A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World

The author himself describes his story as a tale of "quixotic idiocy, passion, determination, frightening beauty, love, loss, enlightenment, failure, and redemption...." Initially, only the idiocy is apparent. On a whim, Carter decides to reenact the voyage of Viking Leif Ericson, who, in the year 1000, sailed his knarr (a Viking longboat) from Greenland to a land he called "Vinland." But why should anyone care? Because Vinland, many experts believe, was located somewhere on the northeast coast of North America, meaning that Ericson beat Columbus to the New World by nearly 500 years.

To realize his dream voyage, Carter endures an almost comical assortment of trials. First, he must find someone to build, pay for, and help sail the boat. Then, he and his novice crew must sail it from Greenland to North America, struggling with the arctic cold, 1,000-year-old technology, and their own ineptitude. Carter describes their exploits with equal parts humor and terror. Fighting frostbite, he muses,

Like Robert Peary, I was going to lose my toes. Unlike him, I would whine and scream until the end. And I certainly would not be able to claim I discovered the North Pole or anything at all beyond learning that Viking boats were not meant to sail windward in anything beyond a duck pond.

For the landlubber, it's difficult to fathom why even the most die-hard Viking fanatics would go to such dangerous lengths to emulate their Norse heroes. Carter's account renders their passion more understandable, revealing little-known gems of Viking history and myth, and garnishing them with thrills and triumphs from his own adventures. Readers may not be inspired to rush out and build their own knarr, but they will find that Carter makes good on his introductory boast, wrenching new adventure from a world with seemingly no unexplored territory. --Andrew Nieland