Vernacular Images Of The Svalbard Archipelago, 1596 To 1996

Abstract

Drama has always been part of Svalbard's vernacular or everyday images. Drama was central to the serialized whaling prints produced in the Dutch and English printing shops by the seventeenth and eighteenth century's graphic artists, who themselves might not have set foot in the Arctic. These prints soon gained increasing popularity in illiterate Europe. Svalbard's resources, adventure, and exploitation became public knowledge. New names began filling empty spaces on the map prompted by science and exploration. The navigator's and cartographer's coastal sketches were slowly replaced by more elaborate landscape compositions with halftones and perspective. During the nineteenth century, professional artists gained access to the islands, most often hired to record expedition findings. Having proceeded from the particular to the universal, Svalbard's vernacular imagery appears as an emotional awakening to the power of being in an arctic environment that renders an important perspective to our global concerns. <p>