Photo's: S.N.H.E. / R. Prinsen

Sailing over the polar sea, falling into glacier crevasses and stumbling on a German WW2 plane. All this and a lot more because of the desire to climb the one and only Dutch volcano in the world. The conquest of the Beerenberg, the northern most volcano in the world and the highest mountain of the Netherlands.

After a long and lonely sailing voyage on board of the small yacht Teake Hadewych we approach the mysterious coast of Jan Mayen. The shouts of the polar sea birds sound to us very threatening when they glide over the volcanic cliffs. The black ash ridden coast is almost completely out of sight because of the mist, which is here far above the polar circle a permanent nuisance. Only a small piece of the land is to be seen. The tongues of snowfields extend even to the beach and on the beach we see big chunks of stranded sea ice. With a rattling sound the anchor drops. The yacht Teake Hadewych of skipper and writer Eerde Beulakker floats peacefully at this historical bay. In 1614 the island of Jan Mayen was discovered by Dutch sailor Jan Jacobsz. May. From that year each summer season Dutch whalers came to the island to hunt the Greenlandic whale. Each year they took a northern course until they sailed in the Walrusbay, which they recognised because of the rock tower, which flanks the bay. They called this rock tower because of the resemblance with the church of the Dutch town Brielle 'Brielle tower'. When we go on land we are confronted with the archaeological remnants of the 17th century Dutch whalers. Old wooden planks, yellow bricks, whale bones and rusted iron nails are scattered over the beach. In the heydays of Jan Mayen whaling the Dutch even build houses and a little fort with two canons on the beach. The days of Dutch whaling on Jan Mayen continued until about 1650 when there were no more whales to be caught in the coastal waters of the polar island. While exploring the historical beach we found an old memorial stone for seven Dutch seamen who perished here in one of the first winterings by Europeans in the Arctic. In the winter of 1633/1634 they all perished because of exposure to the cold, scurvy and eating contaminated meat of polar bears.

The text of the memorial stone was no more readable so we coloured the text letter for letter again. As a homage to the Dutch seamen and explorers who discovered this arctic island and tried to winter there we decided to climb and ski the northern most volcano of this world and one could say also the highest peak of Holland. From sea to the crater rim glacier covered. Mighty Beerenberg. Mountain of the Gods. Olympus of the north. A white giant looming out of the polar sea. Isolated, far away, roughly between Greenland and the North Cape of Norway.

We stopped in our tracks when we descended from a hilltop. Not far away we saw the white ice cap, which surrounds the Beerenberg. Amazingly we had stumbled on the wreck of a German Focke Wulf plane from World War 2. Clearly the Luftwaffe symbol was to be seen on a wing. Over the hillside there were metal fragments spread out. At each new hill or bay we came on new discoveries like frozen lagoons, impressive cliffs and graves of polar explorers. When we reached the ice cap we put on our skis and started ascending through the thick layer of clouds which defended Beerenberg. At about 400 meters we came above the clouds and a fine arctic sun received us. After climbing for hours on our skis we pitched our tent on the ice cap. Lucky enough we could now leave our rifle in the camp. We did not expect to see any polar bears on the mountain. Because of the fine weather, sun and no wind are very rare on Jan Mayen, we decided to continue with our ascent. Now we had to use crampons, ice axe and rope to force a route through the labyrinth of crevasses on the 45 degrees steep ice slopes. Each of our expedition team fell at least five times in these dangerous crevasses. Lucky enough we were each time saved by the rope. At three o'clock midnight with the polar sun in the sky we reached the crater rim. On the clouds below we saw the shadow of Beerenberg with a small rainbow on its top. A very mysterious thing to see. We looked down in the crater rim and saw how it was totally covered with ice. The force of the ice had pushed away part of the wall and the glacier crashed from there in a wild and mad surge of more then 2000 meters into the arctic sea. Maybe some of the Dutch explorers looked down of heaven and saw their first countrymen on top of the Dutch volcano?

In a jubilant mood we skied down from Beerenberg to the icy beach. Suddenly I heard a terrible scream. I stopped and saw that our team member Koos had broken his ankle. The Beerenberg had made his point. With a terrible effort we managed to get Koos back to the beach. He had to endure a not so nice sailing trip back over the cold and lonely sea. In the wake of the Dutch explorers.