From an ecocritical perspective, early modern Dutch history during the little ice age has often been viewed as an example of resilience. Gerrit de Veer’s Waerachtige beschryvinghe van drie seylagien (1598) is one of the most iconic Dutch tales of this period. De Veer’s account of the Dutch shipwreck in the arctic ice of Nova Zembla has etched itself into the Dutch memory as proof of this resilience, represented by heroes like Willem Baerentz who optimistically face tough weather conditions.

Those interpretations hide De Veer’s far more multidimensional account of how humans coped with nature under extreme climate conditions. From the perspective as literary scholars, Feike Dietz and Beatrix van Dam show how De Veer’s text displays a rather flexible and affective attitude towards nature that combines epistemic optimism with vulnerability and humility. They explore how the logbook meticulously kept track of weather changes, as well as of the crew’s changing mental and emotional conditions. It was precisely these vulnerable moments that prompted people to think critically about their own position in relation to their elusive environment. That way, De Veer’s travelogue encourages critical re-readings of early modern texts: it shows that our current need to question anthropocentric views on the entanglement between the human and the non-human has a long history. 

The paper will be commented on by Gianamar Giovannetti Singh.