354 BOOK REVIEWS

feeding ecology that might also explain their hitherto-
unexplained dark plumage? Tickell does not speculate on
this point. Nor does he set out avenues of future research.
Given that the age at which individuals of a species start to
breed varies so much, and has been declining in some
declining populations, it would be fascinating, if difficult,
to understand more of the basis for these inter-individual
differences. Now that Theresa Burg's unpublished doctoral
work in the Department of Zoology at Cambridge has
established more extra-pair paternity in wandering
albatrosses Diomedea exulans than hitherto realised, there
may be scope for more behavioural ecology studies. And
the flood of information from transmitters that monitor the
birds' positions and physiological states can only increase.
The challenge is to ensure that the data are used to address
focused questions.

How does Albatrosses compare with the opposition?
Robertson and Gales (1998) edited a book that is
substantially devoted to the impact of longlining on
albatrosses. It therefore does not begin to compare with
TickelPs book as an all-round source of information on
albatross biology. John Warham's (1990, 1996) two
excellent volumes were largely written before the advent
of satellite tracking permitted wonderful advances in the
understanding of albatrosses at sea. Thus the clear message
is that, if you are seriously interested in albatrosses, it
would be a sin not to obtain Tickell's Albatrosses. How
lucky these birds are to have been served by such a
dedicated author. (M. de L. Brooke, Department of
Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street,
Cambridge CB2 3EJ.)

References
Robertson, C.J.R., and G.B. Nunn. 1998. Towards a new

taxonomy for albatrosses. In: Robertson, G., and R.
Gales (editors). Albatross biology and conservation.
Chipping Norton: Surrey Beatty: 13-19.

Robertson, G., and R. Gales (editors). 1998. Albatross
biology and conservation. Chipping Norton: Surrey
Beatty.

Warham, J. 1990. The petrels: their ecology and breeding
systems. London: Academic Press.

Warham, J. 1996. The behaviour, population biology and
physiology of the petrels. London: Academic Press.

RAVEN'S SAGA: AN ARCTIC ODYSSEY. Peter
Schledermann. 2000. Calgary: Corvus Press. 347 p, soft
cover. 0-9687088-0-3. Cdn$15.00; US$12.00.

Raven's saga is a significant departure from Peter
Schledermann's previous work, which had been situated
more narrowly within the domain of the social sciences,
especially archaeology. Here, Schledermann shifts to the
realm of fiction, informed by the considerable knowledge
he has accumulated over the years as a research social
scientist, in order to reconstruct a long-past world. At a
time when universities in Canada pay great lip service to
the importance of interdisciplinary studies, Schledermann's
new book truly embraces that integrated notion so elusive
to the fragmented approaches of the academy. Schleder-

mann draws on his vast professional knowledge of Arctic
archaeology and ethnography, as well as his personal
interests in sailing and Scandinavian cultural history, to
create a piece of fiction that is solidly situated in an
historical setting.

This is undoubtedly a piece of historical fiction. And
historical fiction should be distinguished from fiction that
merely uses the historical past as its setting. In many ways,
historical fiction is like science fiction: both are imagina-
tive accounts attempting to understand something that
exists outside the realm of the imagination. Science
fiction, at its best, grows out of some subtle principle of
science, exploring it in the realm of the imagination. In
H.G. Wells' The war of the worlds, for example, the
invasion of Earth by the Martians is premised on the
scientific understanding that Mars, because of its greater
distance from the Sun, would have cooled sooner than
Earth, thus allowing the evolutionary process of life to
begin long before it was possible on the much hotter Earth.
Accordingly, the environment of Mars would have gener-
ated more highly evolved forms of life than were present
on Earth at the time the book was set. And it is the medical
understanding of how organisms build natural immunities
to familiar viruses and bacteria that Wells ultimately uses
to defeat the Martians upon their invasion of Earth.

Raven's saga operates in much the same way. Both
books construct an imagined world, although one soundly
premised on the scientific understanding of the tactile
world in which we live. But while The war of the worlds
launches forward into the imagined future, Raven's saga
reaches backwards into the distant past. Schledermann's
created world of the past, like Wells' imagined world of the
future, is solidly based on scientific data that can be
verified and substantiated. The imagination comes into
play in Schledermann's attempt to account for how those
factual, historical details could have occurred. Where
organic and inorganic evolution provide the scientific
thrust to Wells' fiction, the principles of archaeology
inform Schledermann's book.

In 1978 and 1982, Schledermann and his colleagues
discovered a number of Norse artifacts during archaeo-
logical excavations in the high Arctic. Rivets from Viking
ships, chain-mail of the variety worn during the Crusades,
a Norse carpenter's plane, a knife blade, and several other
items were found in the ruins of an Inuit winter house on
an island off the central east coast of Ellesmere Island. The
house, according to radiocarbon technology, had been
occupied sometime between 1250 and 1300 AD. These
facts are grounded in the sound empirical observations of
sophisticated archaeological research. But they are only
the beginning — the point of embarkation, if you will —
from which the imaginative journey that is Raven's saga
begins.

