second period of the Spitsbergen whaling history we see a decrease in the number of stations, but the remaining whaling stations became much bigger. The remains show that the whaling companies had re-designed the spatial lay out of the stations in order to make them more efficient, so that the production of whale oil could increase. In this period the stations also became a political factor, in the meaning of markers of territories. In order to protect their business, the whaling companies called for armed support from their governments and placed guns to protect their stations.(Hacquebord and Avango, 2009). In the second half of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century whales were hunted in a vast area between Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and Norway. However, in this period the blubber was not cooked on Spitsbergen anymore but in the countries from where the whaling companies originated. Therefore the whaling companies did not use stations in the hunting area anymore. The 20th century coal mining industry on Spitsbergen was also primarily driven by economic factors. The industrial economy of Europe was growing rapidly in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century. The primary energy resource for this industry was coal, which was also used for heating and cooking purposes in the rapidly growing industrial cities across the continent. Another big coal consumer was the railway systems, which were expanding rapidly at the time. In the maritime sector sailing ships were replaced by steam ships. Thus, there was a large and rapidly expanding market for coal and therefor coal mining was generally lucrative-even in locations far away from the industrial centers of mainland Europe. There was money to be made in coal mining, also in the Arctic (Avango et al., 2014). By studying the material remains of coal mines at Svalbard (see Fig. 2) we know that the mining companies tried to minimize the costs by only utilizing the most easily accessible coal seams, to use the advantages of the landscape for their transport system and to build the mining towns in the cheapest way by using cheap prefab
houses (Avango et al., 2008). Together with the fact that the companies built these mining towns in periods when the world market prices for coal were particularly high, provide evidence that on market forces coupled with opportunistic business strategies as the main driver behind the establishment of coal mining at Spitsbergen in the early 20th century. There were also political driving forces behind the growth of the mining industry at Spitsbergen. In the early 20th century, Norwegian government took initiatives to gain sovereignty over Spitsbergen. The Swedish, Russian and US governments wished to keep the legal status of the archipelago as a no-man’s land and therefore opposed the Norwegian moves. In order to strengthen their position in ongoing and anticipated negotiations on the matter, they supported and even encouraged mining companies from their own nations to claim land at Spitsbergen. Mining settlements as well as claims to land containing mineral resources legitimized political influence in accordance with international law at the time. . Therefore, although in a different way than the 17th century whaling stations, the mining settlements also had political functions (Avango, 2005). The archaeological remains of the mining activities give evidence on how the mining companies pursued those politically motives, by claiming vast expanses of land that could represent effective occupation, by placing markers, claimhuts and making dead-end mine entrances (Avango, 2013). Thus, in summary, the remains of industrial activities reflect the economic ambitions of the whaling and mining companies, but also reveal that the actors used their operations within the framework of the diplomatic/political strategies of the governments. 3. Design of industrial technology for Polar Regions In the LASHIPA-project field work campaigns, we were able to study how the whaling and mining companies adapted technologies, settlement plans and architecture to geographical,
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
environmental and political claims in the polar areas. One example is the development of the technology in the 17th century whaling industry. Comparison of the whaling sites on Spitsbergen have made clear that the whalers started out by using hunting, flensing and cooking technics copied from the Basques. Later the whalers discovered that not the hunting but the butchering and cooking stage was a bottleneck in the whale oil production process. They therefore changed the process. Instead of flensing the whale along the side of their ships they pulled the dead whales onto the beach. The discovery of a spill and other parts of a capstan on the beach of Amsterdam Island has proved this part of the process. On this natural slipway they cut off the blubber for cooking. Dutch whalers improved the efficiency of their blubber ovens by creating a circulation system based on a chimney (Hacquebord, 2014). In this way they were able to accelerate the cooking process. The English whalers adopted the idea of the chimneys as is proved by a contemporary drawing of Captain Lancelot Anderson (Conway, 1906). This indicates that the 17th century whaling stations already had the structure of the 20th century stations with a slipway, a flensing platform and a division of the butchering and rendering activities. From our archaeological surveys of 20th century mining sites, we were able to interpret the mining companies’ strategies for coping with the local environment. An important problem was the need to find suitable terrain to construct the above ground infrastructure of their mines and to build their settlements. They needed sheltered harbors not too far from their mines to transport the coal to the markets. One example is the Dutch mining company Nespico, which opened a mine named Rijpsburg at Cape Boheman on Spitsbergen. This site was surrounded by shallow waters extending kilometers from the mine. These conditions combined with the limited size of the coal seam made Nespico decide to close the mine after only one year and acquire another mining site instead. There they had an excellent harbor and space to build a settlement (Avango et al., 2005; De Haas 2012; Hacquebord, 2015). The mining companies adapted their technology to the ice and snow situation on Spitsbergen. Archaeological surveys show that the mining companies overcame snow related obstacles to the transport of coal from mines to harbors, by either building aerial ropeways (e.g. at the Svea mine, Grønfjorden, Longyeardalen, Adventdalen) or railways covered by wooden structures that kept the tracks free from snow (e.g. Barentsburg, Grumant city-Coles bay, Pyramiden) (Avango and Hacquebord, 2007; Avango and €gselius, 2013). None of these transport systems were new or in Ho any way unique to the Arctic, which show that the companies in fact did little to develop new technologies in their strategies to extract resources there. They combined already existing technologies, which in most cases were sufficient for their purposes. This, we suggest, calls for a less exceptionalism in narratives about Arctic resource exploitation e both in the past and the future. The mining companies also struggled to get access to fresh water. Low precipitation and relatively cold summers makes water a scarce resource on Spitsbergen. Fresh water was needed for drinking, household purposes, production of electricity and for cooling drilling equipment. Archaeological field work show that in some cases, such as at Sveagruvan (during the Swedish period 1917e1925) or at Barentsburg, companies dammed up creeks, founded a pumping station and brought fresh water to the settlements through pipes (Avango, 2005; Avango et al., 2008; Avango, 2013). The distances from Spitsbergen to the rest of the world and the presence of sea ice caused isolation. Therefore, those mining companies that operated their mines the whole year around, needed winter houses and food stores for at least 10 months. The transport of coal could only take place in the summer and therefore
437
