Olivier Brunel, the first Flemish navigator of…

Olivier Brunel, the first Flemish navigator of the Arctic Ocean, had sailed beyond Lapland in 1565 in search of a northeast route to China.

After establishing a trading post at the mouth of the Northern Dvina River (now Archangel'sk, Russia), he had been imprisoned by the Russian government.

He had been released, sometime around 1566, through the intervention of the Stroganovs, a wealthy Russian merchant family, for whom he then went to work.

As their agent he had established regular trade between Russia and the Netherlands by 1570.

Continuing his search for a northeastern passage, Brunel had become the first western European to make an overland trip from Moscow to the Ob River in Siberia, in 1576.

The Netherlands' commercial sphere of influence has spread over the entire White Sea region by 1578,  and a Dutch settlement is founded on the present site of Archangel'sk, on the Northern Dvina River, thirty miles (fifty kilometers) from the White Sea.