 When formed in 1963, one of the museum's co-founders was Vadim F. Starkov, a Soviet archaeologist from the USSR Academy of Sciences and a prominent figure in the archaeology of Svalbard.The primary subject of the museum is, as the name indicates, the Pomors, inhabitants of the White Sea who feature heavily in the archipelago's history.Starkov held that these hunters were the first discoverers of Svalbard, not Willem Barentsz, a point of view which the museum pursues as well.