the companies built big coal storages as well as highly effective transport- and ship loading systems that allowed them to export all the stored coal in the short summer. Archaeological surveys at Barentsburg, Longyearbyen, Sveagruvan show which choices the mining companies made (Avango, 2005; Aalders et al., 2007; Avango et al., 2008). The modern whaling settlements in the Antarctic also show how the companies managed the special environmental conditions at the Antarctic Peninsula and at South Georgia (Fig. 2 Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands and Fig. 3 South Georgia). Just like in the case of the mining companies at Svalbard, they needed large amounts of fresh water, especially for the production of steam for the cookery process at shore based whaling stations or on factory ships. During the field investigations remains of dams, pumping sheds, wooden water-boats and iron pipes were found everywhere in the region of the Antarctic Peninsula (Hacquebord, 1992; Avango et al., 2010e2). 4. Structure of settlements and the organization of production The archaeological excavations of the Dutch whaling station Smeerenburg has provided important information on how whaling companies handled the challenges in the Polar Regions in the 17th century. In the beginning the ovens were constructed of boulders and bricks around a copper cauldron in which the blubber was rendered into oil all over the west coast of Spitsbergen. Always near the place where the whale was killed. The workers were lodged in tents and the barrel maker had a tent as a workshop. Later the companies centered their try-works on one or two locations. The English Muscovy Company had two settlements in the Bell Sound and the Dutch Noordse Company only had Smeerenburg on Amsterdam Island, Spitsbergen and two settlements on Jan Mayen to produce whale-oil (Hacquebord, 2004, 2014). The geography of the oldest settlement of Svalbard, Smeerenburg reflects the structure of the Dutch whaling company This company was a cartel of independent chambers and all these chambers had their own try-work on Amsterdam Island. In this way the settlement was composed of seven try-works on a row along the beach, each using the beach in front of the try-work as a natural slipway. All together Smeerenburg had 15 wooden houses. There was accommodation for ca. 250 men (Hacquebord, 1984, 2014). All whaling stations were settlements, used on a seasonal base (Fig. 4, Smeerenburg, Amsterdam Island, Spitsbergen). The structure of the individual try-works shows an effective organization with a clear division between butchering, cutting, cooking and cooling activities. In this way they improved the rendering process. The spatial division of the English whaling stations at Edge point in Recherche-fjord and the Rock in the Bell Sound further south on the Spitsbergen west coast, reflects a less effective production compared to Dutch station Smeerenburg. The cutting platforms were situated far away from the cooking and cooling installations. Since the processing and not the killing of the whales was the bottleneck of the production, the Dutch were producing much more whale oil than the English in the 17th century (Hacquebord et al., 2003). The mining companies at Spitsbergen in the 20th century clearly defined climate and isolation as challenges for settlement building. They expressed an ambition to build housing that would keep their workers protected from low temperatures and extreme wind speeds. They also argued in favor of building settlements that would ensure a quality of living as well as a strict hierarchy that would make workers refrain from costly strikes, in geographical locations so distant from population centers that there was no prospect of hiring other personnel in exchange for striking workers.
438
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
Fig. 4. Geography of the 17th century whaling settlement Smeerenburg on Amsterdam Island Spitsbergen.
From the perspective of the companies, the latter problem was enhanced by the legal status of Spitsbergen as a no-man’s land before 1920, which meant that they could not rely on any state to intervene on their behalf with police (or army) in case of worker’s rebellions (Avango et al., 2014). Archaeological surveys of mining settlements at Svalbard show how the companies tried to ensure social peace by using the built environment. Mining companies who had experienced labor conflicts improved their workers housing and facilitated the production of fresh food by building hen houses, piggeries and cow sheds (Sveagruvan and Barentsburg). In the Soviet mining settlements at Svalbard, the mining companies also built greenhouses to supply garden fresh vegetables. In order to keep workers satisfied, the mining companies at Svalbard also established leisure facilities as libraries, cinema’s, theatre and music performances (e.g. Sveagruvan, Longyearbyen and Brandal city/Ny Ålesund). At the Soviet mining towns Pyramiden and Barentsburg, the mining company built swimming halls, sports arenas and an athletic track. At South Georgia in the Sub-Antarctic, whaling companies faced similar challenges. Although Britain claimed sovereignty over South Georgia and had a magistrate established at one of the whaling stations (Grytviken), the whaling stations were far away from any alternative source of labor and therefore strikes were always very costly because of reduced production results. Therefore, in order to keep workers satisfied, the whaling companies at their stations built soccer fields (Hacquebord, 1992, Avango, 2003; Avango and Hacquebord, 2008; Gustafsson, 2008; Avango et al., 2010-2). Another way to avoid conflicts was to offer workers a way out. When in early May ships bound for Sveagruvan would anchor at the ice edge off the west coast of Spitsbergen in order to supply the mining community with fresh food, workers who wanted to leave the settlement walked over the ice to meet the boats. Archaeological surveys at Spitsbergen has revealed the infrastructure which the Swedish mining company built in order to facilitate this movement of goods and personnel, in the form of huts between the mine and the ice edge (Avango, 2005). At Spitsbergen the mining companies also had ways of implementing social peace by more forceful means. Archival research reveals methods such as black lists, differentiated wages and other
anti-unionism policies. Archaeological field work at historic mining sites such as Sveagruvan, Longyear city and Advent city at Spitsbergen reveals how the companies used settlement plans and architecture to discipline workers. One of the strategies was to manifest hierarchies symbolically by spatially separating workers housing from housing units of engineers and managers. Another common strategy was to visualize the different status of the station employees through the architecture. The whaling companies in the Antarctic designed their settlements at South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula according to similar principles. Just as in the case of the mining companies’ choice of technology, this form of social engineering was not unique to the Arctic or Antarctic. The companies emphasized hierarchy in the same way as most industrial companies did in company towns elsewhere in the world. However, the effort the companies made to represent hierarchy even under the difficult and costly circumstances for building industrial settlements in the areas we have investigated, show the high importance they devoted to the task of maintaining social control (Avango, 2005; Martin et al., 2005; Avango et al., 2008). As the map of Prince Olav Harbor show, the company tried to naturalize hierarchy using the built environment, by symbolically separating the directors building from the workers housing by placing them on either side of a transport system (Fig. 5 Prince Olav Harbor).
5. Political influence and control over natural resources The whaling and mining companies needed to cope with the unsettled legal status of the polar areas in the past. Spitsbergen was, as mentioned in the above, a no-man’s land until 1920 and when the first whaling companies arrived in the Antarctic at turn of the century 1900, Britain had not yet laid claim or re-confirmed older claims to South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Therefore the companies had to find ways to secure ownership or at least some form of legitimate control of the natural resources. In addition, they had to interact with governments of states which claimed sovereignty or political influence over the polar areas concerned. In the archives we can investigate the strategies of the states and the role the companies played in these strategies.
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
439
Fig. 5. Geography of the 20th century whaling station Prince Olav Harbor surveyed by a LASHIPA-team.
