True North: Travels in Arctic Europe

by Gavin Francis

Driven by a yearning to experience the vast skies and frozen beauty of the North, Gavin Francis goes in search of the people living along the northern limits of Europe. From the first Greek explorers to the Vikings to modern polar adventurers, he travels through history and legend to find out why – and how – we are drawn to the North.

Francis's encounters in the Arctic teach him as much about that sense of longing for the North, and of belonging to the North as the seafarers, warriors, monks and poets whose stories he follows. In Shetland, the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and Lapland, Francis finds a way of life characterised by both peace and unease, threatened as it is by the shadow of climate change and the tense, ever-increasing importance of Arctic Europe in global power politics

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, Nature, Scotland, Environment, Biography Memoir

334 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 15, 2008

About the author

Gavin Francis was born in Scotland in 1975, and has travelled widely on all seven continents. He has crossed Eurasia by motorcycle, and spent a year in Antarctica. He works as a medical doctor as well as a writer.

When travelling he is most interested in the way that places shapes the lives and stories of the people who live in them.

His first book, True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, explores the history of Europe's expansion northwards from the first Greek explorers to the Polar expeditions of the late 19th and 20th centuries. It was nominated for a William Mills Prize for Polar Books. Of it Robert Macfarlane wrote: 'a seriously accomplished first book, by a versatile and interesting writer... it is set apart by the elegance and grace of its prose, and by its abiding interest in landscapes of the mind. Francis explores not only the terrain of the far North, but also the ways in which the North has been imagined... a dense and unusual book.'

In 2011 he received a Creative Scotland Writer's Award towards the completion of a book about the year he spent living beside a colony of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. Empire Antarctica will be published by Chatto & Windus in November 2012.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a travel writer, Gavin Francis is no Bill Bryson. He does not exude wit and charm, and his anecdotes are hardly side-splitting. Then again, it may be his subject matter. It would take an astonishingly brilliant writer to make many of the places this author visits seem warm and inviting.

Francis travels to the Shetland and the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, and Lapland.
There's a lot of boat trips, and some hitchhiking. Though his journey is not exactly spellbinding, he manages to impart some fascinating facts while providing well-researched histories of each area. Francis also throws in some violent and bloody mythology free of charge. Each chapter contains a map, and there is a nice collection of color photos in the center.

All in all, it was a decent look at a bunch of places I'll probably never see in person.


Uummannaq, Greenland


Pallastunturi National Park, Lapland aka Where Santa Lives


Muckle Flugga, Shetland

I know I'm easily amused, but the fact that there is a place on this planet called Muckle Flugga makes me absurdly happy!

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intelligent and beautifully written. From Shetland to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and Lapland Francis, a young Scottish doctor, takes us on a journey of discovery through the history of exploration of the far north, spanning over 2,500 years. His journeys often follow those of his predecessors, e.g. St Brendan, Viking settlers, the Moravians, Nansen, and he intertwines their stories with his. Although he meets locals and fellow travellers along the way, the book is not reliant on their stories as so many others in this genre are. Just as often, he walks into the wilderness on his own to experience the land in solitude. He makes us very aware of the fragility of these northern lands, at the mercy of environmental changes such as global warming, and the inevitability is heartbreaking.

I didn't want this book to end but I will keep it on my bookshelf as a reference and also so that I can occasionally pick it up and read his elegant prose.

The ship trailed along the north coast. Through binoculars I saw the sites where trappers had built their huts, strung out along the northern beaches like pearls in a necklace of isolation.

Norwegian and Swedish are sung rather than spoken.......Finnish is more fluid, more complex, and in many ways more beautiful.....The Finnish language has the cadence and rhythm of streams and rainfall, it sounds the way that drawing circles in the mud with your fingers feels.

Islands stood out to sea like scattered jewels, encrusted with foam as the power of the westerly ocean swell broke over them.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful travel book, one of my favourites of this year. The author describes the area's origin stories, weaving in his own experiences of his travels. Contains a nice list of sources with some great literature to read as a follow up. Now I really want to return to the Arctic again..

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gavin Francis is a Scottish doctor working in Africa when he decides he's had enough of the Tropics and plans a trip to the European Arctic. He will visit Shetland, Faroe, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and Lapland.

