The farfarers: Before the Norse

Tight, clean, bright and unmarked-" After years of research, sparked by his discovery of roofless ruins in Hudson Bay, Farley Mowat presents a speculative history of the first Europeans in North America and a challenge to the presently held notion that the Vikings were the first to inhabit northern Canada. During the sixties, on a windblown shore off Hudson Bay, Farley Mowat observed ruins that could not have been left by the Inuit, the only known first inhabitants of the region. Carbon dating placed these ruins hundreds of years before the Vikings landed in Newfoundland, but the conventional accepted historical theory could offer no explanation for them. Mowat`s search led him to Scotland and the Northern Isles where he discovered ruins that resembled those he had seen on the other side of the Atlantic. He painstakingly researched early historical accounts from Roman and pre-Roman times for answers and was able to reconstruct the story of a forgotten people. Fictional accounts of the Albans in their skin-covered boats, venturing ever farther from known shores, in search of the massive walrus herds that were their livelihood, and a place of safety from the warlike Celts and Romans, are woven skilfully into the re-construction. Provocative and controversial, The Farfarers is a beautifully wrought literary adventure that is sure to excite lively debate. It is a book that challenges perceptions and forces the reader to re-think the origins of the North American continent. (1998) 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 floatplane. 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 determining research and fieldwork over the next 30-odd years--convinced him that he had gotten it all wrong. Another group of Europeans, whom Mowat calls the "Albans," beats 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