In the early modern whaling period the Kings of England and Denmark both claimed the Spitsbergen archipelago and both sent letters with the whalers in which they claimed sovereignty over the archipelago. Archaeological research show how the whaling companies re-enforced and realized those claims on the ground at Spitsbergen. They built solitary houses in order to control certain bays as their exclusive catching grounds. Later armed ships and sometimes even men of war were sent to protect the claims. The archaeological excavations showed that the whaling companies also placed flags and arms in front of the houses at the whaling stations, in order to display the ownership of the try work. In Smeerenburg and on Jan Mayen remains of a fortress were found that was built by the Dutch company to protect its property (Hacquebord, 2004). In the 20th century the mining industry also undertook measures to protect what they regarded as their properties against competitors and sought ways to benefit from geo-political ambitions of states, mentioned in the above. Just like the whaling companies on Spitsbergen before them, the mining firms in the opening decades of the 20th century operated under no-man’s land conditions which meant that there were no laws regulating ownership of the minerals. Such laws were only established when the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen was ratified in 1925. Archaeological surveys in many former mining areas in Spitsbergen have revealed the strategies the companies used to protect their properties. First of all, traces of sign posts claim boards and cairns were found which the companies used to indicate and limit their claims. Secondly we found remains of claim huts, technological artifacts and traces of defense works. Although the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen gave sovereignty over the archipelago to Norway, both Russia and Norway have made efforts to strengthen their influence in the archipelago by material means. In the mining settlements Longyearbyen, Barentsburg and also Pyramiden there are different generations of government buildings with elaborated architectural
designs as well as flags and arms showing the nationality of the installations and the settlements (Avango, 2003, 2005; Aalders et al., 2007, 2008). 6. Impact of industry on the local environment There is no doubt that large scale resource extraction has had profound impacts on fragile polar environments. For historians and archaeologists studying the environmental consequences of these industries the historical remains of whaling and mining contain important evidence. The impact of 17th and 18th century whaling on the Atlantic Greenland right whale population was dramatic. Based on archive research in the Netherland, Germany and United Kingdom in total 122,000 whales were killed and disappeared out of the ecosystem, consequently making a lot of food available for seabirds, fish and seals with as result that some animals may be overrepresented in the Spitsbergen ecosystem (Weslawski et al., 2000; Hacquebord, 2001). Beside this the whalers hunted on walruses, polar bears, polar foxes, reindeer and several birds which means that their impact was extended to these animals as well. Pollen analysis of soil samples near Smeerenburg has made clear that the impact of a relatively small intervention on the vegetation has been great. That’s to say it lasted 150 years before the tundra vegetation recovered from this activity. Beside pollen of plants soot from the cooking process was found in the soil samples taken kilometers away from the blubber ovens (Van der Knaap, 1985). The impact of the 20th century mining at Svalbard and the Arctic and Antarctic whaling industry on the local environment has been much bigger than the 17th century whaling activities in the Arctic, at least in terms of visual impacts. The mining industry at Svalbard used much larger areas for their activities. In addition to the mines they built huge installations such as power- and processing plants, mechanical workshops, large storage areas and
440
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
extensive settlements. This not the only means that they impacted larger areas than the 17th century whalers used for their butchering and cooking activities, but also that the soot from their power plants and other production facilities had a much wider reach. New research has shown that soot and coal dust produced by power plants and mining operations at Spitsbergen fallen on top of the local glaciers increased the speed of melting of these glaciers (Aamaas et al., 2011; Quinn et al., 2011). The reach of some environmental impacts are even global. The near extinction of several whale populations is a well-established fact and the consequences for the larger ecosystem are subject of many biological studies and are topics in the international environmental discussions. Other local environmental consequences of mining and whaling are the remains of the stations and settlements. When the mining and whaling companies abandoned their production sites, they left everything behind and the settlements turned into ghost towns situated in industrial landscapes. The crumbling remains of former industrial workplaces often contain scrap metal, asbestos and other hazardous waste but are also evidence of behavior of industry in remote regions. However, recent clean-up operations (Grytviken, South Georgia and Factory Cove at Signy Island) have removed many remains of these industrial heritage sites and destroyed the information these sites contain for historians and archaeologists. 7. Conclusions Industrial production sites in Polar Regions have a unique capacity to provide important information for historicalarchaeological research. They are nodes of human activities in sparsely populated areas and give us important information about industrial activities in those areas. The sites are unique documents of use and abuse of the natural resources in Polar Regions and can teach us more about the driving forces behind industrial development, design of industrial technology, structure of the settlements and organization of the production, the political influence and control over the resources and the impact of the industry on the local environment. The sites therefore should be preserved for future research. Clean-up operations of these sites should be executed very carefully so that as little as possible is changed at these former industrial sites. Acknowledgements This research was made possible with financial support of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the Swedish Research Council References Aalders, Y.I., Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., de Haas, H., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., 2007. LASHIPA 4. Archaeological Expedition on Svalbard. August 2-25. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Aalders, Y.I., Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., de Haas, H., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., Kruse, F., 2008. LASHIPA 5. Archaeological Expedition on Spitsbergen 27 Juli-17 August. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Aalders, Y.I., 2012. Perceptions of polar resources: a comparison of the animal remains of the russian hunting station kokerineset and the Dutch whaling station Smeerenburg. In: Hacquebord, L. (Ed.), LASHIPA. History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas, Circumpolar Studies, vol. 8. Barkhuis Publishing, Groningen, pp. 33e46. n, Kim, Stro € m, J., 2011. Aamaas, B., Bøggild, C.E., Stirdal, F., Berntsen, T., Holme Elemental carbon deposition to Svalbard snow from Norwegian settlements
