Jóhann Straumfjord Sigurdson and David Collette, whose ancestral grandmother was Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir, the mother of Snorri, the first European child born in North America, will sail from Canada to Iceland along a route that was old before Christopher Columbus was born.

“We’ve named the expedition Fara Heim”, said Jóhann Sigurdson. “In Old Norse, “að fara heim” means “to go home”. We are searching for Norse presence in the Arctic between Hudson Bay and west of Greenland to investigate how far West the Vikings explored”. The team will use non-damaging modern techniques to collect data and do no harm to artefacts or locations found. All information and any discoveries will be digitally recorded and shared with government agencies for formal archaeological investigation.

The expedition will work closely with the Inuit people and Nordic countries as Fara Heim is a story of many Arctic cultures. “We have begun reaching out to everyone we can in the North to ask for local knowledge and stories. Incredible things have been found, like the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, by just asking. We plan to make the Fara Heim website the nexus for information on Viking exploration in North America”, said Collette.

The modern Vikings will voyage via the far travelled “Glory of the Sea”, a purpose-built aluminium polar expedition sailing boat. “Glory” has been to both Poles, circumnavigated the globe twice and travelled the Northwest Passage in 2011. “The deck of a small sailing vessel is the perfect platform to see the Arctic as the Vikings saw it. “Glory” will get us to locations that aren’t normally visited”, said Sigurdson.

Fara Heim’s advisory board includes Captain Norm Baker, the First Mate and Navigator for several of Thor Heyerdahl’s expeditions and a current Director of the Explorers Club, Guy Maddin, film Director and Producer, and Charles Hedrich, global explorer and founder of “Respectons La Terre” a European organisation dedicated to exploration with an environmental focus. Key archaeologists and historians are joining the board to develop the field data collection protocols, aid in historical research and ensure all field investigations maintain the integrity of the site for further field work.

The team and sailing boat will be based on Lake Winnipeg for the summer of 2012 for crew training and boat preparation and depart from Churchill in May 2013. To support the non-profit Fara Heim organisation corporate sponsorships are being developed. “Travel with a purpose” opportunities for individuals to participate on the journey are available in both 2012 and 2013.

Join in the adventure by visiting http://www.faraheim.com.
“Like” the project on Facebook at http://www.facebook/faraheim

The organisation hopes that the commercial hunting of the animals, a practice common in Greenland and Canada, will effectively be halted by the agreement.

The decision was made to protect sea mammals, with seal hunting categorised as a particularly harsh form of hunting. Russia is the biggest buyer of seal skins and whale calves skins, which are mainly supplied by Canada.

Maria Vorontsova, the director of the Moscow IFAW (International Fund for Animal Protection), said the ban was urgent due to the inhumane treatment of animals, particularly in Canada.

“Canadian seal hunters catch and kill [pups] under one year old, to be more exact, from 2 weeks to 3 months old,” Vorontsova told the Voice of Russia. “Thus, there’s reason to believe that seal hunting is cruel and inexpedient. Canada keeps saying that 90 percent of the seal skin market is in Russia.”

“And I’m very happy to say that Russia, which banned seal hunting in 2009, made another step and imposed a ban on the import of seal skins. Thus, the Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, which have joined the countries, where a ban on the import of seal skins is in force, has made a very important step,” Vorontsova added.

A ban on the sale of seal products has also been approved by the European Parliament, although there will be exceptions for certain small indigenous communities in Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska. European visitors will still be able to purchase souvenirs made from the animal products as long as they are not for resale.

Minister Össur Skarphéðinsson says it is crazy to suggest that Huang’s plan to build a hotel and golf resort in northeast Iceland is somehow connected to a colonial plot — adding that it is nothing short of funny that the Canadian military intends to play on these fears to secure extra funding from its government to buy icebreakers, ships and submarines.

The Canadian paper Globe and Mail reports that the country’s defence ministry has been looking seriously into the issue.

Huang Nubo’s intention to buy Grímsstaðir á Fjöllum has attracted attention further afield than just Iceland and the Globe and Mail reports that Canadian military generals fear that the investor has more on his mind when trying to buy 0.3 percent of Iceland than a mere hotel and golf course.

The paper speculates that Chinese interest is more connected to important Arctic shipping lanes which are slowly opening with the melting sea ice to the far north of Iceland, which could make the country a trans-shipping hub for freight between Asia and Europe and North America.

Canadian military officials are apparently taking that threat seriously, saying it means Canada should buy more icebreakers, other ships and submarines.

Össur Skarphéðinsson makes little of it, saying to RÚV: “I find it sort of quaint that the Canadian Army is worried because a Chinese person wants to build up a tourist resort in Iceland [...] and make a direct link between that and trying to get more funding from the government to build a counterweight against the Chinese.”

Icelandic interior minister Ögmundur Jónasson’s decision to block Huang Nubo’s land purchase caused ruptures within the Icelandic coalition government last week and they only got deeper this weekend when he and Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism Katrín Júlíusdóttir became embroiled in a discussion over what defines helping the Chinese investor to circumvent Icelandic law. Katrín is reportedly working to help Huang Nubo lease the land instead of buying it outright.

