The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II

by A. E. Nordenskiöld

On Spitzbergen there is sometimes to be met with in the interior of the country, on the mountain slopes, a game bird, spetsbergsripan, the rock ptarmigan (Lagopus hyperboreus, Sund.). A nearly allied type occurs on the Taimur peninsula, and along the whole north coast of Asia. It perhaps therefore can scarcely be doubted that it is also to be found on Novaya Zemlya, though we have not hitherto seen it there. On Spitzbergen this bird had only been found before 1872 in single specimens, but in that year, to our glad surprise, we discovered an actual ptarmigan-fell in the neighbourhood of our winter colony, immediately south of the 80th degree of latitude. It formed the haunt of probably a thousand birds; at least a couple of hundred were shot there in the course of the winter. They probably breed there under stones in summer, and creeping in among the stones pass the winter there, at certain seasons doubtless in a kind of torpid state.

The mode of life of the Spitzbergen ptarmigan is thus widely different from that of the Scandinavian ptarmigan, and its flesh also tastes differently. For the bird is exceedingly fat, and its flesh, as regards flavour, is intermediate between black-cock and fat goose.[65] We may infer from this that it is a great delicacy.

When I was returning, in the autumn of 1872, from an excursion of some length along the shore of Wijde Bay, I fell in with one of our sportsmen, who had in his hand a white bird marked with black spots, which he showed me as a "very large ptarmigan." In doing so, however, he fell into a great ornithological mistake, for it was not a ptarmigan at all, but another kind of bird, similarly marked in winter, namely, fjellugglan, the walrus-hunter's isoern, the snowy owl (Strix nyctea, L.). It evidently breeds and winters at the ptarmigan-fell, which it appears to consider as its own poultry-yard. In fact, the marking of this bird of prey is so similar to that of its victim that the latter can scarcely perhaps know how to take care of itself. On Spitzbergen the snowy owl is very rare; but on Novaya Zemlya and the North coast of Asia—where the lemming, which is wanting on Spitzbergen, occurs in great crowds—it is common. It commonly sits immoveable on an open mountain slope, visible at a great distance, from the strong contrast of its white colour with the greyish-green ground. Even, in the brightest sunshine, unlike other owls, it sees exceedingly well. It is very shy, and therefore difficult to shoot. The snow ptarmigan and the snowy owl are the only birds of which we know with certainty that they winter on Spitzbergen, and both are, according to Hedenström, native to the New Siberian Islands (Otrywki o Sibiri, p. 112).

In the cultivated regions of Europe the larger mammalia are so rare that most men in their whole lifetime have never seen a wild mammal so large as a dog. This is not the case in the high north. The number of the larger mammalia here is indeed no longer so large as in the seventeenth century, when their capture yielded an abundant living to from twenty to thirty thousand men; but sport on Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen still supports several hundred hunters, and during summer scarcely a day passes without a visitor of the coasts of these islands seeing a seal or a walrus, a reindeer or a Polar bear. In order to present a true picture of the Polar traveller's surroundings and mode of life, it is absolutely necessary to give a sketch of the occurrence and mode of life of the wild mammalia in the Polar lands.

I shall make a beginning with the reindeer. This graminivorous animal goes nearly as far to the north as the land in the old world. It was not, indeed, observed by Payer on Franz Josef Land, but traces of the reindeer were seen by us on the clay beds at Cape Chelyuskin; remnants of reindeer were observed at Barents' winter harbour on the northernmost part of Novaya Zemlya; some very fat animals were killed by Norwegian walrus-hunters on King Karl's Land east of Spitzbergen, and for some years back the reindeer was very numerous even on the north coast of North East Land, and on Castrén's, Parry's, Marten's, and Phipps' Islands, lying still farther to the north. Although these regions are situated between 80° and 81° N.L., the reindeer evidently thrives there very well, and finds, even in winter, abundant food on the mountain slopes swept clear of snow by storms, as is shown by the good condition in which several of the animals shot by us were, and by the numerous reindeer traces and tracks which we saw on Castrén's Island in the month of May, 1873. Nor does a winter temperature of -40° to -50° appear to agree particularly ill with these relatives of the deer of the south. Even the Norwegian reindeer can bear the climate of Spitzbergen, for some of the selected draught reindeer which I took with me to Spitzbergen in 1872, and which made their escape soon after they were landed, were shot by hunters in 1875. They then pastured in company with wild reindeer, and were, like them, very fat. It is remarkable that the reindeer, notwithstanding the devastating pursuit to which it is exposed on Spitzbergen,[66] is found there in much larger numbers than on North Novaya Zemlya or the Taimur peninsula, where it is almost protected from the attacks of the hunter. Even on the low-lying part of South Novaya Zemlya, the reindeer, notwithstanding the abundance of the summer pasture, is so rare that, when one lands there, any reindeer-hunting is scarcely to be counted on. It first occurs in any considerable numbers farther to the north, on both sides of Matotschkin Schar.

It deserves to be mentioned here that three hundred years ago, when the north part of Novaya Zemlya was for the first time visited by man, reindeer do not appear to have been more numerous there than now. In the narrative of Barents' third voyage (De Veer, Diarium Nauticum, 21st June, 1506) it is expressly stated: "Here it may be remarked that; although the land, which we consider as Groenland (the present Spitzbergen), lies under and over the 80th degree of latitude, there grow there abundant leaves and grass, and there are found there such animals as eat grass, as reindeer, while on the other hand, on Novaya Zemlya, under the 76th degree of latitude, there are neither leaves nor grass nor any grass-eating animal." After this, however, traces of reins were found even at the winter station; a bear, for instance, was killed that had devoured a reindeer.

On Spitzbergen the reindeer have been considerably diminished in numbers by the hunting, first of the Dutch and English, and afterwards of the Russians and Norwegians. In the northwestern part of the island, where the Dutch had their train-boiling establishments, the animal has been completely extirpated.[67] It still, however, occurs on Ice Fjord in very great numbers, which, were the animal protected, would speedily increase.

That so devastating a pursuit as that which goes on year after year on Spitzbergen can be carried on without the animal being extirpated, has even given rise to the hypothesis of an immigration from Novaya Zemlya. But since I have become better acquainted with the occurrence of the reindeer in the latter place, this mode of explanation does not appear to me to be correct. If, therefore, as several circumstances in fact indicate, an immigration of reindeer to Spitzbergen does take place, it must be from some still unknown Polar land situated to the north-north-east. In the opinion of some of the walrus-hunters there are indications that this unknown land is inhabited, for it has repeatedly been stated that marked reindeer have been taken on Spitzbergen. The first statement on this point is to be found in Witsen (Noort ooster gedeelte van Asia en Europa, 1705, ii. page 904), where the reins are said to have been marked on the horns and the ears; and I have myself heard hunters, who in Norway were well acquainted with the care of reindeer, state positively that the ears of some of the Spitzbergen reindeer they shot were clipped—probably, however, the whole has originated from the ears having been marked by frost. That no immigration to Spitzbergen of reindeer from Novaya Zemlya takes place, is shown besides by the fact that the Spitzbergen reindeer appears to belong to a race differing from the Novaya Zemlya reindeer, and distinguished by its smaller size, shorter head and legs, and plumper and fatter body.