In 1614, Dutch sailors planted cabins on a gravel beach at the end of the world, at 79 degrees north latitude, at the north-western tip of Svalbard. Their aim came down to one word: blubber. Bowhead whales abounded then in these waters, and their rendered fat, transformed into lamp oil, lit the cities of Europe. Thus was born Smeerenburg, literally the "blubber city," on the island of Amsterdamøya. The expedition ships that approach it today find there only vestiges laid in an almost complete Arctic silence, and walruses sleeping where once the kettles boiled.

The Rush for Oil

In the 1630s, at its height, Smeerenburg counted 16 or 17 buildings and up to 200 seasonal workers. The campaigns lasted the summer: whaleboats harpooned bowhead whales in neighbouring fjords, crews butchered the catch on the shore, and the blubber melted in great copper kettles set on double furnaces. Competition between Dutch and Danish companies structured the site into rival quarters. Then whales grew rare, techniques evolved toward try-works aboard ship, and around 1660 the station was abandoned to the winds. The Arctic slowly reclaimed the rest.

What You See Today

Landing is by inflatable boat, on a low beach of sand and gravel. The most legible traces are the circular bases of the blubber furnaces: rings of bricks cemented by a hardened mixture of sand and whale oil that four centuries of winters have not erased. Remnants of foundations surface here and there in frozen ground. The whole is classified as cultural heritage: any vestige predating 1946 is strictly protected in Svalbard, and you move under the guidance of guides, touching and moving nothing. This sparseness gives the place its power: it takes imagination to repopulate the shore with smoking kettles, and the contrast between this vanished industry and the site's present purity leaves you thoughtful.

The Walruses: New Occupants

This stretch of sand is today one of the most reliable haul-out sites for walruses in the north-western Svalbard. These colossi of hundreds of kilograms pile flank against flank to sleep, sometimes for days on end, in a chorus of grunts and sighs. Guides set the approach distance; at slow steps, in compact group, you manage to observe them at length without disturbing them. Around, the décor completes the picture: glaciers descending toward the strait, jagged peaks of neighbouring Danskøya, water an ink-blue where guillemots and Arctic terns dive.

An Expedition Port-Call

• Landing by inflatable boat, weather permitting, depending on sea state and the absence of polar bears on site
• Mandatory guidance by guides, some armed, as everywhere in Svalbard
• Protected vestiges: touch nothing, remove nothing, follow circulation instructions
• Dress in warm layers and waterproof boots furnished or required by most expeditions

The Weight of the Place

Some historic sites impress by what remains of them; Smeerenburg moves by what does not. A few circles of brick on a grey beach, the graves of sailors nearby, and all around the vastness that has reclaimed its rights. You measure here the brevity of human undertakings before the Arctic, and also their excess: men crossed terrible seas to render giants of the sea at the foot of glaciers.

Climbing back aboard, your eye returns to the shore where the walruses have not stirred. The bowhead whales, meanwhile, slowly reappear in these waters after centuries of absence. Smeerenburg tells a story of excess and return to balance; few port-calls offer a lesson so clear in such vast landscape.