and long-range transport. Tellus B 63 (3), 340e351. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., 2007. LASHIPA 3. Industry and its impact in the polar areas from1600 till present. In: Rickberg, S. (Ed.), Swedish Polar Research Secretariat Yearbook. Swedish Polar Secretariat, Stockholm, pp. 62e66, 2006 (published 2007). Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., 2008. The exploitation and heritage of natural exploitation in the arctic and antarctic: the LASHIPA project. Patrim. l’ind. 19, 7e16. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., 2012. Polar industrial heritage sites as resources for historical research. In: Munro, D.M. (Ed.), 2012 Managing Industrial & Cultural Heritage South Georgia in Context, pp. 17e32. Dundee. €gselius, P., 2013. Under the ice: exploring the Arctic’s energy reAvango, D., Ho sources, 1898e1985. In: Christensen, M., Nilsson, A.E., Wormbs, N. (Eds.), Media and the Politics of Climate Change. When the Ice Breaks. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 128e156. Avango, D., Bekooy, B., Gustafsson, U., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., 2005. Report LASHIPA Svalbard Expedition. Arctic Centre University of Groningen. Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., 2008. LASHIPA 3 Archaeological Expedition on Spitsbergen. August 7-24, 2006. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., Aalders, Y., de Haas, H., Gustafsson, U., Kruse, F., 2010-1. Between markets and geo-politics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day. Polar Rec. 47 (1), 29e39. Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., Hacquebord, L., Rosness, G., 2010-2. The Myth of the Untouched Antarctica. LASHIPA 8, 5-31 March 2010. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., Wråkberg, U., 2014. Industrial extraction of Arctic natural resources since the sixteenth century: technoscience and geo-economics in the history of northern whaling and mining. J. Hist. Geogr. 44, 15e30. Avango, D., 2003. Aktanter i ingenmanslandet: den svenska gipsbrytningen på €m, B. (Eds.), Industrins Avtryck. Perspektiv på Svalbard. In: Avango, D., Lundstro ett forskningsf€ alt, Stockholm, pp. 173e206. Avango, D., 2005. Sveagruvan: Svensk Gruvhantering Mellan Industri, Diplomati Och Geovetenskap. PhD thesis. KTH, Stockholm. Avango, D., 2013. Arktiska framtider och resurser: det industriella kulturarvet som €lla. Bebyggelsehistorisk Tidskr. 65, 52e71. ka Conway, W.M., 1906. No Man’s Land.a History of Spitsbergen from its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country (Cambridge). de Haas, H., 2012. In search of profit in the high arctic. The commercial background of the Dutch expedition to spitsbergen in 1920. In: Hacquebord, L. (Ed.), LASHIPA. History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas, Circumpolar Studies, vol. 8. Barkhuis Publishing Groningen, pp. 34e47. Gustafsson, U., 2008. Modern Whaling Industry in Spitsbergen as a tool for territorial claiming and national sovereignty strives. Patrim. l’ind. 19, 17e24. Hacquebord, L., Avango, D., 2009. Settlements in an arctic resource frontier region. Arct. Anthropol. 46 (1e2), 25e39. Hacquebord, L., Steenhuisen, F., Waterbolk, H.J., 2003. English and Dutch whaling trade and whaling stations in spitsbergen (svalbard) before 1660. Int. J. Marit. Hist. XV (2), 117e134. Hacquebord, L., 1984. Smeerenburg. Het verblijf van Nederlandse walvisvaarders op de Westkust van Spitsbergen in de zeventiende eeuw. PhD thesis. University of Amsterdam. Hacquebord, L., 1992. Hector station on deception Island (south shetland Islands (Antarctica); an environmental study of a whaling station. Circumpolar J. 7 (1e2), 72e97. Hacquebord, L., 2001. Three centuries of whaling and walrus hunting in svalbard and its impact on the arctic ecosystem. Environ. Hist. 7 (2001), 169e185. Hacquebord, L., 2004. The jan mayen whaling industry; its exploitation of the Greenland right whale and its impact on the marine ecosystem. In: Skreslet, S. (Ed.), Jan Mayen Island in Scientific Focus. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 229e238. Hacquebord, L., 2012. In: LASHIPA. History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas. Hacquebord, L., 2014. De Noordse Compagnie. Walburgpers, Zutphen. Hacquebord, L., 2015. Wildernis, woongebied en wingewest. Een geschiedenis van de poolgebieden. Atlas/Contact, Amsterdam. Martin, P.E., Avango, D., Martin, S., Hacquebord, L., Oglethorpe, M., Nisser, M., Rossnes, G., 2005. Industrial Heritage in the Arctic: Research and Training in Svalbard, August 2004. Houghton, Groningen: Stockholm. Quinn, P.K., A.Stohl, Arneth, T., Berntsen, J.F., Burkhart, J., Christensen, M., Flanner, K., Kupiainen, H., Lihavainen, M., Stephard, V., Shevchenko, H., Skov, V., 2011. The impact of black carbon on arctic climate. AMAP Tech. Rep. 4 (Oslo AMAP). Van der Knaap, W.O., 1985. Human influence on natural arctic vegetation in the 17th century and climate change since A.D. 1600 in northwest spitsbergen: a paleo-botanical study. Arct. Alpien Res. 17 (4), 371e387. Weslawski, J.M., Hacquebord, L., Stempniewicz, L., Malinga, M., 2000. Greenland right whales and walruses in the Svalbard food web before and after exploitation. Oceanologia 42 (1), 37e56.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Polar Science j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : h t t p s : / / w w w . e v i s e . c o m / p r o fi l e / # / J R N L _ P O L A R / l o g i n
Industrial heritage sites in Spitsbergen (Svalbard), South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula: Sources of historical information Louwrens Hacquebord a, *, Dag Avango b a b
Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 24 November 2015 Received in revised form 7 June 2016 Accepted 8 June 2016 Available online 11 June 2016
Industrial heritage sites in Polar Regions are very important as sources of historical information. Together with archival documents this information gives us the possibility to complete the picture of the exploitation of natural resources in those regions. Thirty years of historical-archaeological field research at whaling and mining sites in Spitsbergen (Svalbard), South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula has shown that these sites can provide unique evidence about the driving forces behind industrial development, the design of industrial technology, the structure of the settlements, strategies to control natural resources and achieve political influence, and the impact of resource extraction on the local environment. In this article we will give examples of the results of our research at these sites. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. and NIPR. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Historical archaeology Industrial heritage Natural resource extraction Arctic Antarctic
1. Introduction The Polar Regions have a long history of exploitation and many abandoned extraction sites and settlements bear witness to these activities. The exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic began in the seventeenth century, some years after the first European attempts to find a northern passage to Asia. Through boom and bust periods, this exploitation lasted more than four hundred years. Products such as whale oil, furs and ivory were transported to European harbors where they were used in the developing industries of the first half of the seventeenth century. After the industrial revolution coal and other minerals was added to the list of natural resources extracted in the Arctic, which companies sold on energy markets in Scandinavia, and nowadays Arctic oil and gas is seen as potentially important to meeting demand for energy. All these activities have left traces in the landscape, which give evidence on the history of the quest for raw materials to supply the
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Hacquebord). 1 To avoid confusion and because most of the sites were in use at a time that the archipelago was named Spitsbergen we use the name Spitsbergen. That’s the historical name of the archipelago that is indicated in the documents. Where relevant we use the name Svalbard, which the Norwegian government introduced after the ratification of the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen In 1925. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polar.2016.06.005 1873-9652/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. and NIPR. All rights reserved.
needs of economic and political centers in the western world. By studying these traces, we can obtain unique information about the process of exploitation of natural resources and its local consequences in different parts of the Polar Regions. We can use the remains to explain the development of different industries there and to get more insight on the geo-political role of these economic activities.1 (Fig. 1, Spitsbergen, Svalbard). In the International Polar Year project LASHIPA (Large Scale Historical Exploitation of Polar Areas), archaeologist collected data in a sequence of surveys at sites with remains from various extractive industries from several historical periods, both in the Arctic and Antarctic (Fig. 1, Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Fig. 2, Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands and Fig. 3, South Georgia). Most of these sites we documented in the form of mapping, using gps-technology or total stations, digital photography, measured drawings and text descriptions. In some cases, when sub-surface data was needed, archaeological excavations were conducted e from small scale test excavations to a complete excavation of a settlement (Hacquebord, 1984; Aalders et al., 2007, 2008). During these excavations artifacts were registered and collected to analyze human behavior. Animal bones were collected and identified to get an impression of the hunting and feeding behavior of the people who left the bones behind (Aalders, 2012). Discoloration in the soil indicating turf, plank and brick walls and fire places were carefully excavated, drawn and photographed to get insights regarding the
434
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
Fig. 1. Map of the production and extraction sites on Spitsbergen (Svalbard).
