The Farfarers: Before the Norse

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 archaeological 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 archaeological is ultimately a hypothesis 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.