Long before the "heroic" British exploration of the Canadian Arctic in the 19th century, followed by the Americans and others getting in the game, there was an earlier era, part of the old Age of Exploration, looking for a mythical Northwest Passage, followed by looking for its Northeast Passage counterpart.

The Dutch, not yet free from Spain and not yet fully organized as a nation, jumped in. That's where William Barents comes in

That said, this is light, in part because we don't have nearly as much info about these trips as we do about the likes of Franklin. But, also, pre-Barents information is taken lightly, Hugh Willoughby visited half a century earlier and is mentioned just once. It wasn't just, or even primarily, Russian sailors that visited earlier. Wiki notes Russian hunters were there 500 years earlier.

Speaking of, as other reviewers have noted, the number of polar bears encountered was interesting. But, was it really more than early European explorers of the Canadian Arctic saw, as in Frobisher, etc., or even the 19th century resurgence?