New Harbors New Hopes carries on where its predecessor book ends; following Leif Ericsson from his Greenland home on his most famous voyage, west to Vínland; or mainland North America as we might now call it.

The book brings the famous story of Leif’s discovery of the American continent to life in a way history books, and even the Sagas themselves, cannot. Its blending of fiction and non-fiction allows the author to embellish details and give the characters a believable level of depth which helps the reader to appreciate their motives and develop feelings for them that go deeper than simple name recognition.

The book follows three different trips to Vínland, each with very different outcomes and only the first featuring Leif himself.

New Harbors New Hopes is also very much about life back home in Greenland and events happening there. This gives the story a welcome duality, but also means it contains more characters than the reader can reasonably be expected to remember. The book contained so many births, deaths and marriages that I was often left struggling to remember who the people were.

Just how much of the story is fiction and how much fact, I do not know; but if the seemingly-excessive number of funerals and births in the book relate to real historical figures from the time, then it is clearly quite acceptable. If most of them are fictional characters then I would argue it is a bit of overkill (pun clearly intended).

I got the slight impression that keeping hold of all the characters began to strain the author by the end as well and that bringing all their stories to a satisfactory conclusion was difficult. The resultant feeling was unfortunately that the end of the story was rushed and that too many separate events were described in too-little detail. That was sad, because over the course of the two books I had come to care about several of the characters and wanted to know more about their fates.

At this point I would like to point out that I am deliberately being hyper-critical. Despite the book’s perceived weaknesses I still enjoyed it and would recommend both novels to Viking fans and general readers alike. I would also recommend that Celia Lund might like to consider writing a third book…maybe one about the end of the Norse settlement in Greenland? That is a story shrouded in mystery and nobody really knows what happened to the Vikings who had lived in Greenland for some 500 years. A touch of fictional flair could make for a very interesting, if sad, novel.

New Harbors New Hopes, like its predecessor novel, is about people; their emotions, their lives and their relationships. The story takes place in some impressive places and on some incredible journeys; but they play a supporting rôle to the characters themselves. That, more than anything else, is what makes the book so different from the Sagas and what gives it its real value and inspires empathy.

Celia Lund’s New Harbors New Hopes (Trafford Publishing, first released 2011, ISBN 978-1426948008)

Reviewed by Alëx Elliott, IceNews editor

This page picture: front cover of New Harbors New Hopes
Main page photo: Alëx Elliott // IceNews

This is the first year that the tournament includes a full women’s division. This represents a five-fold increase in the number of Canadian women taking part and the driving force behind the influx of women is Deirdre Norman and her organisation, The Women of Winter (TWOW).

Norman came to playing hockey later in life. “I started playing at 45 at outdoor rinks so I could play with my husband and son,” said Norman. “I was always riled by the lack of support for the women’s game. I am passionate about making the ‘best game’ accessible to everyone who wants to play. So I had a vision, took it to the organiser of the tourney, Barry Walmsley of ‘Travel and Play’, and he gave me full support.”

Part of the 2011 event will be Canadian Hockey Day in Iceland on 9th October. This collaborative effort brings together ‘Travel and Play’, TWOW, Bjorninn League and Canadian Sarah Smiley who is currently playing on the Icelandic women’s national team. The day-long event will include free skills classes and ‘chalk talk’ and is open to all women and girls who already play hockey as well as those who want to learn the game. Fellow Canadian, Sami Jo Small, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner and five-time world champion goaltender, will present this promotional hockey event with her husband and gold medal Paralympian sledge hockey player, Billy Bridges.

The Iceland International Ice Hockey Cup Tournament has been providing a unique hockey experience for nine years. “The charitable component of the tournament began in 2008 after Iceland’s banking collapse with a bunch of guys from New Jersey who love Iceland (‘The Great Iceland Hockey Bailout’),” Norman says. “So far, 25,000 dollars in cash and hockey equipment has been donated to youth hockey organisations in Iceland and the Icelandic Red Cross. TWOW is responsible for co-ordinating the women’s division, for creating ‘Canadian Hockey Day in Iceland’, for bringing donations of gear, and for bridging Canadian and Icelandic hockey programmes.”

Canadian participation started modestly in 2010. “Last year, 16 women went — 14 players and two friends,” Norman said. “We each paid our own way and were the only non-Icelandic women’s team of the four women’s teams. Everyone was blown away by the country and the experience and all the sharing when we got back got others to come this year, too. There wasn’t a women’s division until I emailed and asked for one a month before the tournament last year.

Both divisions have grown this year, in part because we are taking our partners and friends which added three extra teams to the event.” In total, this year’s tournament has eight women’s teams and ten men’s teams from four countries: Germany, the USA, Iceland and Canada.

Word is getting around about the Canadian women’s hockey second visit to Iceland in October. “Sarah Smiley, a local girl from Toronto, former coach and current member of the Icelandic National team, is working with TWOW to promote the game in her new country. And at this year’s tournament, His Excellency Alan Bones, Canada’s Ambassador to Iceland, will drop the ceremonial puck.” Norman says the event has also “grabbed the attention” of the IIHF World Girls’ Hockey Day committee.

