Westviking

Book excerpt: Step into the world of sagas, longships, and enigmatic Norse explorers with Farley Mowat’s captivating historical account, Westviking. The Viking sagas speak of a land called Vinland, a place of abundant resources and possibilities. Nearly a thousand years after the events those tales describe, Farley Mowat sets out to decipher these ancient accounts and trace their path along the rugged coastlines of the North Atlantic. In this celebrated classic, first published in 1965, Mowat’s immersive storytelling brings Viking culture to life as he tells the story of Viking settlement in Vinland—now thought to include areas of Newfoundland and New Brunswick—five hundred years before Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. With the vivid prose that made him a bestselling author and beloved storyteller, Mowat follows the stories of Norsemen like Erik the Red, Leif Erikson, Bjarni Herjolfsson and Thorfinn Karlsefni, unravelling their struggles and triumphs as they set sail for the uncharted waters of the New World—then face the challenges of a new and unfamiliar land. Meticulously researched and grippingly told, Mowat infuses his own adventurous spirit into the little-known story of the Viking culture that once took hold on the edges of North America.