Recommendation: New Viking Voyages

I love water adventures, especially the ones involving practical archeology or anthropology.

I grew up with Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki on a bookshelf just above my bed. I recall buying Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage the first day it was available, bringing it home and devouring this nonfiction tale of Irish exploration of the North Pacific in leather boats. Leather boats! (Icebergs! Whales! Adventure! I was--and am--a fairly enthusiastic armchair voyager.)

Severin's book is still a favorite, a book I read yearly, but W. Hodding Carter has also contributed a worthy volume to this adventurous, salty, usually cold water genre.

A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World. So much fun as we move with Carter from his first inspiration, through many trials, dead-ends, pitfalls, tragedies, successes, fellowship, and more, to the voyage's end. My favorite parts, besides the bantering of the crew, involve Hodding Carter's coming to terms with questions of leadership, practical and spiritual in the best senses. Also, just as Severin's Irish replica, Hodding Carter's craft Snorri is authentic; it doesn't have a motor for emergencies. This vessel must be sailed, and sailed well. No escort vessel either (and neither did Severin's craft). These fellows get in a bit of trouble all by themselves. Two tries to get across the sea. And . . . .

Read the book; you'll have fun, no doubt at all.

Secondly, there's an illustrated companion to Hodding Carter's chronicle:

An Illustrated Viking Voyage: Retracing Leif Eriksson's Journey in an Authentic Viking Knarr.

Lovely photos by Russell Kaye; a fine tribute to the men and women who constructed this vessel, the crew who sailed and rowed this vessel, and to the landscape this Viking craft sailed from, through, and to. This book makes me want to voyage too, or at least to break out the kayak and the camera for some Marin Headlands action, even if I'm not heading out across any sea or up the coast on my own epic journey. Armchair travel at its finest.

P.S. I've also written about Hodding Carter's adventures before:

http://mattduckworthunderwater.blogspot.com/2009/05/annotations-w-hodding-carter.html

Annotations: W. Hodding Carter

Carter, W. Hodding. Off the Deep End: The Probably Insane Idea That I Could Swim My Way Through a Midlife Crisis--And Qualify for the Olympics. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2008.

The title really does tell you what you'll get, but Carter isn't quite as insane as his goal may seem. On the one hand, a classic midlife crisis in action, and on the other, a great how-to for training to swim at an Olympic level, this book takes you for a ride. Carter has an engaging (or annoying, for some) lack of embarrassment as he documents some truly stupid behavior. Mostly, he offers a model of crisis, self-assessment, positive response, frailty and partial failure, and finally, actual progress in self-awareness, commitment and performance. (As a 47-year-old male, I like watching someone else go through the rough stuff and emerge at least somewhat victorious, even if chastened.)

P.S. What's the name of the 40-something swimmer who did reach the Olympic Games this past year? Well, not Hodding Carter, but still . . . .

---. A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Voyage to the New World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

The first book by Carter I'd read. Here, he presents a potentially silly obsession that he manages to take from an idle thought (and he has a boatload of those) to serious completion, struggling and straggling all the way. One part how-to-build-a-viking-boat and another part friendships-are-built-on-shared-adversity, the book is a model of having a goal and getting to the goal-line. Very humorous too.