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History
Early Greenland Kayaks Return
To The Water
Text and illustrations by Harvey
Golden
With
their extreme differences, the Hindeloopen and Brielle were
prime candidates for replication. Through reconstructing
and using them in varying sea conditions, I hoped to gain
a deeper understanding of each.
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Dutch
whalers, plying the waters adjacent to Greenland in the late 1600s,
brought back not only a wealth of whale oil and furs, but many
artifacts acquired from the Greenlanders. Along with hunting equipment,
skins and ivory, the whalers brought back kayaks. Several of them
still exist, souvenirs from a grand period of Dutch seafaring;
ethnological treasures that offer a valuable glimpse into 300-year-old
kayak forms from Greenland.
Dutch
proficiency in whaling led them to dominate the industry by the
end of the 1600s. Their whaling grounds were primarily in the
vicinity of Spitzbergen Island, east of Greenland. In his book,
The Arctic Whalers (Ferguson Brown & Son, 1937), Basil Lubbock
writes: "Between 1699 and 1708, the Dutch sent out 1,652
whalers and killed 8,537 whales.…"
Diminishing
yields quickly followed the prosperity. Lubbock continues: "By
the year 1720, the Greenland whale had been chased away from the
coast of Spitzbergen and even from the whaling banks.…"
Finn Gad, in The History of Greenland, Vol. 2 (University of Toronto
Press, 1973), writes: "The decline may have resulted from
over-exploitation or migration of the whales…." He also
suggests that lack of shipping activity due to Dutch involvement
in wars may have played a part. As a result, the Dutch concentrated
their efforts in Davis Strait on the west side of Greenland.
Little
is known about the histories of 11 Greenland kayaks thought to
have been brought back by Dutch whalers between 1600 and 1800.
Whaling histories, while numerous, rarely make mention of souvenirs
picked up on a voyage. Gert Nooter explores the origins of 10
of these kayaks in his work, Old Kayaks in the Netherlands (E.J.
Brill, 1971), a study that seeks to accurately identify each kayak's
history using historical records and comparisons with ethnological
texts. No definite conclusions are drawn as to the kayaks' respective
histories. The only certain answer is that they are all from Greenland—and
most likely the Davis Strait side.
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