Vikings in North America by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

  

The Vikings in North America

 

It has been long thought that the first European to step on the soil of North America was Christopher Columbus. But excavations done at a site in northwest Newfoundland, called L’Anse aux Meadows, in the 1960’s recovered artifacts like jewellery, a stone oil lamp, a bone knitting needle, and tools that were compared to ones used at Viking settlements in Greenland and Iceland around the year 1000. They have been carbon dated to between the years 990 and 1050, proof that the Vikings were in North America long before Columbus.

       Vikings were people from Scandinavia, present day Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, who were merchants as well as warriors. During the late eighth to eleventh century they raided, pillage, and conquered settlements in Scotland and throughout Europe. They also had settlements in Iceland and Greenland.

       Surnames ending in "-son" or "-sen" are considered to have Viking ancestry. My great-grandparents emigrated from Scotland. Plus, the little finger on my right hand does not lay flat when I set my palm down. My sister has the same condition but worse. Her little finger had a permanent bend to it. She went to her doctor and received a botox shot to relax it. When she went for physio she was told that a bent finger like that was a sign of being a Viking. I also have a friend of Norwegian ancestry with the same little finger.

       But, that bent little finger comes from my mother’s side who also had one. Her maiden name was Relf, which I learned was first found in the 1000s in Nairnit, a town in northern Scotland. So, with this ancestry on both sides I consider myself a Viking. In 2017, I visited L’Anse aux Meadows in northwest Newfloundland.

       From the parking lot I walked to the interpretive centre where I looked at the displays of what the settlement would have looked like during its occupation. There are replicas of the longships that the Vikings sailed in, artifacts unearthed during the excavations, write-ups about the Vikings, tools that were found, and maps showing the route the Vikings used to get to Newfoundland or Vinland, as they are thought to have named it. The Scandinavians of the medieval period were known as Norse and they were farmers and traders. When they began raiding other countries they became known as Vikings, the Norse word for raiders.

       There has been a lot of interest in the Vikings recently with televisions shows and documentaries about them and their raiding which began in the 790s and lasted until around 1050. With their longboats and advanced sailing and navigational skills the Viking men and women travelled from Scandinavia south through Europe to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and west to North America.

       I left the centre and followed a long, wooden boardwalk through grass and small bushes to the actual site. There I found a post fence around a yard with large mounds covered in grass. When the Vikings landed here there were forests from which they were able to get material for their boat and house building. The remains of eight buildings were found in the 1960s and they are believed to have been made of a wooden frame and covered with sod.

       The structures have been identified are a long house, an iron smithy, a carpentry shop, and smaller buildings that may have been for lower-status crewmembers or even slaves or for storage. There are three replicas of those sod buildings with their thick walls on the site. One is a long house which is equipped with clothes, beds and bedding, household utensils, tools, a fire pit and has a couple dressed in period clothing cooking a meal. The Vikings hunted caribou, bear, and smaller animals plus whale, walrus, and birds for food as well as fished.

       I wandered through the rooms divided by hand carved wooden plank walls. Light came from the fire and holes in the ceiling which are partially covered with upside down wooden boxes to keep the rain out.

       One of the other buildings is the smithy complete with anvil, forge, bellows, and various tools. I wandered the rest of the site and saw the outlines of other buildings that have not been reconstructed. It is estimated that between 30 and 160 people lived there over the years.

       The Vikings arrived in Newfoundland from Iceland via Greenland. According to historical records the site was inhabited by the brothers and sister of Leif Ericson plus a series of explorers. It is believed the settlement was there for seven or eight years before being abandoned. This is the only confirmed Viking site in North America and is the farthest west that Europeans sailed before Columbus.

       After viewing the buildings I followed a trail along the rocky shoreline and then turned inland to walk on a boardwalk over a bog back to the parking lot.

       One of the best things is that not only does the interpretive centre have the history of the Vikings, but there is also extensive displays showing the history of the aboriginal people who inhabited the area over thousands of years before any European arrived.

       In 2018, I visited the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, just outside Copenhagen, Denmark. In the museum is a permanent exhibition of parts of five original Viking ships excavated nearby in 1962. A thousand years ago these ships were deliberately scuttled (filled with rocks and sunk) in a river to stop the enemy from invading the city by water. Over the decades since they were found, the pieces have been preserved and put together on a metal frame to show how the ships would have looked. Also at the site are replicas of the Viking ships and I became a Viking for an hour. A group of us sat on the seats and rowed the ship out of the harbour using the long oars. Once on the open water we hoisted the mast and set sail. After sailing for a while we headed back to the harbour. As we neared it I had the honour of pulling on the rope that lowered the mast and sail and we glided back to our dock.

       It would be fun, someday, to write a novel about my ancestors.

       

 

Canadian Authors by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

 

 

 

https://books2read.com/Romancing-the-Klondike

 

https://books2read.com/Rushing-the-Klondike

https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike

 https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

      I am a proud Canadian author of over twenty fiction and non-fiction books in my long writing career. But I am just one of thousands of published writers from this huge country. Canada has had a long and illustrious history of producing world renown authors and books going all the way back to the 18^th century.

     Frances Moore was born in England in 1724. She was a well-known poet and playwright in England before she and her husband, Reverend John Brooke moved to Quebec City in 1763, for John to take up the post of army chaplain. During her time there Frances wrote The History of Emily Montague, a love story set in the newly formed Quebec province.

