Publisher's Synopsis
Pytheas "had heard that it is the most northerly of the British Isles, six days to the north of Britain and close almost one day only from the "Sea Ice", if it was not conceived as "Congealed Sea" (...) in which land and sea and everything floats, which is in a kind of jumble that holds all these things together, something that cannot be exceeded by men and ships (...) there is habitable land up to the "extreme parts around Thule" Pytheas is the Greek navigator who, at the end of the fourth century B.C., made his adventurous journey to the European boreal lands. Up to what was defined as the island of Thule or Ultima Thule. That, according to some, would be identifiable in the Shetland Islands. I do not know if this northern archipelago is the Thule of the adventurous Greek. Undoubtedly for me, the island of Mainland represented the northernmost point touched in my life. Especially since the particular geo-astronomical aspect was immediately confirmed, if it was still needed, by the harsh winter climate. Connected by a frost so intense as to penetrate the bones. Often accompanied by impressive gusts of wind, suddenly able to push you. And to say that, the year after, I would even have reached the closest point to the Magnetic Pole. In Resolute Bay, in the Canadian High Arctic, during my anthropological survey among the Inuit. Then, twenty years later, on two occasions, in the Svalbard Islands, I would have crossed that latitude. First in Longyearbyen, afterwards in Ny-Ålesund. Yet in 1982 I could feel more than satisfied with what, at the time, was my personal record. For the first time in my life I, who had carried out fieldworks only in tropical countries, could even think of finding myself more far north, than I really was. Like the numerous protagonists of the adventurous exploring and ethno-anthropological expeditions, that fascinated me so much as a boy.The idea of writing this book, making it available to a wider audience of readers, compared to those who had been able to read my articles on the subject, published in magazines and newspapers, came watching: Shetland, a television series, produced for BBC Scotland. Unexpectedly I felt a strong sense of nostalgia, looking again on the screen that environment, so completely different from the Mediterranean. Almost always characterized by a chiaroscuro of unusual, albeit singular, beauty. The majestic panoramas, the gigantic cliffs overlooking the sea, the low clouds, the decidedly subarctic atmosphere, reminded me that those islands could really represent, about 2,500 years ago, the last habitable land of the oecumene. Because I could even have the good luck to admire, high in the night sky, the shattering and phantasmagorical Northern Lights of the Ultima Thule...That Nordic journey would have been for me the very first approach to an ecological-cultural reality, radically different from all those that, until then, I knew (Sudan, Kenya, Mexico). That, the following year, with my survey among six Inuit communities of the Canadian Arctic, it would be strengthened. Among other things, in those Scottish islands the former Africanist, as I was, would "meet" the Vikings for the first time. An initial approach, which later should have been consolidated. Since the Shetlands unknowingly represented the first of many "steps" of my future wandering, on the trail of the so-called Viking "Overseas Movement", which would lead me: still to the South-West (Orkney, Scotland and North-Eastern England, Outer Hebrides, Fær Øer, Dublin), to the North (Svalbard), to the West (Newfoundland, Iceland, Greenland, Labrador), to the South (Normandy), to the East (Russia).Thanks to that study trip would have been thrown the first seed of what later would be transformed into my North Atlantic Maritime Community Program.Naturally I have integrated and updated the statistical, economic and demographic data included in the volume.
