On the coast of Russia’s Kola peninsula, on the northern shore of the Eurasian continent, the cold begins finally to relax its grip. After the unbroken darkness of December, the days grow rapidly longer. By the end of April it is light until almost eleven o’clock at night. In the estuary of the river known later as the Varzina, the hard-frozen surface softens and breaks up. When sunshine pierces the scattered cloud the water glows a rich blue, contrasting with the smooth granite rocks of the fractured coastal rim and with the fresh moss and low plant-cover which clings to them. Every year, as the water defrosts, parties of Russian fishermen emerge from the throat of the White Sea, then work their way north-west, keeping the shore in view.
In the year 1554, one boat, containing just over twenty men, steers around the northern end of Nokuyev island, where the land rises steeply to a rounded summit, and snow covers the dark rock. The crew then turn sharply south, avoiding the shallows and sandbanks, and head for the river mouths which feed into a sheltered bay. Like the returning salmon they are pursuing, the fishermen pass from salt water to fresh, as they follow the estuary inland. Their boat, which they had made themselves, looks primitive. But its single mast allows them to utilise the cold wind which blows from the Pole to the north. Otherwise the men work at the boat’s oars, their heads and shoulders draped in furs, clouds of steam rising from their mouths.
Within the estuary, suddenly, there are shouts. The fishermen point frantically, unable to contain their excitement, bewilderment and fear. Standing starkly out against the treeless backdrop is the skeletal outline of two large ships, anchored in the empty estuary. The sails have been hauled down, but the masts thrust upwards into a wide sky. These are ships unlike any that the Russians have seen before. Cautiously, talking nervously in hushed voices, they row towards them.
Approaching one of the ships in their smaller boat, the Russians notice a complete lack of activity on board, and a peculiar silence. The wind rattles the rigging on the ship’s mast, and the planks of the hull creak and groan after months of being squeezed by the ice, but when the fishermen shout out, there is no response. They draw alongside, then clamber apprehensively from their open boat up onto the deck. At first they bang on the sealed hatches, then kneel to force them open, peering, then stepping nervously down into the gloom below deck. As their eyes adjust to the half-light, a surreal and ghostly scene emerges.
There are men on board the ship, and they are dressed in thick layers of bright, new woollen clothing, stripped from boxes of merchandise to keep warm. They are in a variety of strange and lifelike postures, hunched over fixed tables, lying together in groups, bent over by cupboards of stores. But there is no movement and no noise. All of them are dead. Their bodies are perfectly preserved. They look, it is later said, like statues, adopting a variety of poses, as if they had been placed in them by some artistic creator. Among them are dogs, similarly frozen as they lived.
As the fishermen explore this bizarre scene, in a separate cabin they find the body of a tall, bearded man, seated at a fixed bench, slumped over. Even in death his clothes mark him out from the crew, and beneath his pale arm are parchments which gently lift at the corners in the wind which now blows through the forced-open hatches. But those among the Russian group who can read are unable to decipher the strange script in which he has been writing. Where have these great ships come from? Who are these dead men?
These are not questions that the Russian fishermen can answer. But when they depart back to the White Sea, they take with them all the documents they find on board, including the ship’s log, which details its final movements, and allows historians to do the same.!