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There are shadows on the warming, northern seas.

 

Long ago, refugees fled Doggerland when seas encroached. Now rising seas threaten low-lying shores once again.

 

Icelanders ask, ‘How do we say goodbye to a glacier?’

 

Yet these are tales to bring hope if we can reconnect with nature, community and the power of our northern seafaring and Viking heritage.

 

Jules Pretty explores moving stories from Iceland, Norway’s Lofoten islands, Denmark, eastern and northern England, Lindisfarne, Shetland, St Kilda and the Faroes. His touching tales weave a rich cultural tapestry from sagas, the heroic cliff rescues of deep-water fishermen by Icelanders, how Vikings and sheep left so few trees, the miraculous escape of Danish Jews to Sweden from Denmark in 1943, the rise of Abbess Hildr of Whitby, the enslaved Grimsby orphan boys and life on Doggerland itself.

 

He asks, as the fire and flood of Ragnarök seems to loom, how can we live wisely and well with nature and each other?

 

The book’s three central themes are living with environmental change around the North Sea and the Atlantic; story-telling through history in these lands; reconnecting with nature and our ancient heritages so as to live well and responsibly.