page_title: The Farfarers
section_title: Iceland
hierarchical_section_title: The Farfarers / Iceland
caption_attribution_description: English: Historic site on Pamiok Island, Ungava Bay; several longhouse and other stone structures
context_page_description: The Farfarers: Before the Norse is a non-fiction book by Farley Mowat, setting out a theory about pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. Mowat's thesis is that even before the Vikings, North America was discovered and settled by Europeans originating from Orkney who reached Canada after a generation-spanning migration that used Iceland and Greenland as 'stepping stones'. Mowat's ideas are controversial and have been accused of being over-speculative. The book has been published in the UK as The Alban Quest.
context_section_description: Mowat believes that settlement of Iceland began early in the first millennium AD. After the end of Roman rule in Britain, unrest and military threats to Alba from the Scoti in the west and the Vikings in the north resulted in widespread settlement of Iceland during the 5th to 7th centuries by fleeing Albans.
  
  In their search for new sources of ivory, Alban hunters explored and hunted along the coasts of Greenland, Baffin Island, Ungava Bay, and Labrador before discovering Newfoundland. 
   Mowat believes that the hunters would create camp sites for overwintering by placing their skin boats on top of stone foundations, such as the one on Pamiok Island. Mowat believes that the Albans encountered the Tunit in the Canadian Arctic, with some Albans eventually living and intermarrying with the Tunit.
  Mowat believes that Viking interest in Iceland was prompted by the wealth of Ivory and other materials such as furs reaching Europe by Alban ships from Iceland. In support of this, he cites the Viking Sagas, which state that the Viking discoverers of Iceland found it to be already inhabited by a people the Vikings called the Papar, and that Viking explorers like Naddodd, Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson, Garðar Svavarsson and Ingólfr Arnarson behaved on first arrival to Iceland by taking refuge in some of the most inhospitable places, as if the land was inhabited by a hostile population. The start of Viking occupation of Iceland in the 870s prompted a second move of some of the Albans, this time to the fjords of southwestern Greenland and to central Labrador.
caption: Pamiok Island (near Kangirsuk), Longhouse No. 2
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Digital image", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft ICE v1.3.5.0", "Image DateTime": "2010:07:31 11:27:32", "Image Tag 0x4748": "[1, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 12, 126, 23, 64, 25, 43, 123, 64, 97, 0, 187, 63, 40, 169, 3, 64]", "Image ExifOffset": "225", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[60, 4, 591/25]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[69, 34, 1967/100]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "13", "GPS GPSMapDatum": "WGS-84", "Image GPSInfo": "295", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:07:31 11:42:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:07:31 11:42:04"}