structure of buildings and production facilities. Historical data were collected in archives in several countries. Flora and fauna were studied to get an impression of the recent vegetation and animal life. Soil samples were taken and analyzed on pollen to reconstruct the paleo-vegetation and to study the impact of the extracting activities on the vegetation concerned (Van der Knaap, 1985). Through these different archaeological methods, we collected data which we could use to address core questions of the LASHIPAproject: what were the driving forces behind industrial development in the Polar Regions, how did companies design technology suitable for northern environments and how did they structure their settlements and organize the production and which strategies did they use to secure control over natural resources and build political influence, and what was the impact of the industry on the local natural environment (Avango et al. 2010-1). In order to address these research questions, the LASHIPA project focused on three case study areas e Spitsbergen/Svalbard in the Arctic, and
South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula in the Antarctic. Our motivation for selecting these case study areas is the fact that a) they have been subject to large scale natural resource exploitation by actors from outside the polar areas for a long period of time, b) they contain well-preserved archaeological remains, c) they have been subject to geo-political conflict between the nations from where the industrial companies originated and d) there are archival documents pertaining to their histories available. Thus, as a consequence of the obvious need for delimitation in the vast Polar Regions, the LASHIPA project did not study resource oriented industries in Greenland, the North American Arctic and the Asian Arctic. 2. Driving forces behind industrial development There was never one single factor driving the development of industry in Polar Regions. It was always a combination of factors
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
435
Fig. 2. Map of the whaling stations and whaling infrastructure on South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula.
that brought merchants and entrepreneurs to venture to the northern and southern ends of the globe. Economic factors together with politics, knowledge, cultural and ideological trends as well as environmental possibilities encouraged these actors to conduct hunting, whaling and mining activities there. Without knowing how they designed their production facilities or the character of the local natural environment in which they operated, it is difficult to sufficiently describe and explain the development of these industries. That’s why field research is important. The remains of these industrial activities give additional and often different data, compared to the information we can get from written sources. By combining these forms of data, we increase our capacity to deal with our research problems in a holistic and comprehensive way (Avango and Hacquebord, 2012; Hacquebord, 2012; Avango, 2013; Avango et al., 2014, Hacquebord, 2015). In the 16th century an increasing demand for oil in Europe
encouraged the Basques to engage in whaling off the coast of Labrador. The Basques knew what they were doing, based on experience from hunting Northern right whale in the Bay of Biscay since the 12th century. In the 17th century expanding cloth, leather, soap and candle making industries in Western Europe, needed increasing amounts of oil as raw material, which together with high prices for corn led to rising prices for vegetable oils and fats (Hacquebord, 1984). Whale oil was considered to be a substitute for vegetable oils, but the supply of whale oil from the Basque whalers was drying up. Therefore the recently discovered whaling grounds off the coasts of Spitsbergen were seen as an opportunity, encouraging merchants in England and the Dutch Republic to explore the possibilities of bowhead whaling there. The archaeological remains of a great number of whaling stations along the western coast of Spitsbergen, give ample evidence on the rapid growth of this industry, reflecting the enormous
436
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
Fig. 3. Whaling stations and whaling stations surveyed by LASHIPA on South Georgia.
demand for oil in Europe in those days. In the second period of the Spitsbergen whaling history we see a decrease in the number of stations, but the remaining whaling stations became much bigger. The remains show that the whaling companies had re-designed the spatial lay out of the stations in order to make them more efficient, so that the production of whale oil could increase. In this period the stations also became a political factor, in the meaning of markers of territories. In order to protect their business, the whaling companies called for armed support from their governments and placed guns to protect their stations.(Hacquebord and Avango, 2009). In the second half of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century whales were hunted in a vast area between Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and Norway. However, in this period the blubber was not cooked on Spitsbergen anymore but in the countries from where the whaling companies originated. Therefore the whaling companies did not use stations in the hunting area anymore. The 20th century coal mining industry on Spitsbergen was also primarily driven by economic factors. The industrial economy of Europe was growing rapidly in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century. The primary energy resource for this industry was coal, which was also used for heating and cooking purposes in the rapidly growing industrial cities across the continent. Another big coal consumer was the railway systems, which were expanding rapidly at the time. In the maritime sector sailing ships were replaced by steam ships. Thus, there was a large and rapidly expanding market for coal and therefor coal mining was generally lucrative-even in locations far away from the industrial centers of mainland Europe. There was money to be made in coal mining, also in the Arctic (Avango et al., 2014). By studying the material remains of coal mines at Svalbard (see Fig. 2) we know that the mining companies tried to minimize the costs by only utilizing the most easily accessible coal seams, to use the advantages of the landscape for their transport system and to build the mining towns in the cheapest way by using cheap prefab
houses (Avango et al., 2008). Together with the fact that the companies built these mining towns in periods when the world market prices for coal were particularly high, provide evidence that on market forces coupled with opportunistic business strategies as the main driver behind the establishment of coal mining at Spitsbergen in the early 20th century. There were also political driving forces behind the growth of the mining industry at Spitsbergen. In the early 20th century, Norwegian government took initiatives to gain sovereignty over Spitsbergen. The Swedish, Russian and US governments wished to keep the legal status of the archipelago as a no-man’s land and therefore opposed the Norwegian moves. In order to strengthen their position in ongoing and anticipated negotiations on the matter, they supported and even encouraged mining companies from their own nations to claim land at Spitsbergen. Mining settlements as well as claims to land containing mineral resources legitimized political influence in accordance with international law at the time. . Therefore, although in a different way than the 17th century whaling stations, the mining settlements also had political functions (Avango, 2005). The archaeological remains of the mining activities give evidence on how the mining companies pursued those politically motives, by claiming vast expanses of land that could represent effective occupation, by placing markers, claimhuts and making dead-end mine entrances (Avango, 2013). Thus, in summary, the remains of industrial activities reflect the economic ambitions of the whaling and mining companies, but also reveal that the actors used their operations within the framework of the diplomatic/political strategies of the governments. 3. Design of industrial technology for Polar Regions In the LASHIPA-project field work campaigns, we were able to study how the whaling and mining companies adapted technologies, settlement plans and architecture to geographical,
