Helge Ingstad – författare

The young Norwegian was Helge Ingstad, now famous for his discovery in 1960 of a Viking village at L''Anse aux Meadows (on the northern tip of Newfoundland) -- the oldest known European settlement in North America. Ingstad recorded his adventures in the Canadian North in The Land of Feast and Famine, originally published in Norwegian in 1931 and first released in English two years later. Now, after being out of print in English for more than forty years, The Land of Feast and Famine is once again available, with its description of youthful adventure and its vivid portrayal of the people and ways of the Northwest Territories in the last days of the fur trading era. After making his way into the Canadian Arctic interior, Ingstad spent one winter with a fellow trapper in a log cabin they built themselves, and another living and hunting with a tribe of Inuit known as the Caribou-Eaters. During his final winter in the North, Ingstad lived in a tent in an area called the Barren Lands, hunting caribou and wolves, alone with his five dogs. In 1937, a small river in the Barren Lands was renamed Ingstad Creek. The life Ingstad describes is harsh and full of danger. He recounts many close calls of his own as well as the fates of those far less fortunate. On his way out of the North, Ingstad learned that the colourful adventurer John Hornby and two of his companions starved to death while on a expedition to the Barren Lands -- one of them outliving the others by months. But Ingstad''s life in the Canadian Arctic was also full of heart-warming experiences. He describes the native companions and fellow trappers with whom he shared adventures and relates stories of numerous hunts and how he learned first hand about beaver, caribou, wolf, and other wildlife. He also provides a remarkable body of knowledge about native medicine. The arrival of the age of aviation opened up the North and, as Ingstad prophetically observed in 1931, the way of life of the native people, who were "still pursuing the free nomadic existence of their forefathers," would be irrevocably changed. At a time when the ways of life of Canada''s native and Inuit people are more threatened than ever before, The Land of Feast and Famine provides a fascinating glimpse at a time already far in the past.

Available in English for the first time, The Apache Indians tells the story of the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad's sojourn among the Apaches near the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona and his epic journey to locate the "lost" group of their brethren in the Sierra Madres in the 1930s. Ingstad traveled to Canada, where he lived as a trapper for four years with the Chipewyan Indians. The Chipewyans told him tales about people from their tribe who traveled south, never to return. He decided to go south to find the descendants of his Chipewyan friends and determine if they had similar stories. In 1936 Ingstad arrived in the White Mountains and worked as a cowboy with the Apaches. His hunch about the Apaches' northern origins was confirmed by their stories, but the elders also told him about another group of Apaches who had fled from the reservation and were living in the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Ingstad launched an expedition on horseback to find these "lost" people, hoping to record more tales of their possible northern origin but also to document traditions and knowledge that might have been lost among the Apaches living on the reservation.Through Ingstad's keen and observant eyes, we catch unforgettable glimpses of the landscape and inhabitants of the southwestern borderlands as he and his Apache companions, including one of Geronimo's warriors, embark on a dangerous quest to find the elusive Sierra Madre Apaches. The Apache Indians is a powerful echo of a past that has now become a myth.