In the late Eighties, on a boat in the water of Turkey, travel writer and novelist Lawrence Millman meets a stereotypical grizzled trawler captain from Iceland. From this unique man, Millman gets the idea of travelling in the footsteps of the Vikings, from Bergen, Norway, to far-flung “last places” like the Shetland Islands, the Faeroes (even Foua and Grimsey), Iceland, Greenland, Labrador and Newfoundland.
Millman evokes the beauty of the North and relates legends of folk beliefs of the local people. However, his meetings with locals are often less than heartwarming, especially in Greenland, where bungled social engineering has herded indigenes from traditional fishing grounds to small town enclaves where they are hammered by noon daily and have all the usual personal, medical and social problems that come out of alcohol abuse.
But overall humorous, interesting, and provocative are his descriptions of the people he met, such as a killer, a hermit, various experts as well as dive-bombing skua birds.
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