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
environmental and political claims in the polar areas. One example is the development of the technology in the 17th century whaling industry. Comparison of the whaling sites on Spitsbergen have made clear that the whalers started out by using hunting, flensing and cooking technics copied from the Basques. Later the whalers discovered that not the hunting but the butchering and cooking stage was a bottleneck in the whale oil production process. They therefore changed the process. Instead of flensing the whale along the side of their ships they pulled the dead whales onto the beach. The discovery of a spill and other parts of a capstan on the beach of Amsterdam Island has proved this part of the process. On this natural slipway they cut off the blubber for cooking. Dutch whalers improved the efficiency of their blubber ovens by creating a circulation system based on a chimney (Hacquebord, 2014). In this way they were able to accelerate the cooking process. The English whalers adopted the idea of the chimneys as is proved by a contemporary drawing of Captain Lancelot Anderson (Conway, 1906). This indicates that the 17th century whaling stations already had the structure of the 20th century stations with a slipway, a flensing platform and a division of the butchering and rendering activities. From our archaeological surveys of 20th century mining sites, we were able to interpret the mining companies’ strategies for coping with the local environment. An important problem was the need to find suitable terrain to construct the above ground infrastructure of their mines and to build their settlements. They needed sheltered harbors not too far from their mines to transport the coal to the markets. One example is the Dutch mining company Nespico, which opened a mine named Rijpsburg at Cape Boheman on Spitsbergen. This site was surrounded by shallow waters extending kilometers from the mine. These conditions combined with the limited size of the coal seam made Nespico decide to close the mine after only one year and acquire another mining site instead. There they had an excellent harbor and space to build a settlement (Avango et al., 2005; De Haas 2012; Hacquebord, 2015). The mining companies adapted their technology to the ice and snow situation on Spitsbergen. Archaeological surveys show that the mining companies overcame snow related obstacles to the transport of coal from mines to harbors, by either building aerial ropeways (e.g. at the Svea mine, Grønfjorden, Longyeardalen, Adventdalen) or railways covered by wooden structures that kept the tracks free from snow (e.g. Barentsburg, Grumant city-Coles bay, Pyramiden) (Avango and Hacquebord, 2007; Avango and €gselius, 2013). None of these transport systems were new or in Ho any way unique to the Arctic, which show that the companies in fact did little to develop new technologies in their strategies to extract resources there. They combined already existing technologies, which in most cases were sufficient for their purposes. This, we suggest, calls for a less exceptionalism in narratives about Arctic resource exploitation e both in the past and the future. The mining companies also struggled to get access to fresh water. Low precipitation and relatively cold summers makes water a scarce resource on Spitsbergen. Fresh water was needed for drinking, household purposes, production of electricity and for cooling drilling equipment. Archaeological field work show that in some cases, such as at Sveagruvan (during the Swedish period 1917e1925) or at Barentsburg, companies dammed up creeks, founded a pumping station and brought fresh water to the settlements through pipes (Avango, 2005; Avango et al., 2008; Avango, 2013). The distances from Spitsbergen to the rest of the world and the presence of sea ice caused isolation. Therefore, those mining companies that operated their mines the whole year around, needed winter houses and food stores for at least 10 months. The transport of coal could only take place in the summer and therefore
437
the companies built big coal storages as well as highly effective transport- and ship loading systems that allowed them to export all the stored coal in the short summer. Archaeological surveys at Barentsburg, Longyearbyen, Sveagruvan show which choices the mining companies made (Avango, 2005; Aalders et al., 2007; Avango et al., 2008). The modern whaling settlements in the Antarctic also show how the companies managed the special environmental conditions at the Antarctic Peninsula and at South Georgia (Fig. 2 Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands and Fig. 3 South Georgia). Just like in the case of the mining companies at Svalbard, they needed large amounts of fresh water, especially for the production of steam for the cookery process at shore based whaling stations or on factory ships. During the field investigations remains of dams, pumping sheds, wooden water-boats and iron pipes were found everywhere in the region of the Antarctic Peninsula (Hacquebord, 1992; Avango et al., 2010e2). 4. Structure of settlements and the organization of production The archaeological excavations of the Dutch whaling station Smeerenburg has provided important information on how whaling companies handled the challenges in the Polar Regions in the 17th century. In the beginning the ovens were constructed of boulders and bricks around a copper cauldron in which the blubber was rendered into oil all over the west coast of Spitsbergen. Always near the place where the whale was killed. The workers were lodged in tents and the barrel maker had a tent as a workshop. Later the companies centered their try-works on one or two locations. The English Muscovy Company had two settlements in the Bell Sound and the Dutch Noordse Company only had Smeerenburg on Amsterdam Island, Spitsbergen and two settlements on Jan Mayen to produce whale-oil (Hacquebord, 2004, 2014). The geography of the oldest settlement of Svalbard, Smeerenburg reflects the structure of the Dutch whaling company This company was a cartel of independent chambers and all these chambers had their own try-work on Amsterdam Island. In this way the settlement was composed of seven try-works on a row along the beach, each using the beach in front of the try-work as a natural slipway. All together Smeerenburg had 15 wooden houses. There was accommodation for ca. 250 men (Hacquebord, 1984, 2014). All whaling stations were settlements, used on a seasonal base (Fig. 4, Smeerenburg, Amsterdam Island, Spitsbergen). The structure of the individual try-works shows an effective organization with a clear division between butchering, cutting, cooking and cooling activities. In this way they improved the rendering process. The spatial division of the English whaling stations at Edge point in Recherche-fjord and the Rock in the Bell Sound further south on the Spitsbergen west coast, reflects a less effective production compared to Dutch station Smeerenburg. The cutting platforms were situated far away from the cooking and cooling installations. Since the processing and not the killing of the whales was the bottleneck of the production, the Dutch were producing much more whale oil than the English in the 17th century (Hacquebord et al., 2003). The mining companies at Spitsbergen in the 20th century clearly defined climate and isolation as challenges for settlement building. They expressed an ambition to build housing that would keep their workers protected from low temperatures and extreme wind speeds. They also argued in favor of building settlements that would ensure a quality of living as well as a strict hierarchy that would make workers refrain from costly strikes, in geographical locations so distant from population centers that there was no prospect of hiring other personnel in exchange for striking workers.
438
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
Fig. 4. Geography of the 17th century whaling settlement Smeerenburg on Amsterdam Island Spitsbergen.
