True North: Travels in Arctic Europe
Gavin Francis
Language: English
Pages: 300
ISBN: B00796EB8A
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A great web of interconnecting sagas' - The Scotsman 'True North is a wonder-voyage - an immrama - out into the landscape of the northern regions, but also into the mindscape of those many travellers who have been drawn irresistibly northwards over the millennia. Fluent, subtle, tough and often beautiful, True North stands alongside Peter Davidson's The Idea of North and Joanna Kavenna's The Ice Museum as a significant recent addition to the Arctic canon' - Robert Macfarlane 'A deep empathy with the land and its history runs like a golden thread through every chapter of True North.' - Sara Wheeler, The Spectator Gavin Francis is an accomplished teller of traveller's tales. His nuanced, often witty, observations of the people and places he encounters mean True North really gets under the skin of Europe's magical north' - Sunday Herald The stark, vast beauty of the remote Arctic Europe landscape has been the focus of human exploration for thousands of years. In this striking blend of travel writing, history and mythology, Gavin Francis offers a unique portrait of the northern fringes of Europe. His journey begins in the Shetland Isles, takes him to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and on to Lapland. Following in the footsteps of the region's early pioneers, Francis observes how the region has adapted to the 21st century, giving an observed insight into the lives of people he encounters along the way. As with all the best travel writing, "True North" is an engaging, compassionate tale of self-discovery, whilst blending historical and contemporary narratives in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Robert Macfarlane.
the old church walls, used, he reports, ‘to judge the glans penis of men who had been rejected by their wives’. He follows this discovery with a discussion on the physiognomy of the women of Lapland: ‘The vagina in women does not become more ample when they are fat, more likely narrower; the thinner they are, the larger the vagina.’ Further around the coast in Tornio he indulges in a meditation on the relative merits of Finnish and Lappish girls: ‘The Finnish girls have big breasts, Lapp girls
you for this,’ he said, ‘… I’m so pleased with this girl that I count myself very lucky to have such a beautiful child.’ He took her home to Borg with him and brought her up in his household. She was called Helga, Helga the Fair. At the same time on the banks of the river Hvita at the head of the Borgarfjörđ a young boy was growing up, the son of a great Viking named Illugi the Black. The boy was strong-willed, ambitious and argumentative, but supremely gifted with words. He was called
he said. I was eavesdropping. The speaker was a tall and well-built man in his thirties with a black tangle of hair and a jaw bristling with benign self-assurance. His chequered shirt made him look like a Canadian lumberjack. ‘Sorry, could I ask what was that you said?’ I asked. He turned round. ‘Round here are the oldest rocks in the world – well, further south, down around Nuuk. That’s where we’re heading, my wife and I. And you?’ ‘I’m going to Nuuk too,’ I said. ‘We’re going off to camp
functional vowels, and as much communication passes with facial expressions as with words. The houses were arranged around the solitary water tap fed by glacial meltwater. The people sat on their verandas playing cards, swatting flies and waving to me as I passed. There are no roads in the smaller settlements in Greenland, only snaking paths through the scrub between the houses, converging as they approach the jetties. The walled remains of the old Norse farm lay on the far side of the island. I
continuing his stroll he contemplated their origin, correctly arguing how the snow, never thawing, is gradually compacted by its own weight into ice. Baffin and Fotherby continued on in their explorations, though the snow fell hard on the sea around them and the surface began to freeze. The wind blew them south into the great strait separating the island of Spitsbergen from Nordaustland, the most northerly island of the Svalbard archipelago. After eighteen hours rowing in a blizzard through a