I've become very interested in those regions after reading a book written by a Greenlandic shaman, Schamanische Weisheit für ein glückliches Leben (Einzeltitel Lebenshilfe), which is unfortunately unavailable in English. The author is the famous shaman Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, and, while the book is centered on spirituality, it also offers some insight into Greenlandic life.

For this reason I decided to buy some books about Inuit people and travelogues about the Arctic. And this book by Gavin Francis is a very good one if you're interested in this area.

Francis has read many books written by ancient and modern authors who traveled around the Arctic: explorers like Pytheas or Fridtjof Nansen, travelers like Karel Čapek, enthusiasts like Roald Amundsen. He has also read important sagas, especially Icelandic ones, like Egil's Saga. He sets on his journey in the hope of retracing these authors' steps, and he mostly succeeds in doing so.

Francis' travel notes are alternated with reports from the authors he's read, which he summarizes in the book. So we have history, travelogue, nature, society, enviromentalism, and more.

Francis tells us about the places he visits, the people he meets, the traditions he gets to know, the nature he sees, the history of the places, and much more. It is all very interesting and well written. There are also some (not many) great pictures, which unfortunately don't look so great on a Kindle Paperwhite, but can be seen on the author's website.

I would recommend this book if you are interested in the Arctic or in travelogues in general.

*

For a review in Italian, please visit my blog: https://sonnenbarke.wordpress.com/201...

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting enough book. My favourite part was about the Faroes.

Also, I now have some understanding as to why the Gulf Stream may start cooling, (but I'm not sure how long I'll be able to remember how this works!)

[Craig Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I had enjoyed Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession by Gavin Francis so much I sought out his earlier work and thanks to an interloan from the Calgary Public Library I was able to read True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, originally published in 2008. In this work Francis traced the steps of explorers throughout the past, except in Francis’s case he had the conveniences of modern transportation. He did try to copy the explorer experience by camping in a tent versus staying in a hotel. True North is the diary of his voyage, starting in the northernmost part of the UK, the Shetland Islands, then moving to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and finishing in Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish Lapland.

Francis combined his own travel story with the histories of the explorers he emulated. Chapters were divided seamlessly as he wove his own travelogue amidst the published accounts and private letters of those who preceded him centuries before. The author was cognizant of the competitive drive of explorers to get there first, and sometimes centuries would lapse between separate individual “discoveries” of the same places. Regardless of anyone’s claim to immortality by being a discoverer of new lands, Francis revealed evidence that others had arrived even earlier. And in many of those cases, the explorers (such as the Vikings) couldn’t have cared less.

Since the author visited Iceland shortly before the financial meltdown his interactions with the locals weren’t preoccupied with doom-and-gloom. He hitchhiked often (Mark and I even picked up a hitchhiker during our Ring Road trip around Iceland in 2015) and the drivers throughout his travels were so friendly, sometimes offering him back to their place for dinner.

Francis was bewildered why he couldn’t sail from Iceland to Greenland directly, which is what another traveller friend of mine has said when he made a similar puddle jump. I liked the way the author phrased it:

“But instead of sailing over the Denmark Strait I was going to have to fly to Denmark, and from Copenhagen airport fly back out west again over the island I had just left. It seemed wrong, especially in these days of concern over our ‘carbon footprints’, but in planning my trip there had been no other way.”

While there may have been no passenger ship routes from Iceland to Greenland in 2008, I wonder if he would have chosen to fly instead. It makes sense that he would, instead of backtracking to Denmark. I have checked and can see that Air Greenland currently flies from Keflavík to Nuuk and Icelandair flies from the Reykjavík city airport to Nuuk, each flight taking only three hours and twenty minutes. However there is always the possibility that these flights were introduced after 2008.

Francis charmed me with his descriptions of Arctic scenery and I cite his most memorable passages that inspired multiple rereads:

“Near the water’s surface, seven hundred metres below, fulmars circled on the up-draught of air like motes of dust in a column of light.”

“Behind me to the south were the eighteen islands of the Faroes; separated by narrow and broad sounds, joined by innumerable tunnels, bridges and ferries, fracturing the sea around them like a broken mirror.”

“The waiter had hair like a seam of quartz, pale blonde and flecked with grey.”

