Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Sleep and Relax ASMR.

On this episode of the podcast I visit public domain review.com or dot org I believe

That's a dotorg or dot com that or it is

And we learn about the myth of Blubertown.

The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit,

dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.

Their goal is to promote and celebrate the public domain in all its abundance and variety.

So make sure to head over to public domain review.org for more brilliant essays

like the one I'm about to read today.

Though the 17th century whaling station of Smeerenburg was in reality at its height,

just a few dwellings and structures for processing blubber.

Over the decades and centuries, a more extravagant picture took hold.

There once that stood defying its far-flung Arctic location, a bustling urban center

complete with bakeries, churches, gambling dens, and brothels. Matthew H. Burkold explores a legend.

Perched on a desolate island in the Norwegian Archipelago of Svalbard, 1500 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle,

sits the settlement of Smerenberg, founded by Dutch Whalers in 1619.

Smyrenburg, literally Blubbertown, was once the busiest polar site for rendering

oil from Blubber. As new hunting grounds and

technologies rendered land-based processing obsolete, the outpost became unnecessary.

Faraway Smeer and Burrs The outpost became unnecessary.

Faraway Smeermberg was abandoned by 1663.

Despite its belief, its brief existence, myths of a bustling blubber town lived on.

...