BOOK REPORT: THE FARFARERS: BEFORE THE NORSE by FARLEY MOWAT

 

 

   Farley Mowat 1921-2014

I THOUGHT I WOULD DO A SHORT REVIEW  of Farley Mowat’s wonderful tale of the Alban people of ancient Europe. Combining history, archaeology, interviews, and fictionalized accounts, Mowat weaves the story of a people’s search for a homeland that begins in prehistory and ends (if it does) in modern-day Newfoundland. In a previous book, written in 1965, Westviking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America, he details the history of Norse settlement in Greenland and speculates on their pre-Columbian activities along the east coast of North America. Mowat traces the outbound migrations of the people who became known as “Vikings” (the name means “pirate” or “raider”), beginning in the eighth century from their native Scandinavia. In the following centuries*, the Vikings did indeed raid, conquer and settle coastal Britain, Scotland and Ireland, as well as the North Islands, the Shetland and Orkney islands, the Danish Faroe islands, Iceland and Greenland. In addition, he presents archaeological evidence, then controversial, that Norse people had visited and established trading settlements in Newfoundland and Labrador, centuries before the arrival of Columbus.

Mowat continued his interest in early North American history by conducting interviews with hunters, farmers, and fishers, and travelling extensively in the region to locales where the Vikings had been active, including Greenland and Britain. Over the years, he began to wonder if another European people had settled the north of Britain, Iceland, and coastal Greenland, as well as Labrador and Newfoundland, before the Vikings—that is, was there an earlier people, all but unknown to the history books, who had preceded the Viking migrations across the northern regions of Europe and North America? Mowat became convinced that a people called the Albans had migrated from the Balkans, across Southern Europe, eventually making their way along the Irish and Scottish coasts until they established settlements in northern Scotland and eventually the Northern Isles of Britain. Later, they were evicted by encroaching migrations of Vikings, leading them to settle first in Iceland and then along the shores of Greenland, and finally crossing the ocean to Labrador and Newfoundland. This is the history Mowat writes about in his 1997 book, The Farfarers.

    Alban house recreation. Stone foundation, boat roof

It is a complex story of migrating and settling, war-making and piracy, trading and exploring. There are a lot of moving parts to it, with the histories of several ethnic peoples, time frames in the centuries, and migrations across thousands of miles. He wrote Farfarers after decades of research and speculation. ("Farfarers" is the name he gave to a fictional Alban clan’s ship in his retelling of how they lived.) One piece of the puzzle that directed Mowat to the possibility of pre-Viking Iceland and Greenland settlements (we are taught that the Vikings were the first to settle Iceland around 900 A.D., and Greenland some time after) were references in old Norwegian and Icelandic “Sagas” to a place across the ocean called “Alba-in-the-west”, which Mowat came to believe referred to southwestern Newfoundland, and to communities found there that were ones established by Alban traders and settlers centuries earlier. And archaeological discoveries of stone foundations and hearths found along the west coast of Greenland and in Labrador and Newfoundland, were additional clues suggesting they were made by Europeans arriving before the Vikings. It would be difficult to summarize Mowat’s decades-long research and speculations, but I will say the narrative he crafts in Farfarers provides a fascinating alternative history of European migration and settlement patterns. His prose is robust and engaging; he is a gifted storyteller, and the history of the Albans** is brought into sharp focus as Mowat describes what happens, or could happen, when people—families, clans, nations—move and migrate, trade and assimilate, accommodate and acculture over time, and also how they can come into conflict, make war and destroy. Mowat describes the “valuta” trade in walrus ivory, hides and oil and how it led the Albans further and further north, first to establish trading stations and later permanent settlements. And how ninth century Norse Vikings began to follow the Albans, in search of similar riches, and eventually crossed the ocean to Newfoundland.

I’d never much considered the possibility of trans-Atlantic trade and North American settlement by Europeans before Columbus’ arrival in 1492. That such activities may have occurred centuries earlier is exciting and encourages me to examine other counterfactual historical narratives. Whether Mowat is right or not about the Albans and their role in trans-Atlantic settlement--his thesis has been challenged by mainstream archaeologists and historians--the fact remains that the best reason to read The Farfarers is because it is a ripping good yarn, one that is told by a master storyteller!

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*Of course, the Vikings also raided, traded and settled European locations, as well, venturing as far as the Mediterranean.

 

**He speculates that the Albans spoke a non-Indo-European language and that a remnant population may be found in the Basque region of Spain. He further suggests that modern Newfoundlanders living in the St. George’s Bay region on the island’s south-west coast, may have ancestral ties to the ancient and all-but-forgotten Albans.

 

 

Mowat, Farley. The Farfarers: Before the Norse. Key Porter Books. Toronto, 1998.

 

 

Cheers, Jake