“Anna’s and her husband Olafur’s house was a typical suburban home, a white cube on a friendly street that seemed out of place in the landscape that lay around the town. The black cliffs to the south across the fjord seemed to glower in disapproval. Electric lighting and central heating, however appreciated by the people of Borg, jarred with their surroundings. I had the impression that the mires around the town wanted to swallow it up.”

“The valley was bounded on both sides by high mountain ridges sprinkled with snow, their summits angular and brittle, whipped into peaks like a tray of meringues.”

“A river meandered across it, meeting tributaries in a sunken brocade of lace linked with shining threads of water.”

“Ice was sprinkled on the ocean like chalk crumbled over a mirror.”

“The Finnish language has the cadence and rhythm of streams and rainfall, it sounds the way that drawing circles in the mud with your fingers feels.”

As a speaker of Finnish I can’t imagine how he can compare the language to mud circles. I tend to describe Finnish discourse as resembling rapid gunfire. Francis’s description seems to suggest a slow and lugubrious cadence. I think I will ask the author; we have been in touch since my review of Island Dreams.

Francis included an insert of colour photos to accompany his travel stories. His Notes on Sources will inspire future reads.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And then there is still another journey, or pilgrimage, North; this makes for nothing else but just the North; because there are birch trees and forests there, because grass grows there, and plenty of blessed water is sparkling there; because there is a silvery coolness there, and dewy mist, and altogether a beauty that is more tender and more severe than any other…”

What is it about the Arctic North that captivates both modern day and ancient exploration? Gavin Francis captures the intrigue, the history, the myth and saga of the European Arctic in ‘True North: Travels in Arctic Europe’ as he takes us on a voyage of epic proportions from the Shetland Islands to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and across Lapland. This is actually not just a travel anthology, it is a history book, geographic study, narrative, reflection, anthropological and socio-cultural commentary. It is a journey to the far flung regions of the extreme north, the habitation of the Hyporboreans, the search for Thule.

For me, ‘True North’ was an opportunity to dig deep into the part of the globe that I love so much and am truly quite enamoured with. The book reinforced so many things about some parts of the Arctic that I have read, gave me lots of new information to follow up and introduced me to some places that are now firmly on my To Be Visited list.

I was actually a bit sad when the book finished because I felt like I had shared an epic journey with Francis. I will definitely reread many parts of this one again.

Naturally 5 stars from me!

[Vicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Francis sets his compass and travels in the tracks of early explorers of the North, following their searches for ultima Thule, the furthest North, the limits of the known world. Starting in Unst, the northernmost of of the Shetland Isles, he travels to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, the Sápmi area of northern Scandinavia, and the Svalbard Archipelago.

Weaving together history and travelogue, and bringing in the stories of historical figures including Pytheas, Brendan the Navigator and Fridtjof Nansen, Francis focuses on the idea of North, and the imprint that it leaves on the imagination of the individual. The immediacy of the writing, and the strongly visual element envoked when describing the vast, stark landscapes make Francis an ideal companion for exploring the North of the map and the North of the mind.

[Frankie Saxx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the way Gavin Francis interleaves the history of arctic exploration and discussion of the effects of climate change on the arctic with his personal travel narrative and modern impressions of the region.

[Stephanie Ricker · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my prep reading for the Faroe Islands, I've discovered the literature pool to draw from is quite a lot smaller than for Iceland...more of a puddle. A fascinating puddle, to be sure, but my library's interlibrary loan department is having to hunt high and low for these books. As a result, I wanted to read True North even though only a portion is about the Faroes; the rest is about the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, and Lapland--to be fair, all places I'm also mightily intrigued by.

I had some mixed feelings overall. There is undoubtedly some fascinating information here, and I admire the guts of anyone who simply backpacks and hitchhikes around the Arctic countries, camping alone amongst the mountains and glaciers. But I couldn't shake the feeling, especially in the first two-thirds of the book, that the author was being condescending in his descriptions of the people he encountered, and the first couple pages talking about his work in Africa were particularly off-putting. Given his vague comments about his location, they further cement the mistaken idea that all of Africa is "like that" and misses the context leading to the situations he saw. At first I thought he was just very young, as the book sort of had the "I'm a college student who has figured out the world's problems" vibe, but he was in his 30s when he made this trip.

