Olivier Brunel

Olivier Brunel was a Flemish merchant and explorer who is credited for establishing trade between the Low Countries and Russia.

In 1565 Brunel sailed beyond Lapland in search of a northeast route to China. He established a trading post at the mouth of the Northern Dvina River (now Arkhangelsk, Russia), but he was imprisoned by the Russian government. Through the intervention of the wealthy and powerful Russian merchant family, the Stroganovs, he was released, probably in 1566, and went to work as their agent. In the service of Stroganovs he established regular trade between Russia and the Netherlands by the early 1570s. Due to this events the Netherlands’ commercial sphere of influence spread over the entire White Sea region, and a Dutch settlement was founded on the present site of Arkhangelsk.

Brunel continued to search for a northeastern passage and was the first western European to make an overland trip from Moscow to the Ob River in Siberia, in 1576. In 1581 he entered on an Arctic expedition that ended when the ship was wrecked in Pechora Bay after unsuccessfully attempting to sail through the Yugorski Straits into the Kara Sea. His final attempt to find a northeast route was made in 1584. This ended with his death after his ship capsized in the Pechora River