In Schledermann's imaginative reconstruction, an
exploratory expedition sets out from the southern tip of
Greenland around 1278 and travels up Greenland's west
coast beyond modern Thule to Skraeling Island, one of
numerous islands midway up the east coast of Ellesmere



BOOK REVIEWS 355

Island. While the expedition is underway, and, to a great
extent, one of the factors prompting it, a colonizing power
struggle takes place in the Norse settlement of Vesterbygd
on the southern tip of Greenland. Self-serving machinations
by ambitious priests in the Catholic Church and crippling
trade restrictions imposed by King Magnus of Norway,
who has proclaimed sovereignty over Greenland, seriously
threaten the peaceful way of life in the seemingly once-
remote frontier of Vesterbygd. The action of the novel
shifts back and forth between these two venues. The story
of the northern expedition is filled with Boy's Own
Magazine variety of adventure, as the small party encounters
the natural forces of sea ice, polar bears, and walrus, and
the cultural dynamic of first contacts between Europeans
and Inuit. Back in the settlements, the story is more
complex, with Schledermann drawing on his extensive
knowledge of the politics and history of Greenland, Iceland,
and Markland (modern Labrador) and their role as the
European frontiers of their day.

The characterisation throughout is polarised, typical of
the romance. The protagonist, Tore Ey vindsson, is a stock
heroic figure — young, adventurous, and physically at-
tractive to women. He leads the expedition to the coast of
Ellesmere Island and returns to marry the chieftain's
daughter. To reveal this resolution of the plot will not spoil
the book, because no reader would ever imagine a different
conclusion. The psychological detail of individual charac-
ters counts for little here. Rather, Schledermann has
focused the reader's attention on a sense of the setting —
both temporal and spatial — in which the action unfolds.

This sense of an historical setting is certainly where the
book shines. Educated people have long doubted the
accuracy of that public-school rhyme concerning the Eu-
ropean discovery of North America: 'In fourteen hundred
and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.' We
have heard too many vague accounts of earlier European
contact with North America: fleeting textbook allusions to
Leif Ericsson, rumoured work by Helge Ingstad at L'Anse
aux Meadows, the Viking grave discovered in Farley
Mowat's Lost in the Barrens. But few of us have a solid
image of Norse commerce in the New World to match that
solidly ingrained mental icon of Nina, Pinta, and Santa
Maria sailing into the Caribbean Sea under Christopher
Columbus' command. Nor do most of us have an under-
standing of European politics in the thirteenth century to
match our general grasp of Europe at the beginning of the
Renaissance. Raven's saga provides much of that under-
standing, as well as a better sense of Inuit culture during the
same period. One learns about the important rituals
associated with the solstice, the social and economic
structure of Norse and Inuit societies, and the practicalities
of rope-making, boat-building, food preparation, and house
construction. One has an opportunity to glimpse the
Crusades as something perpetuated by those who profit
from military conflict, and not merely as yet another
manifestation of blind religious fanaticism. One is pro-
vided with a window through which to observe the eco-
nomic hardship that a frontier society of hunters and

pastoralists must endure when the Pope and the Norwegian
king make sweeping decisions from afar.

Schledermann's historical reconstruction also probes
into the difficulties encountered when traditional cultures
come into contact with new cultures. Some of the mem-
bers of the northern expedition to Skraeling Island return
to Vesterbygd, bringing with them improved skills and
techniques learned from the Inuit. But those better meth-
ods are not always accepted, simply because they are new
and unfamiliar. Other expedition members choose never
to return to their Norse roots, preferring the Inuit culture
that has embraced them. Although the setting of Raven's
saga is more than eight centuries in the past, there is much
of relevance here to modern Canadian society. This is
especially true in matters related to northern cultures and
the effect on them of more southerly populations. (Richard
C. Davis, Department of English, University of Calgary,
2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4,
Canada.)

LEADING AT THE EDGE: LEADERSHIP LES-
SONS FROM THE EXTRAORDINARY SAGA OF
SHACKLETON'S ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION.
Dennis N.T. Perkins, with Margaret P. Holtman, Paul R.
Kessler, and Catherine McCarthy. 2000. New York:
American Management Association, xx + 268 p, hard
cover. ISBN 0-8144-0543-6. $24.95.

This book forms part of the contemporary oeuvre based
around Sir Ernest Shackleton. The qualities and behaviour
exhibited by Shackleton are crafted into a template for
identifying and developing the performance and skills of
leadership. Another recent book exploring this theme is
Shackleton's way, by Morrell and Capparell (2001a), and
an article by these authors appears in the March 2001 issue
of Director, the magazine for the Institute of Directors
(Morrell and Capparell 2001b).

In Apsley Cherry-Garrard's first edition of The worst
journey in the world (putatively the best exploration book
of the twentieth century), he comments on Antarctic lead-
ership styles: 'For a joint science and geographical piece
of organisation, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey,
Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen;
and if I am in a devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give
me Shackleton every time' (page viii). Since that time the
legend of Shackleton has continued to grow, the last few
years having seen a glut of exhibitions, TV and other visual
media programmes, and newspaper and magazine articles
on arguably this most of charismatic of all Antarctic
explorers. Much of the current interest may stem from the
paucity of present-day 'real heroes.' Although space
exploration provides a genuine frontier, the public are,
ineluctably, drawn to the raw confrontation of man with
the elements epitomised by the expeditions to Antarctica
during the first two decades of the last century. Shackleton's
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17 has con-
tinually captured imaginations, not for what was achieved
in exploration terms, but for the sheer determination and
audacity of Shackleton's team to survive against incalcu-