He also made several inaccurate statements about Iceland (one of which was about the country having mosquitos in 2008--totally untrue until just this month, actually, and Icelanders aren't happy about the bloodsuckers' recent arrival on their shores), which made me wonder how much I could trust what he said about the other countries that I know less well. He also claims at one point that "Frey, Frigg, Freyja, Friggja, Fricco. All these names come from the same stem of an Old Germanic word, and are all perhaps best translated as 'f***.' " This is etymologically spurious at best, just plain untrue at worst.

I felt like I had to fact-check everything he said, which makes this pretty unhelpful in terms of a travel book, but I can't deny some of the descriptions and history of these northern countries really drew me in. Two and a half stars.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Von den Shetlands über die Färoer Inseln, dann nach Island. Von dort aus weiter nach Grönland, Spitzbergen und schließlich nach Lappland: das ist die Reiseroute von Gavin Francis. Ohne Auto, dafür mit Rucksack und Zelt macht er sich an die Nordspitze Europas auf.

Gavin Francis arbeitet auf einer Krankenstation in Afrika, als die Idee einer Reise in den Norden bei ihm aufkommt. Der Anstoß kommt von einer Kollegin, die ihm erzählt dass sie die Hitze nur ertragen kann, wenn sie an ein Kontrastprogramm denkt. Kaum ist er wieder zuhause, da bricht er auch schon wieder auf.

Der Anfang ist leicht: der Schotte kann auf der Reise zu den Shetland-Inseln im eigenen Land bleiben. Mit dabei hat er ein Buch über nordische Sagen und folgt den Spuren der Charaktere, die er darin findet. Auf Shetland angekommen stellt er schnell fest, dass Landsleute oft sehr unterschiedlich sind. Unterschiedlich bedeutet aber nicht negativ. Vielmehr scheint sich das Leben auf eine angenehme Weise langsamer abzuspielen, je weiter nördlich er ist. Die Ortschaften werden kleiner, man kennt sich untereinander und nimmt den Reisenden mit offenen Armen auf.

Aber diese Gemächlichkeit ist nicht für alle gut. Gavin muss feststellen, dass manche Jugendlichen das Leben zu langsam ist und sie lassen ihrem Frust und Langeweile auf eine unangenehme Art freien Lauf. Auch diese Episoden erzählt Gavin aus der Sicht des Beobachters, ohne zu bewerten.

Gavins Art zu reisen dauert lange, aber das macht ihm nichts aus. Erst kurz vor Lappland fällt ihm auf, dass er die Reise auch mit dem Auto hätte machen können. Das wäre mit Sicherheit auch interessant gewesen, wie auch die ganze Reise. Ich habe schon einige Reiseberichte gelesen, aber Dem Nordpol entgegen ist die Erste, bei der ich mir vorstellen kann, die genauso zu machen.

[Tschahu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es war wirklich anstrengend das Buch zu lesen und es hat sich zwischendurch ziemlich gezogen fand ich. Allerdings habe ich es auch durch einen Urlaub unterbrochen. Das war jetzt das zweite Buch das ich aus der Reihe der Dumont Reiseabenteuer gelesen habe und es hat mir wieder nicht sonderlich gut gefallen. Beide Bücher waren allerdings vom gleichen Autor. An sich fand ich das Buch nicht wirklich schlecht allerdings war mir etwas zu viel Geschichte in den Büchern. Ich finde es zwar interessant wenn man zu den Orten an die man reist auch einen historischen Überblick gibt aber es war eigentlich mehr historisch was hier erzählt wurde als die Gegenwart in der der Autor sich befindet. Zumindest kam es mir so vor. Ich werde demnächst noch ein anderes Buch aus der Reihe von einem anderen Autor lesen...mal sehen ob in der ganzen Reihe so detailliert historisch beschrieben wird oder ob das speziell am Autor lag.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gavin Francis wrote this book on his travels to the remote islands of Arctic Europe and Lappland while living for a year in Antarctica. It is similar to Malachy Tallack's 60 DEGREES NORTH in that he covers similar ground. He, like Tallack, began his journey in the Shetland Islands, visited the Faroes, went on to Iceland and Greenland, and then circled back to Svalbard and Lappland. Both books had side themes to their travels. While Tallack's book explored sense of place in all the places he visited, Francis followed the travels of ancient explorers of these places. I resonated more with the sub-theme of sense of place in the earlier book rather than the ancient history theme in this one. Still, I liked how he brought out of these places in his travels in a very sympathetic way.

