WESTVIKING: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America

by Farley Mowat ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 8, 1965

Imaginative readers will find this a vivid history which constantly reveals primitive visions and attitudes foreign to a modern mind. The author sinks all footnotes into a huge appendix and allows his text to flow with incidents. The period covered is 960 to 1010 A.D., in and about Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland and Vinland. The history follows the original saga sources very closely, avoids dependence on modern scholarship, has many passages of subjective speculation. The main figures involved are astonishingly few, although the ""supporting cast"" is extensive. We follow the stories of Erik the Red, his ambitious son Leif Erikson, Bjarni Herjolfsson (who accidentally discovered Newfoundland) and Thorfinn Karlsefni, who helped develop Greenland. At their height, Mowat estimates, there were about 5,000 Norse settlers here. Eventually, not being Eskimos or Indians, they found life here too rough and too full of internecine warfare, and went home. What comes through powerfully is the Norse contempt for life, with murder as common as fistfights. They worshipped hammers and Thor the Hammer God, ate like wolves and were given to gargantuan sexual excesses. Depression and super-stitution were endemic...This is a bold, absorbing story with many wry asides.

Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1965

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown-A.M.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1965

Categories: NONFICTION