page_title: Willem Barentsz
section_title: Excavation and findings
hierarchical_section_title: Willem Barentsz / Excavation and findings
caption_attribution_description: Illustration of artifacts collected by later expeditions to the wintering site of w:Willem Barents
context_page_description: Willem Barentsz, anglicized as William Barents or Barentz, was a Dutch navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer.
  Barentsz went on three expeditions to the far north in search for a Northeast passage. He reached as far as Novaya Zemlya and the Kara Sea in his first two voyages, but was turned back on both occasions by ice. During a third expedition, the crew discovered Spitsbergen and Bear Island, but subsequently became stranded on Novaya Zemlya for almost a year. Barentsz died on the return voyage in 1597.
  The Barents Sea was named in his honour.
context_section_description: The wooden lodge where Barentsz' crew sheltered was found undisturbed by Norwegian seal hunter Elling Carlsen in 1871. Making a sketch of the lodge's construction, Carlsen recorded finding two copper cooking pots, a barrel, a tool chest, clock, crowbar, flute, clothing, two empty chests, a cooking tripod and a number of pictures. Captain Gunderson landed at the site on 17 August 1875 and collected a grappling iron, two maps and a handwritten translation of Pet and Jackman's voyages. The following year, Charles L.W. Gardiner also visited the site on 29 July where he collected 112 more objects, including the message by Barentsz and Heemskerck describing their settlement to future visitors. All of these objects eventually ended up in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, after some had initially been held in The Hague.
  The amateur archaeologist Miloradovich's 1933 finds are held in the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg. Dmitriy Kravchenko visited the site in 1977, 1979 and 1980 – and sent divers into the sea hoping to find the wreck of the large ship. He returned with a number of objects, which went to the Arkhangelsk Regional Museum of Local Lore (Russia). Another small collection exists at the Polar Museum in Tromsø (Norway).
  In 1992, an expedition of three scientists, a journalist and two photographers commissioned by the Arctic Centre at the University of Groningen, coupled with two scientists, a cook and a doctor sent by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, returned to the site, and erected a commemorative marker at the site of the cabin.
  
  The location of Barentsz' wintering on the ice floes has become a tourist destination for icebreaker cruiseships operating from Murmansk.
caption: Objects found in Het Behouden Huys
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