In the end, Norman says it’s all for the love of hockey and expanding the game, particularly for young women. It is no surprise that the Canadian contingent has grown in just one year. “Everyone that goes gets to see the country and fall in love with Iceland — and they do!”

(From a press release)

Their email message was as follows:

Dear IceNews,

We are two guys who photograph weddings and live in Vancouver, Canada. Our names are Cole and Jakob, our business is called Nordica Photography, and we photographed the wedding of an American couple recently at Hotel Budir.

We think that the results are quite nice, and we just wanted to thank you (as in Iceland) for being so rad and offering such a fantastic scenery for their wedding!

But more importantly, and perhaps the main reason we’re contacting you, is to gush over our experience at Hotel Budir. The staff were absolutely incredible and as a venue for a destination wedding, more people in the world should know about how awesome that place is.

We’re not sure if this is news-worthy for you or your viewing audience, but we felt like sharing this with you anyways because we left with such an incredibly positive impression. Perhaps readers of IceNews would be interested in this, and more importantly, visit it.

So, here is the wedding: nordicaphotography.com

We just wanted to share it with you and once again extend a massive virtual high-five Iceland’s way for being an absolutely wicked country!

(Please note: the above is a genuine readers’ letter and not a paid advertisement. Thanks to Cole and Jakob for the photos!)

The 62.5 square-kilometre island, known as PII-A, is currently off the coast of Labrador and is expected to reach Newfoundland in about three weeks if it continues at its current speed of 0.6 kilometres an hour.

The ice sheet, which weighs between 3.5 billion and four billion tonnes, does not pose any imminent threat, but scientists are busy pondering its potential. To act as a comparison, it was suggested that a smaller iceberg which separated from Antarctica recently could provide as much as two litres of water per day for every person on earth for the next two years.

“We have that resource up there, and if we could ever do anything with it, that would be amazing,” said Charles Randell, the president of St John’s-based research centre C-Core. “Very, very pure. 110,000-year-old water; not many contaminants in that,” he added in Montreal Gazette report.

PII-A, which originally separated itself as a 251 square-kilometre block from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier last summer, has been gradually breaking up into smaller pieces due to the warmer weather. The Canadian Ice Service, which provides daily iceberg bulletins, said there are currently around 150 slabs off the coast of Labrador, and around 20 close to Newfoundland, where many tourists take up iceberg watching tours at this time of year.

(Photos: Anders Peter Amsnæs)

According to Frettabladid, Irving’s people are meeting with counterparts at several of Iceland’s biggest oil companies to find out more about their operations. According to the newspaper, it is possible that Irving Oil will purchase Skeljungur (which runs Shell stations in Iceland) or N1.

Irving Oil attempted to enter the Icelandic market in the 1990s and intended to import and sell fuel. The company had even secured premises. The presidents of the existing Icelandic oil companies all stood united against the Canadian firm and in the end nothing came of the venture. The Icelandic competition authority came to the conclusion that by working together against a common enemy, the Icelandic oil companies had broken competition law.

Grandparents Climate Action of Norway group has paid for a half-page advertisement in a local newspaper in Edmonton, where the court case is taking place. On behalf of the organisation’s 2,000 members, the notice said that they “deeply regret that Norway’s 67 percent state-owned company Statoil is part of this dirty and dangerous project.”

The message went on to say that the Grandparents “want Canadian citizens to know that the environmental movement in Norway is unanimous in its condemnation of the ongoing tar sands extraction in Alberta.”

Statoil’s activities have drawn criticism from environmentalists around the world and the local indigenous population in Alberta. A silent protest by various groups was held outside the court last Wednesday, where a preliminary hearing took place. Greenpeace Norway has also pledged to try to persuade shareholders to stop the project.

A second hearing is scheduled for 30th June to give interested parties time to work through the vast amount of documentation relating to the case. If found guilty of 19 counts of breaking local regulations, the company could be fined NOK 60 million (EUR 7.7 million).

Canada has just taken over responsibility for Icelandic airspace under the NATO arrangement which sees allied nations take turns to patrol the air above Iceland. Air forces often also take the opportunity to use Iceland for exercises, as the NATO member country has the relevant equipment and ground crews despite not having a military of its own.

Before the three F-18 fighters arrived yesterday, Canada had already sent personnel, tools and equipment to Iceland. Later today one more F-18 will arrive, along with a P-3 aircraft used for aerial re-fuelling.

Some 150 personnel accompany the planes and will be staying at the Keflavik base over the coming weeks. As well as patrolling, the Canadians also plan to conduct exercises and landing practice at Keflavik, Akureyri and Egilsstadir.

The Icelandic Coastguard recently took over from the Icelandic Defence Agency, which held ultimate responsibility for Icelandic airspace, RUV reports.

The coastguard reports that the current Canadian mission had to be swiftly reorganised when it came to light the originally scheduled aircraft and crew would be sent on the NATO no-fly zone enforcement mission to Libya.

(Photos of German aircraft used for illustration purposes only: not directly related to the story)