Kolyma River

The Kolyma corridor linked the rivers and Arctic shores of northeastern Siberia. In the early 1640s, Russian expeditions moved east from the Indigirka, using river journeys and coastal sailing rather than a single continuous road. The parties associated with Mikhail Stadukhin, Dmitry Zyryan and Semyon Dezhnev reached the Kolyma and established wintering places in an already inhabited northern landscape.

These journeys pursued furs, tribute and knowledge of further routes. A century later, the Great Northern Expedition again examined the Arctic coast, often without fully using the experience of seventeenth-century travellers. Kolyma’s early route history therefore joins improvised movements between watersheds and coastal stretches to later attempts at systematic mapping. The practical corridor remained a chain of seasonal journeys.