[Karin Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I share the author’s fascination with remote places but I’m a bit of a softy so I’m happy to follow his travels from my armchair!
There’s a good mix of Gavin’s own travels and a history of Arctic travel from St Brendan to the 20th Century.
As a half Swede I bristled at his characterisation of Sweden as a place which helped the Nazis and where he spotted a biker with a swastika tattoo. He did then go on to say some more positive things but that first impression stuck! That sort of thing always makes me wonder what unhelpful generalisations I have missed about areas I’m less familiar with.
I’ll not let that niggle spoil my enjoyment of a very absorbing book.
I would like to know how he finds time for so much travel alongside working as a GP but that’s mainly envy on my part!

[Imogen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Good travel writing, not great. This book is peppered with human/personal anecdotes, tales from mythology and well-researched historical accounts detailing arctic explorations of the past. There are some intelligent insights into life in the North, particularly with regard to the challenges posed by tourism and climate change, for example. I was slightly disappointed to find that the entire trip was undertaken during the summer/early autumn, but I suppose camping in Svalbard in January would have posed a whole other set of challenges...
(Bonus points for beautiful cover.)

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 3.5 star book. The travel elements, the meeting with people and the embedded history are all very interesting and I learned all sorts of things I did not know, but the pace of the book sagged in the middle because of the inclusion of much too much detail of the Icelandic and Greenland sagas.

[Carianne Carleo-Evangelist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something about reading this while in some of the regions he visited, the bulk on the plane to and on a road trip in Iceland. I know of the Sagas but not the rest of the history and I know virtually nothing of Scotland. Loved how he weaved his trip with the history on which he walked and in some cases the footsteps of those he was following. Excellent travel guide meets history overview

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intelligent and beautifully written ode to the North. I enjoyed immensely Gavin Francis' carefully constructed balance of personal memoir, history, and mythology.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most interesting.

[Ken Greenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into the region we just came back from.

[Simon Yoong · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty entertaining read, though the historical anecdotes lost me here and there. I actually thought the book was about the north pole, but was still a good surprise.

[Isabel M · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found aspects of the history interesting. The pacing was clunky. I grew bored of it quickly.

[Eric Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this, it made me want to travel. Docking one star for occasional laddishness that to me almost came across as belittling some of the people he met.

[Amy Doeun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great introduction to an area of the world I know little about but is not on my bucket list. I must go there. Especially to Lapland.

[Babz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first forray into travel literature but I must say I enjoyed this book immensely despite taking quite a while to read. The north has always really appealed to me and it is apparent that the author feels the same way as well. I learned much of the history of exploration in Arctic Europe from reading this book, as well as being a joy to read the descriptions of the beautiful Arctic scenery it was educational. A beautiful book from start to finish, I would definitely recommend it.

[Snicketts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had a nice balance between the 'big issues' and personal observations. I particularly enjoyed the author's ideas on the enduring call of the north and why humans need it. The historical elements were well researched and interesting and there were not too many stories about scurvy and frostbite! The most fascinating conclusions for me were those relating to the Irish Mariners and the role of religion in the exploration of the Arctic.

[Kathleen Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am, in fact, still busy with this book and I am loving it. I picked it up quite by chance and am now fascinated by a part of the world of which I have only scant knowledge.(except of course, if you were a fan of Prince Valiant in your youth, then you know all about the vikings and Ultima Thule). It is easy reading and full of exciting sagas - excuse me, I must get back to my reading.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some truly evocative and thought-provoking passages, but for me, it felt confused as to whether it was a travel-book (descriptions of his own experiences were thin on the ground) or a summary of writings on Arctic travels.

[Mandy Haggith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was essential reading for my arctic journey in summer 2013. Good travel writing, well researched and full of interesting encounters with people and vivid landscape descriptions. It's a good analysis of how the arctic is a place where people make their livelihoods, not just a wilderness.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the chapter about Svalbard.