Today marked the culmination of a dream several years in the making for Team Viking. On August 13, 2018, quite nearly four full years ago, I received what is called “the good news letter,” by the Office of the Provost of Gettysburg College. It informed me that I was eligible for a sabbatical during the course of the 2020-21 academic year. I hadn’t yet heard of COVID, of course, and few of us could have imagined how the next couple of years might unfold. But then again, none of us ever truly realize all the perils that lurk like the sails of a Viking longship fleet just over the horizon, do we? Still, we get on with our lives and we make our plans the best we can. Soon after receiving that letter, I approached John Regentin about bringing his vast experiential educational expertise to a joint project tentatively entitled In the Wake of the Vikings: ReDiscovering Norse America. John jumped at the chance to collaborate with me again, this time on an adventure-based experience ultimately designed to result in a book that reexamined and reinterrogated the Saga accounts and archaeological and other evidence of the Norse ventures to and in North America. We hoped to emphasize viewing the Norse accounts and settlements from the perspective of actual sea-farers, paddling 18’ sea-kayaks along the coast of Labrador and eventually visiting the only known Norse settlement west of Greenland, that at L’Anse aux Meadows, on the Northeastern tip of the Canadian island of Newfoundland. John assured me that looking deeply at highly localized realities concerning prevailing winds, currents, tides, and shifting coastlines, sandbars, and rock formations along relevant lengths of coastline and notable bays, coves, and river estuaries would inform our study in visceral manners that one simply can’t discover in a library or through a Google search. How right he was: The sea is immense and ever-changing, often downright terrifying, and local knowledge and insight is the gold-standard currency of those who would be successful in understanding the realities of those who navigated its pathways before us. John also insisted that we rope in his old pal Russell Farrow, a world-class paddler who had helped John to lead a group of Gettysburg College kayakers across the Baltic from Stockholm to Helsinki a few years before. Russell and I had met through John a couple of years before that when he helped to facilitate a faculty paddling excursion in Lake George that John and I had envisioned. Soon the three of us had bounced some ideas around with Michael Leaman at Reaktion Press, and after taking us down a peg or two and making us think more rigorously about the structure of our work, Michael was kind enough to offer us a contract for the book. In any case, Russell was invaluable to us in many ways, too many to enumerate here. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, however, that these certainly included his vast experience paddling around Baffin Island and in Northern Labrador, his skill and patience as a gentle guide and mentor, and his quiet wry wit with and fierce loyalty towards his friends, among whom I am humbled and privileged to number myself. In any case, we were derailed first by COVID, and then by the unexpected loss of the elder statesman of our little ragtag band of Viking paddlers. If ever the Valkyries chose a warrior in his prime, it was our RAF. Today, therefore, is a celebration of Russell, who—quite early on in our long and rambling conversations about our planned expedition—looked me straight in the eye and said, “ya know, Fee, the first time you set eyes on that place, it’s GOTTA be from the water….” That is what we did today, and that is why it matters so much to us. Russell, how right you were, brother! Today John and I followed in your wake as well as in that of the Vikings. As I taught you to say in Icelandic, Skál! Tonight we drink our mead to your memory!
Follow along on our ongoing adventures in ten-minute intervals via this link:
In the Wake of the Vikings 
Hopefully he’s watching from the heavens! Again, Thank you, even if you make me cry everytime!!❤️🤗💔
LikeLiked by 1 person