From the perspective of the companies, the latter problem was enhanced by the legal status of Spitsbergen as a no-man’s land before 1920, which meant that they could not rely on any state to intervene on their behalf with police (or army) in case of worker’s rebellions (Avango et al., 2014). Archaeological surveys of mining settlements at Svalbard show how the companies tried to ensure social peace by using the built environment. Mining companies who had experienced labor conflicts improved their workers housing and facilitated the production of fresh food by building hen houses, piggeries and cow sheds (Sveagruvan and Barentsburg). In the Soviet mining settlements at Svalbard, the mining companies also built greenhouses to supply garden fresh vegetables. In order to keep workers satisfied, the mining companies at Svalbard also established leisure facilities as libraries, cinema’s, theatre and music performances (e.g. Sveagruvan, Longyearbyen and Brandal city/Ny Ålesund). At the Soviet mining towns Pyramiden and Barentsburg, the mining company built swimming halls, sports arenas and an athletic track. At South Georgia in the Sub-Antarctic, whaling companies faced similar challenges. Although Britain claimed sovereignty over South Georgia and had a magistrate established at one of the whaling stations (Grytviken), the whaling stations were far away from any alternative source of labor and therefore strikes were always very costly because of reduced production results. Therefore, in order to keep workers satisfied, the whaling companies at their stations built soccer fields (Hacquebord, 1992, Avango, 2003; Avango and Hacquebord, 2008; Gustafsson, 2008; Avango et al., 2010-2). Another way to avoid conflicts was to offer workers a way out. When in early May ships bound for Sveagruvan would anchor at the ice edge off the west coast of Spitsbergen in order to supply the mining community with fresh food, workers who wanted to leave the settlement walked over the ice to meet the boats. Archaeological surveys at Spitsbergen has revealed the infrastructure which the Swedish mining company built in order to facilitate this movement of goods and personnel, in the form of huts between the mine and the ice edge (Avango, 2005). At Spitsbergen the mining companies also had ways of implementing social peace by more forceful means. Archival research reveals methods such as black lists, differentiated wages and other
anti-unionism policies. Archaeological field work at historic mining sites such as Sveagruvan, Longyear city and Advent city at Spitsbergen reveals how the companies used settlement plans and architecture to discipline workers. One of the strategies was to manifest hierarchies symbolically by spatially separating workers housing from housing units of engineers and managers. Another common strategy was to visualize the different status of the station employees through the architecture. The whaling companies in the Antarctic designed their settlements at South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula according to similar principles. Just as in the case of the mining companies’ choice of technology, this form of social engineering was not unique to the Arctic or Antarctic. The companies emphasized hierarchy in the same way as most industrial companies did in company towns elsewhere in the world. However, the effort the companies made to represent hierarchy even under the difficult and costly circumstances for building industrial settlements in the areas we have investigated, show the high importance they devoted to the task of maintaining social control (Avango, 2005; Martin et al., 2005; Avango et al., 2008). As the map of Prince Olav Harbor show, the company tried to naturalize hierarchy using the built environment, by symbolically separating the directors building from the workers housing by placing them on either side of a transport system (Fig. 5 Prince Olav Harbor).
5. Political influence and control over natural resources The whaling and mining companies needed to cope with the unsettled legal status of the polar areas in the past. Spitsbergen was, as mentioned in the above, a no-man’s land until 1920 and when the first whaling companies arrived in the Antarctic at turn of the century 1900, Britain had not yet laid claim or re-confirmed older claims to South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Therefore the companies had to find ways to secure ownership or at least some form of legitimate control of the natural resources. In addition, they had to interact with governments of states which claimed sovereignty or political influence over the polar areas concerned. In the archives we can investigate the strategies of the states and the role the companies played in these strategies.
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
439
Fig. 5. Geography of the 20th century whaling station Prince Olav Harbor surveyed by a LASHIPA-team.
In the early modern whaling period the Kings of England and Denmark both claimed the Spitsbergen archipelago and both sent letters with the whalers in which they claimed sovereignty over the archipelago. Archaeological research show how the whaling companies re-enforced and realized those claims on the ground at Spitsbergen. They built solitary houses in order to control certain bays as their exclusive catching grounds. Later armed ships and sometimes even men of war were sent to protect the claims. The archaeological excavations showed that the whaling companies also placed flags and arms in front of the houses at the whaling stations, in order to display the ownership of the try work. In Smeerenburg and on Jan Mayen remains of a fortress were found that was built by the Dutch company to protect its property (Hacquebord, 2004). In the 20th century the mining industry also undertook measures to protect what they regarded as their properties against competitors and sought ways to benefit from geo-political ambitions of states, mentioned in the above. Just like the whaling companies on Spitsbergen before them, the mining firms in the opening decades of the 20th century operated under no-man’s land conditions which meant that there were no laws regulating ownership of the minerals. Such laws were only established when the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen was ratified in 1925. Archaeological surveys in many former mining areas in Spitsbergen have revealed the strategies the companies used to protect their properties. First of all, traces of sign posts claim boards and cairns were found which the companies used to indicate and limit their claims. Secondly we found remains of claim huts, technological artifacts and traces of defense works. Although the Treaty concerning Spitsbergen gave sovereignty over the archipelago to Norway, both Russia and Norway have made efforts to strengthen their influence in the archipelago by material means. In the mining settlements Longyearbyen, Barentsburg and also Pyramiden there are different generations of government buildings with elaborated architectural
designs as well as flags and arms showing the nationality of the installations and the settlements (Avango, 2003, 2005; Aalders et al., 2007, 2008). 6. Impact of industry on the local environment There is no doubt that large scale resource extraction has had profound impacts on fragile polar environments. For historians and archaeologists studying the environmental consequences of these industries the historical remains of whaling and mining contain important evidence. The impact of 17th and 18th century whaling on the Atlantic Greenland right whale population was dramatic. Based on archive research in the Netherland, Germany and United Kingdom in total 122,000 whales were killed and disappeared out of the ecosystem, consequently making a lot of food available for seabirds, fish and seals with as result that some animals may be overrepresented in the Spitsbergen ecosystem (Weslawski et al., 2000; Hacquebord, 2001). Beside this the whalers hunted on walruses, polar bears, polar foxes, reindeer and several birds which means that their impact was extended to these animals as well. Pollen analysis of soil samples near Smeerenburg has made clear that the impact of a relatively small intervention on the vegetation has been great. That’s to say it lasted 150 years before the tundra vegetation recovered from this activity. Beside pollen of plants soot from the cooking process was found in the soil samples taken kilometers away from the blubber ovens (Van der Knaap, 1985). The impact of the 20th century mining at Svalbard and the Arctic and Antarctic whaling industry on the local environment has been much bigger than the 17th century whaling activities in the Arctic, at least in terms of visual impacts. The mining industry at Svalbard used much larger areas for their activities. In addition to the mines they built huge installations such as power- and processing plants, mechanical workshops, large storage areas and
