PRAISE FOR GONE VIKING: A TRAVEL SAGA
This is definitely one of the best reads of the year. Gone Viking: A Travel Saga is extremely entertaining, vibrant, and filled with vivid imagery you see and hear. Historical images weave in and out of the pages as the reader travels with Bill Arnott, the Anthony Bourdain of these pages.
Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita and author of Rithimus Aeternam
An extremely well-documented travelogue with beautiful imagery.
The Ottawa Review of Books
Bill Arnott is an erudite and charming guide to the spaces and places of the Viking world.
Canadian Authors Association
This is a writer who engages and entertains at every point along the way.
Adrienne Drobnies, author of Salt and Ash
More than a travel memoir, Gone Viking is a spectacular journey across the globe: fun, humorous, heartfelt, and an excellent read!
Michael Seidelman, author of the Garden of Syn Trilogy
Gone Viking is a fascinating travelogue!
Annette LeBox, award-winning author of Peace is an Offering
Gone Viking is a deeply, warmly human account of delightful peregrinations. You will enjoy it in the settled comfort of your armchair. But if youre outward bound to the UK, the Mediterranean, Scandinavia (of course) or even to Haida Gwaii bring a copy along. It will teach you things; but more than that, it will make for wonderful company.
P.W. Bridgman, author of A Lamb: Poems
The writing in Gone Viking is a sensory delight, a stunning portrayal of unique experiences that gets right inside the reader.
Cynthia Sharp, award-winning poet and author of How to Write Poetry
Bill Arnott has a natural gift of storytelling as epic and entertaining as the original Viking sagas. The narrative is infused with authentic voice and wonderful humour, layered with the echoes of other voices. Arnott compels the reader to join him in this must-read quest.
Kerry Gilbert, award-winning author of Little Red and Tight Wire
With humour and keen observation, Arnott takes us from one windswept landscape to the next. Gone Viking makes me want to lace up my boots and follow along in the footsteps of the author.
Jeremy Kroeker, author of Through Dust and Darkness: A Motorcycle Journey of Fear and Faith in the Middle East
In Gone Viking, Bill Arnott inspires intrepid adventurers and armchair travellers alike. Setting out to explore the reach and influence of the ancient Vikings, Arnott uncovers the essence of adventure that is at the heart of every great quest, which is a sense of discovery, felt viscerally.
Jamey Glasnovic, author of Lost and Found and A Few Feet Short
PRAISE FOR GONE VIKING II: BEYOND BOUNDARIES
A perfect book for the armchair explorer. A true delight from a talented travel writer.
John MacFarlane, author of Around the World in a Dugout Canoe
Gone Viking II is a tale so infused with adrenaline-charged exhilaration, it will leave the reader breathless. This book of travels is fuelled by action, humour and unbridled enthusiasm.
Edythe Anstey Hanen, author of Nine Birds Singing
Bill is a first-rate storyteller, and supremely funny. You wont want to travel with anyone else.
Lorette C. Luzajic, editor of The Ekphrastic Review
An engaging, deliciously irreverent and encompassing read.
Barbara Black, author of Music from a Strange Planet
A multisensory trip with laugh-aloud moments and the soulful variety of insights and observations gained only from the road. A wholehearted delight!
Linda Quennec, author of ABF Winner Fishing for Birds
Arnotts latest saga transports us to other worlds with typical finesse, blending the philosophical, historical and geological with healthy doses of humour.
Patricia Sandberg, award-winning author of Sun Dogs and Yellowcake
Bill writes like a poet and dares like an adventurer: paddling white water, climbing mountains and enduring torrential rains and rough seas, and his ability to capture characters is uncanny.
Jeanne Ainslie, author of Caribbean Moon
In Gone Viking II, Bill Arnott takes the reader on an armchair odyssey literally across the map.
Kate Bird, author of Vancouver in the Seventies
Gone Viking II is brimming with spirited characters, salty air, tidbits of trivia and a dose of mischief. Packed with red sand, shark sightings, volcanic eruptions and pub recommendations, Arnotts writing is so vivid youll feel like a stowaway in his backpack.
Anna Byrne, author of Seven Year Summer
Copyright 2021 by Bill Arnott
First Edition
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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN 9781771605434 (softcover )
ISBN 9781771605441 (electronic)
Printed and bound in Canada
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To our amazing #GoneVikingCommunity
And for my dad
CONTENTS
EPILOGUE TO GONE VIKING: A TRAVEL SAGA
Back home. Following eight years of travel, exploration and research. Eight years of viking, or voyaging, the northern hemisphere in the wake of some of the worlds most adventurous explorers. I was enjoying a Vancouver view water, mountains, the bustle of tugs, tankers and helijets, all plying sea and sky.
Hillside homes reflected sun in bursts of fiery gold and beyond the bay, where inlet sprawls into ocean, bulkers glowed in morning light. Moored sailboats pinged a rhythmic and nautical tintinnabulation, a toe-tapping score, as a solitary freighter slid west beneath the big green bridge, bound for who knows where. Maybe Avalon. Over the pole, Icelandic horses were changing colour with the season, akin to amber leaves now littering the city.