The Price of Adaptation: Visualizing Climate Change in the Greenland Sea, 1596–1800

Abstract

Between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries, waves of cooling associated with the Little Ice Age increased the thickness and extent of sea ice across the Greenland Sea, a vast expanse bridging the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Yet although the Greenland Sea was thus particularly dangerous for mariners, European sailors poured into the region. For two centuries, they pursued thousands of bowhead whales first in the bays of Arctic islands, then in the open ocean, and eventually along the labyrinthine perimeter of the pack ice. Their ability to adapt to an unforgiving, volatile environment inspired and informed hundreds of paintings, sketches, and maps in Europe’s port cities, especially those of the burgeoning Dutch Republic. We argue that the rich visual legacy of Arctic whaling reveals the price of climate adaptation during the Little Ice Age. Whales and whalers suffered so investors and merchants could endure steady profits amid a changing climate—at least until the once-thriving ecosystem of the Greenland Sea had been exploited to exhaustion.