In a location that earned its name for a somber reason – “Stake Bay” on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean – permafrost is thawing, exposing the deteriorated remains of individuals interred there during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1596, Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz first sighted Svalbard, an archipelago now commonly known as Spitsbergen. By this time, humanity harbored a significant desire for whaling, driven by the value placed on whale oil for lighting and industrial lubricants, not to mention the precious ambergris found within.
It soon became evident that Spitsbergen was teeming with these magnificent creatures, or rather, reservoirs of oil, depending on one’s perspective on whaling, which can be influenced by the historical context.
“Only in retrospect does the work of the whaler become malevolent or cruel,” wrote Richard Ellis in “Men and Whales,” a book that chronicles the tumultuous history between humans and whales. “Oil was needed for light and for lubrication; baleen was needed for the petticoats and corsets of women. That whales had to die to provide these things was a fact of life in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.”
Systematic whaling in this region commenced in 1612, and by the mid-18th century, whales had learned to steer clear of coastal areas and the peculiar land-dwelling primates determined to split their bellies open. Humans adapted too, venturing into the open sea to hunt and butcher whales, processing the oil onboard or awaiting their return to shore.
“Whaling really took off during this period. Soon, whaling spanned much of the northern seas, drawing ships from most European maritime powers,” explains the Svalbard Museum. “Far more vessels were engaged in whaling than before. By the end of the 17th century, there could be two to three hundred whale and seal hunting ships in the ice east of Greenland during the summer.”
Dutch whalers had a peculiar habit of naming things quite literally. For instance, in 1619, the settlement of “Smeerenburg” was established, a name that literally translated to “Blubber Town.” On the northwestern coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island of the archipelago, lies an area known as “Likneset,” or “Stake Bay,” where the remains of numerous whalers, finding a semi-permanent rest, were buried.
Due to the ongoing climate crisis, numerous remains have recently begun to reappear in this area. While a rather grim sight, it has enabled researchers like Lisa Loktu of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and Eilín Therese Brødholt from Oslo University Hospital in Norway to study the brief and harsh lives of individuals who ventured above the Arctic Circle in pursuit of a better life and fortune. Their findings have been published in the journal PLOS One.
By examining the skeletal remains, found in varying states of preservation, the team discovered that all individuals were biologically male, predominantly in their early to mid-20s at the time of death, and suffered from diseases even before their demise.
“Scurvy represents the most prevalent metabolic disease within the Likneset assemblage, with skeletal markers indicative of vitamin C deficiency recorded in 18 out of 19 individuals,” the researchers explain in their paper. “Predominantly, the lesions are characterized by periarticular and subperiosteal changes affecting the long bones, most commonly the femora, tibiae, fibulae, and humeri, whereas cranial involvement is rare.”
Scurvy, caused by a prolonged lack of Vitamin C, is a particularly unpleasant ailment, leading to bleeding gums, fatigue, and the reopening of old wounds and scar tissue. This was far from the only issue faced by the young whalers; examinations of their teeth and bones revealed rickets in at least one individual, along with evidence of severe childhood malnutrition.
The labor, as evidenced by the study of the whalers’ bones, was physically demanding. Eighteen out of the nineteen individuals examined showed signs of degenerative joint disease (DJD), or osteoarthritis, conditions typically seen in much older individuals today.
“The upper body is most frequently affected,” the research team adds. “Degenerative and activity-related changes were documented in the shoulders, clavicles, sternums, and elbows of most individuals, particularly in the humeri, scapulae, clavicles, and sternums.”
Having identified several healed injuries among the whalers, including mended fractures and spinal trauma, the research group suggests that the whalers’ deaths were likely not the result of single traumatic events but rather the cumulative effect of prolonged physiological stress, even at such a young age.
“These skeletons show us the human cost of Europe’s first oil industry. As permafrost melts and coastal erosion accelerates, we are losing entire archives of human lives that can never be recovered. We lose not only landscapes but also the human stories held within them,” the authors added. “In these skeletons, we see the physical imprint of one of Europe’s earliest global industries. We can observe how labor, diet, disease, and mobility left physical traces on the people involved in early Arctic whaling. Many of these men died very young, yet already displayed clear signs of severe physical strain, disease, and nutrient deficiency.”
While much knowledge has been gained from these remains, discovered between the 1980s and 2010s, perhaps more importantly, the team found that the climate crisis is erasing these testaments to Europe’s earliest large-scale extractive industries in the High Arctic.
“Rapid Arctic warming is accelerating the degradation of archaeological sites preserved in permafrost, threatening both cultural heritage and the scientific information they contain. Early modern whaler burials in Svalbard are particularly vulnerable due to their organic-rich burial contexts and exposed coastal landscape,” the researchers write in their paper, adding, “The findings highlight the growing challenges of heritage management in Svalbard, where strategies based on in-situ preservation and controlled destruction are increasingly strained by warming permafrost, underscoring the need for systematic monitoring, targeted documentation, and the integration of archaeological data into climate change adaptation plans before invaluable archives are lost.”
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