Matvei Gedenschtrom

Matvei Matveyevich Gedenschtrom or in Swedish, since he has a Swedish name: Mattias Mattiasson Hedenström/von Hedenström 1 (Russian: Матвей Матвеевич Геденштром) (circa 1780 – 20 September 1845) was a Russian explorer of Northern Siberia, writer, and public servant.

Matvei Gedenschtrom attended University of Tartu. He did not finish his studies and left his alma mater in favor of work at Tallinn customs. Soon, however, he was arrested in connection with a smuggling affair, tried, and then banished to Siberia. In 1808, Gedenschtrom arrived in Irkutsk and received his first duty assignment, namely, the exploration of the coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Lacking necessary scientific background, Matvei Gedenschtrom had to study a lot in order to be able to reckon a latitude and longitude of a given location and use scientific equipment in general. Gedenschtrom led the cartographic expedition to explore the New Siberian Islands (together with Yakov Sannikov and land surveyors Pyotr Pshenitsyn and I.Kozhevin). The theory about the existence of Sannikov Land somewhere northwest of the Kotelny Island originated during this very expedition. Gedenschtrom established the presence of the Siberian polynya – patches of open water in sea ice at the edge of the drifting ice and continental fast ice. In 1809, Gedenschtrom visited the eastern shores of an island, discovered by merchants Semyon and Lev Syrovatsky three years earlier, and named it New Siberia (this name would be officially endorsed in 1810). Gedenschtrom charted the coastline between the mouths of the rivers Yana and Kolyma. He also made many trips across Yakutia and areas east of the Lake Baikal.

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