Bill Arnott - Gone Viking II: Beyond Boundaries

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

We would like to also take this opportunity to acknowledge the traditional territories upon which we live and work. In Calgary, Alberta, we acknowledge the Niitstapi (Blackfoot) and the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, which includes the Siksika, the Piikuni, the Kainai, the Tsuutina, and the Stoney Nakoda First Nations, including Chiniki, Bearpaw, and Wesley First Nations. The City of Calgary is also home to Mtis Nation of Alberta, Region III. In Victoria, British Columbia, we acknowledge the traditional territories of the Lkwungen (Esquimalt and Songhees), Malahat, Pacheedaht, Scianew, TSou-ke, and W SNE (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum) peoples.

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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.