The Farfarers

The premise of Farfarers is that the Norse were not the first to arrive in Iceland, Greenland and North America. Mowat call the first settlers, Albans, the name generally given to the people of the British Isles who most likely were descendants of the Neolithic peoples of Britain. He argues that as they were driven out by successive waves of Celts, Norse and other invaders, the Alben pushed across the Atlantic, first to Iceland, then on to Greenland and North America.

He traces the history of these people using everything from Norse epic poetry, to the diaries of Irish monks. There is very little evidence on the ground (though there is some), so Mowat is well outside archeological dogma, but the case is convincing and I see no reason to disbelieve the accounts of the Sagas, private journals, and so on just because they are "unprovable". All archeological is ultimately a hypothosis at best, I see no reason to favor tales constructed out of scraps of wood and fire over those constructed out of paper.

It probably helps that Mowat is a first-rate storyteller and this is a rip-roaring good yarn. Also sailing, there's never been a bad book about sailors.



Voices in the Stones
The Overstory
The Wolf at Twilight
Davy
Neither wolf nor Dog
Only Approved Indians
Columbus and Other Cannibals
A World Full of Gods
Grandma Gatewood's Walk
The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs
The old ways
Extreme Ownership
World we used to live in
God is red
Desert Solitaire
Light Action in the Caribbean
steep trails
decline of the west
the white stage
After Progress 
Braiding sweetgrass
Heaven's Breathe
Forest and Sea
Appachian trail ann and myron sutter