440
L. Hacquebord, D. Avango / Polar Science 10 (2016) 433e440
extensive settlements. This not the only means that they impacted larger areas than the 17th century whalers used for their butchering and cooking activities, but also that the soot from their power plants and other production facilities had a much wider reach. New research has shown that soot and coal dust produced by power plants and mining operations at Spitsbergen fallen on top of the local glaciers increased the speed of melting of these glaciers (Aamaas et al., 2011; Quinn et al., 2011). The reach of some environmental impacts are even global. The near extinction of several whale populations is a well-established fact and the consequences for the larger ecosystem are subject of many biological studies and are topics in the international environmental discussions. Other local environmental consequences of mining and whaling are the remains of the stations and settlements. When the mining and whaling companies abandoned their production sites, they left everything behind and the settlements turned into ghost towns situated in industrial landscapes. The crumbling remains of former industrial workplaces often contain scrap metal, asbestos and other hazardous waste but are also evidence of behavior of industry in remote regions. However, recent clean-up operations (Grytviken, South Georgia and Factory Cove at Signy Island) have removed many remains of these industrial heritage sites and destroyed the information these sites contain for historians and archaeologists. 7. Conclusions Industrial production sites in Polar Regions have a unique capacity to provide important information for historicalarchaeological research. They are nodes of human activities in sparsely populated areas and give us important information about industrial activities in those areas. The sites are unique documents of use and abuse of the natural resources in Polar Regions and can teach us more about the driving forces behind industrial development, design of industrial technology, structure of the settlements and organization of the production, the political influence and control over the resources and the impact of the industry on the local environment. The sites therefore should be preserved for future research. Clean-up operations of these sites should be executed very carefully so that as little as possible is changed at these former industrial sites. Acknowledgements This research was made possible with financial support of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the Swedish Research Council References Aalders, Y.I., Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., de Haas, H., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., 2007. LASHIPA 4. Archaeological Expedition on Svalbard. August 2-25. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Aalders, Y.I., Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., de Haas, H., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., Kruse, F., 2008. LASHIPA 5. Archaeological Expedition on Spitsbergen 27 Juli-17 August. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Aalders, Y.I., 2012. Perceptions of polar resources: a comparison of the animal remains of the russian hunting station kokerineset and the Dutch whaling station Smeerenburg. In: Hacquebord, L. (Ed.), LASHIPA. History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas, Circumpolar Studies, vol. 8. Barkhuis Publishing, Groningen, pp. 33e46. n, Kim, Stro € m, J., 2011. Aamaas, B., Bøggild, C.E., Stirdal, F., Berntsen, T., Holme Elemental carbon deposition to Svalbard snow from Norwegian settlements
and long-range transport. Tellus B 63 (3), 340e351. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., 2007. LASHIPA 3. Industry and its impact in the polar areas from1600 till present. In: Rickberg, S. (Ed.), Swedish Polar Research Secretariat Yearbook. Swedish Polar Secretariat, Stockholm, pp. 62e66, 2006 (published 2007). Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., 2008. The exploitation and heritage of natural exploitation in the arctic and antarctic: the LASHIPA project. Patrim. l’ind. 19, 7e16. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., 2012. Polar industrial heritage sites as resources for historical research. In: Munro, D.M. (Ed.), 2012 Managing Industrial & Cultural Heritage South Georgia in Context, pp. 17e32. Dundee. €gselius, P., 2013. Under the ice: exploring the Arctic’s energy reAvango, D., Ho sources, 1898e1985. In: Christensen, M., Nilsson, A.E., Wormbs, N. (Eds.), Media and the Politics of Climate Change. When the Ice Breaks. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 128e156. Avango, D., Bekooy, B., Gustafsson, U., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., 2005. Report LASHIPA Svalbard Expedition. Arctic Centre University of Groningen. Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., Hacquebord, L., Hartnell, C., 2008. LASHIPA 3 Archaeological Expedition on Spitsbergen. August 7-24, 2006. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., Aalders, Y., de Haas, H., Gustafsson, U., Kruse, F., 2010-1. Between markets and geo-politics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day. Polar Rec. 47 (1), 29e39. Avango, D., Gustafsson, U., Hacquebord, L., Rosness, G., 2010-2. The Myth of the Untouched Antarctica. LASHIPA 8, 5-31 March 2010. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, Groningen. Avango, D., Hacquebord, L., Wråkberg, U., 2014. Industrial extraction of Arctic natural resources since the sixteenth century: technoscience and geo-economics in the history of northern whaling and mining. J. Hist. Geogr. 44, 15e30. Avango, D., 2003. Aktanter i ingenmanslandet: den svenska gipsbrytningen på €m, B. (Eds.), Industrins Avtryck. Perspektiv på Svalbard. In: Avango, D., Lundstro ett forskningsf€ alt, Stockholm, pp. 173e206. Avango, D., 2005. Sveagruvan: Svensk Gruvhantering Mellan Industri, Diplomati Och Geovetenskap. PhD thesis. KTH, Stockholm. Avango, D., 2013. Arktiska framtider och resurser: det industriella kulturarvet som €lla. Bebyggelsehistorisk Tidskr. 65, 52e71. ka Conway, W.M., 1906. No Man’s Land.a History of Spitsbergen from its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country (Cambridge). de Haas, H., 2012. In search of profit in the high arctic. The commercial background of the Dutch expedition to spitsbergen in 1920. In: Hacquebord, L. (Ed.), LASHIPA. History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas, Circumpolar Studies, vol. 8. Barkhuis Publishing Groningen, pp. 34e47. Gustafsson, U., 2008. Modern Whaling Industry in Spitsbergen as a tool for territorial claiming and national sovereignty strives. Patrim. l’ind. 19, 17e24. Hacquebord, L., Avango, D., 2009. Settlements in an arctic resource frontier region. Arct. Anthropol. 46 (1e2), 25e39. Hacquebord, L., Steenhuisen, F., Waterbolk, H.J., 2003. English and Dutch whaling trade and whaling stations in spitsbergen (svalbard) before 1660. Int. J. Marit. Hist. XV (2), 117e134. Hacquebord, L., 1984. Smeerenburg. Het verblijf van Nederlandse walvisvaarders op de Westkust van Spitsbergen in de zeventiende eeuw. PhD thesis. University of Amsterdam. Hacquebord, L., 1992. Hector station on deception Island (south shetland Islands (Antarctica); an environmental study of a whaling station. Circumpolar J. 7 (1e2), 72e97. Hacquebord, L., 2001. Three centuries of whaling and walrus hunting in svalbard and its impact on the arctic ecosystem. Environ. Hist. 7 (2001), 169e185. Hacquebord, L., 2004. The jan mayen whaling industry; its exploitation of the Greenland right whale and its impact on the marine ecosystem. In: Skreslet, S. (Ed.), Jan Mayen Island in Scientific Focus. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 229e238. Hacquebord, L., 2012. In: LASHIPA. History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas. Hacquebord, L., 2014. De Noordse Compagnie. Walburgpers, Zutphen. Hacquebord, L., 2015. Wildernis, woongebied en wingewest. Een geschiedenis van de poolgebieden. Atlas/Contact, Amsterdam. Martin, P.E., Avango, D., Martin, S., Hacquebord, L., Oglethorpe, M., Nisser, M., Rossnes, G., 2005. Industrial Heritage in the Arctic: Research and Training in Svalbard, August 2004. Houghton, Groningen: Stockholm. Quinn, P.K., A.Stohl, Arneth, T., Berntsen, J.F., Burkhart, J., Christensen, M., Flanner, K., Kupiainen, H., Lihavainen, M., Stephard, V., Shevchenko, H., Skov, V., 2011. The impact of black carbon on arctic climate. AMAP Tech. Rep. 4 (Oslo AMAP). Van der Knaap, W.O., 1985. Human influence on natural arctic vegetation in the 17th century and climate change since A.D. 1600 in northwest spitsbergen: a paleo-botanical study. Arct. Alpien Res. 17 (4), 371e387. Weslawski, J.M., Hacquebord, L., Stempniewicz, L., Malinga, M., 2000. Greenland right whales and walruses in the Svalbard food web before and after exploitation. Oceanologia 42 (1), 37e56.