Vladimir Rusanov Ocean via the Northern Sea Route. Their ship "Gerkules" was too small for the kind of expedition Rusanov had in mind. The last to be heard of Rusanov's expedition was a telegram left at Matochkin Shar on Novaya Zemlya, which reached St. Petersburg on 27 September 1912. In it, Rusanov indicated that he intended rounding the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, and heading east across the Kara Sea but nothing was heard from the "Gerkules" thereafter. He and his 11-man team, including Alexander Kuchin, disappeared without trace a year later in the Kara Sea, off the northern coast of Siberia.
Arctic exploration better pasturage and hunting grounds. Modern scholars debate the precise location of the new lands of Vinland, Markland, and Helluland that they discovered. The Scandinavian peoples also pushed farther north into their own peninsula by land and by sea. As early as 880, the Viking Ohthere of Hålogaland rounded the Scandinavian Peninsula and sailed to the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea. The Pechenga Monastery on the north of Kola Peninsula was founded by Russian monks in 1533; from their base at Kola, the Pomors explored the Barents Region, Spitsbergen, and Novaya Zemlya—all of which are in the Arctic Circle.