I had really contrasting feelings about the beginning of this book — the first 40% or so — vs the rest. Initially it felt a little tedious and the accounts of the sailors killing polar bears unnecessarily and being snotty about the “savage” native peoples they encountered (who gave them directions and probably could’ve told them a thing or two about surviving in the Arctic) was unpleasant reading. I realize we’re all products of our times, but still. I found myself thinking they shouldn’t be wasting energy picking fights with polar bears given what I knew was coming. The author also had to contend with limited information about the people involved— this took place in 1595-97, so records and personal information are likely scarce, making it difficult to add human interest to the narrative. However, once their ship becomes thoroughly stuck in the ice, the story starts to get interesting (sorry, Dutch sailors) and that’s when it started to fly by for me. The story of how they survived the winter (or didn’t) and then built makeshift open-top boats to start their journey home and set out to sea was fascinating. I enjoyed the final chapter in which Pitzer recounts the political, social, environmental and artistic impacts of their journey, and discusses a trip she took that retraces some of their steps.

Fairly dry account of Dutch explorers being very very bad at winter in the Arctic.

The first 100+ pages are much more technical in nature than the remaining ones, which are filled with human drama -- fantastical tales of the human spirit and the ability to endure physical and psychological hardships. I'm so glad I stuck with this remarkable book!

I enjoy books about polar exploration, so I was very interested to read this account of an early expedition that sailed further north than anyone had ever gone before, centuries before the so-called golden age of polar exploration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dutchman William Barents made three expeditions to the Arctic in search of a northern route to China. On his first two expeditions he reached Nova Zembla (Novaya Zemlya) but was forced to turn back due to heavy sea ice. His third expedition, in 1596, headed more directly north with two ships, captained by Jacob van Heemskerk and Jan Cornelis Rijp. After discovering Spitsbergen, there was disagreement about where to go next. Barents, van Heemskerk, and their crew of 15 others opted to continue on to Nova Zembla, parting ways with Rijp and his ship.

After rounding the northern tip of Nova Zembla, Barents's ship became mired in ice, forcing the 17 men to overwinter on the island's barren shore. The story of this harrowing ordeal, for which they were woefully unprepared, makes up the bulk of Andrea Pitzer's book. Marooned far from any chance of rescue, the crew faced the long dark of an Arctic winter, a constant struggle to find food, terrible sickness due to scurvy, and frequent threats from polar bears. It's an adventure worth reading about, yet despite all its inherent drama, I often found the story curiously flat. It's not necessarily the author's fault--she writes well and has clearly done extensive research, although her digressions into later polar exploration and other tangentially related topics sometimes felt a bit like padding to make the book longer (it's under 300 pages anyway). I think the main problem with the book is that there are no personalities. With the exception of Barents, van Heemskerk, Rijp, and crew member Gerrit de Veer, whose diary of the expedition is one of Pitzer's main sources, no one is mentioned by name. I am sure this is because their names have not been recorded in history, but this unfortunate fact means that much of the story simply reads as "They did this" and "Then this happened." As a result, Pitzer's story lacks the compelling characters and interpersonal drama that makes books about later polar explorers so fascinating.

There's also a lot of repetition, simply because the crew's lives while stranded on Nova Zembla were so monotonous. They starved, got lucky and managed to kill a fox for food, struggled to keep warm, killed a polar bear, trekked to their stranded ship for supplies, went looking for wood to burn or build with, killed another polar bear, etc. From a modern perspective, the number of polar bears they killed was horrifying. Some of them were a direct threat, but others were shot just because that was what the crew did when they saw an animal. At one point Pitzer quotes a modern researcher saying something like, "It's a miracle there's any wildlife left in the Arctic at all."

I'm torn between two or three stars for this one, but I'll round up. This was worth reading to learn about early Arctic exploration and an extraordinary saga of survival under the harshest of conditions, but it dragged on a bit despite Pitzer's best efforts. The anonymity and repetition aren't her fault, but there's only so much you can do with limited source material.
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UPDATE: Upon further contemplation, I'm changing my rating to two stars. Goodreads defines two stars as "it was ok" and that's really what it was. Just okay.

Good information but dry and boring. Also they killed like 30 polar bears -_-;

I had never heard of William Barents before reading this book. His voyages to the edge of the world are extraordinary and this book tells the story of his three arctic adventures.
This is a good book, although there are some dry sections that I found a little dull. But the parts on Nova Zembla were so interesting, some of the details seems crazy to modern readers-such as the fact that the sailors were not given any clothes suitable for cold weather. It's amazing that we know so much about the details of their time shipwrecked and their story fo survival is impressive. I liked that the author gave each chapter a theme and gave a bit of history on the theme. For example, there's a chapter called "Safehouse" and she opens the chapter by talking about different expeditions and the sort of safehouses they have built.
I have read several books about arctic mid-adventures but this one is the earliest journey. I found the author's comments about the idea of an open arctic sea at the end of the book very profound.
This is a great book for anyone interested in arctic exploration and the history of exploration in general.