About the book: 1964 / The theme of this book is, essentially, a very insignificant fact: one phrase from a letter written by the Nuremberg doctor Hieronymus Münzer to the Portuguese King João II July 14, 1493. A phrase not directly related to the topic of the letter, which accidentally came to the author’s mind as an illustration of one of the provisions of which he is trying to convince his addressee. But analysis of this phrase leads us to a very important conclusion that at the end of the 15th century. the Russians not only visited Spitsbergen, but also established a long-term settlement there; that the Russians mastered Spitsbergen at least a hundred years earlier than it was discovered by the Barents expedition. And this conclusion is extremely important for the history of the development of the northern countries: the sailors of Western Europe came to Spitsbergen when the Russians had already visited there, and for more than a century they hunted sea animals, deer, arctic foxes, and polar bears there.