The Fellowship of Ghosts

Travels in the Land of Midnight Sun, by Paul Watkins.
A real-life adventure among the fjords and icy mountains of Norway.
As a young crewman on a deep-sea fishing boat off New England, Paul Watkins suffered an accident that shattered his jaw. Lying in his bunk at night, still a hundred miles from shore, Watkins listened to a fellow sailor tell stories of his childhood home in Norway. Images of this crystalline, magic-sounding land persisted in Watkin's mind until, on reaching port, he resolved to go there on his own. In The Fellowship of Ghosts, the young writer arrives among the ice-clad peaks and dark fjords of Scandinavia with only a rucksack and a rolled-up tent. Making his way on foot, he follows the paths of long-dead travelers, endures the furious, fast-changing weather, and confronts the magisterial presence of the past among these famous cliffs and mountains. Watkins re-creates the majesty and mysticism that gave rise to Norse mythology and delivers one of our finest accounts of life in the land of midnight sun.
Paperback, 236pp. 2004