The Farfarers: Before the Norse - Softcover

Farley Mowat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883642566 ISBN 13: 9781883642563

Publisher: Steerforth, 1999

Synopsis

MYSTERIOUS LONGHOUSES in the Arctic, ancient stone beacons in Newfoundland - are they evidence of Europeans who crossed the Atlantic before A.D. 1000? Farley Mowat advances a controversial new theory about the first visitors to North America.
Mowat's Westviking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America (1965) was highly influential in helping to establish the belief, now commonly held, that the Norse visited North America some 500 years before Columbus. And yet "a worm of unease" plagued Mowat even then, a vague feeling that he hadn't gotten it quite right. He spent the next 30 years in search of a theory that would explain inconsistencies in the archaeological evidence (such as carbon-dated ruins not left by the Inuit, but that predated the arrival of Vikings in Newfoundland by hundreds of years). Now in The Farfarers he asserts that another Indo-European people he calls the "Alban" preceded the Norse by several centuries.
Throughout The Farfarers, Mowat skillfully weaves fictional vignettes of Alban life into his thoughtful reconstruction of a forgotten history. What emerges is a bold and dramatic panorama of a harsher age: an age of death-dealing warships and scanty food supply, of long, cold journeys across the night sea into unknown lands.
"A spellbinding story . . . told by a master storyteller at the top of his form." -- The Globe And Mail


"The book is a fascinating glimpse of yesteryear and offers brief histories on the Celts, Saxons, Vikings, Inuits, and other peoples of the northern hemisphere. Written in vigorous, picturesque prose." -- The Edmonton Sun

About this title

Review:

Farley Mowat's niggling doubts began in the summer of 1966, while he was tooling around the Canadian Arctic aboard a single-engine Otter float plane. The previous year, he had published the influential Westviking, a book that presaged the now widely held opinion that the Norse arrived in North America some 500 years before Columbus. But what Mowat found that summer of '66--troubling evidence that would be buttressed by determined research and field work over the next 30-odd years--convinced him that he had gotten it all wrong. Another group of Europeans, whom Mowat calls the "Albans," beat the Norsemen to the punch by a few hundred years, arriving in North America as they were both fleeing the rapacious Vikings and pursuing precious walrus ivory.

A professional scientist but an amateur anthropologist, Mowat likes to stir the pot--and he does it well, with a combination of scientific rigor, good-natured wit, and old-fashioned storytelling. (It's easy to imagine Mowat as an ideal companion out on the monotonous tundra, spinning endless stories over wine and cigarettes.) Interspersed among discussions of the Albans' culture, ethnography, and use of technology, Mowat's speculations on their trips and travails in fictional "vignettes" fill in the "immense lacunae" in the historical record. But his reasoning is always so sound--and his narrative so captivating--that you'll find it hard not to join Mowat's speculative journey with the Farfarers. --Paul Hughes

From the Inside Flap:

In this provocative bestseller, Farley Mowat challenges the conventional notion that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach northern Canada. Mowat offers instead an unforgettable portrait of the Albans, a race originating from the island now known as Britain. Battered by repeated invasions from their aggressive neighbours -- Celt, Roman and Norse -- the Albans boarded seaworthy, skin-covered boats and fled west. Their search for safety, and for the massive walrus herds on which their survival depended, took them first to Iceland, then to Greenland, and, finally, to the land now known as Newfoundland and Labrador.

Skillfully weaving together clues gathered from forty years of research, Mowat presents a fascinating account of a forgotten history. The Farfarers affirms Mowat's status as one of Canada's most powerful chroniclers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Steerforth
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1883642566
• ISBN 13: 9781883642563
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 377