     The story is told through the voices of her characters by way of personal letters between the two. This is known as epistolary (of letters) type of writing and it was popular during the1700s in Europe. The Brookes’ returned to England in 1768 and the novel was published in 1769 the London bookseller, James Dodsley. The History of Emily Montague was the first novel written in what is now Canada and the first with a Canadian setting. Frances died in 1789.

 Ontario

William Robertson Davies was born August 28, 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario (ON). He grew up surrounded by books and he participated in theatrical productions, developing a lifelong love of drama. He attended Upper Canada College then studied at Queen’s University at Kingston, ON. He moved to Oxford, England where he received a Bachelor Degree in Literature from Balliol College in 1938. His thesis, Shakespeare’s Boy Actors, was published in 1939 and he began acting in London.

     William married Brenda Mathews, an Australian who was working as a stage manager. They moved to Canada in 1940 and he began a career as literary editor at Saturday Night magazine. Their first child was born in December 1940. Two years later he accepted the position of editor of the Peterborough Examiner in Peterborough, ON. During this time he wrote humorous essays under the name Samuel Marchbanks and wrote and produced many stage plays.

     In 1947, several of his essays were published in The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, and The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks came out in 1949. Davies used his early upbringing to provide themes for his novels and his first novel Tempest Tost was published in 1951. His second, Leaven of Malice, came out in 1954. In 1955 he became publisher of the Peterborough Examiner and his third novel, A Mixture of Frailties was published in 1958.

     Besides novel and play writing, and being a newspaper publisher, Davies taught literature at Trinity College at the University of Toronto from 1960 until 1981. He left his post as publisher of the Peterborough Examiner in 1962 and became a Master of Massey College, the University of Toronto’s new graduate college, in 1963. Along with his father William Rupert Davies and his brother Arthur Davies, William bought the Kingston Whig-Standard newspaper, CHEX-AM and CKWS-AM radio stations, and CHEX-TV and CKWS-TV television stations. His third book of essays, Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack was published in 1967.

     William Robertson Davies wrote a total of eighteen fiction and non-fiction books, plus fifteen plays. He won many awards for his writing including the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. He was named a Companion of the Order of Canada.

     William Robertson Davies died on December 2, 1995, in Orangeville ON.

 

Josiah Henson was born on June 15, 1789, into slavery in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland. When his family was separated by each being sold to different plantations, his mother pleaded with her new owner, Isaac Riley, to buy her youngest son so she would have him with her. Riley agreed and Josiah came to work for him. Josiah was twenty-two years-of-age when he married. He also became a Methodist Minister and was made the supervisor of his master's farm.

     In 1825, Mr. Riley fell on hard times and was sued by a brother-in-law. Henson guided eighteen of Riley’s slaves to Riley’s brother’s plantation in Kentucky. When he returned and asked to buy his freedom from Riley for $450.00 (350.00 cash and $100.00 IOU), Riley added an extra zero to the IOU. Cheated of his money, Henson returned to Kentucky. In 1830, he learned that he might be sold again so he, his wife, and their four children escaped to Kent County, in Upper Canada (now Ontario), which had been a refuge for slaves since 1793. That was the year Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe passed: An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province. While the legislation did not immediately end slavery, it did prevent the importation of slaves and so any United States slave who entered the province was automatically free.

     Josiah Henson worked on farms in Upper Canada before moving with friends to Colchester to set up a Black settlement on rented land. He eventually was able to buy 200 acres in Dawn Township and made the community self-sufficient. The settlement reached a population of 500 at its height, earning money by exporting black walnut lumber to the United States and Britain. Henson purchased an adjoining 200 acres for his family to live on.

     Henson served in the Canadian Army as a military officer. He led a black militia unit in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38. When slavery was abolished in the United States many residents of the Dawn Settlement returned to their original home. Josiah Henson and his wife had eight more children in Upper Canada and he remarried a widow from Boston when his first wife died. He continued to live in Dawn for the rest of his life and many of his descendants still live in the area.

     Henson wrote his autobiography The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as narrated by Himself. It was published in 1849 and many believe he inspired the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowes’ Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Henson then expanded his memoir and published it as Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life which came out in 1858. Since people were still interested in his life, in 1876 his story was updated and published as Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life: An autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson.

     Josiah Henson died on May 5, 1883 at the age of ninety-four.

Canadian Authors--New Brunswick by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

  

https://books2read.com/Romancing-the-Klondike

 

https://books2read.com/Rushing-the-Klondike

https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike

https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

     I am a proud Canadian author of over twenty fiction and non-fiction books in my long writing career. But I am just one of thousands of published writers from this huge country. Canada has had a long and illustrious history of producing world renown authors and books going all the way back to the 18^th century.

     Frances Moore was born in England in 1724. She was a well-known poet and playwright in England before she and her husband, Reverend John Brooke moved to Quebec City in 1763, for John to take up the post of army chaplain. During her time there Frances wrote The History of Emily Montague, a love story set in the newly formed Quebec province.

     The story is told through the voices of her characters by way of personal letters between the two. This is known as epistolary (of letters) type of writing and it was popular during the1700s in Europe. The Brookes’ returned to England in 1768 and the novel was published in 1769 the London bookseller, James Dodsley. The History of Emily Montague was the first novel written in what is now Canada and the first with a Canadian setting. Frances died in 1789.

 

New Brunswick

Julia Catherine Beckwith was born on March 10, 1796 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her mother, Julie-Louise Le Brun, was from a wealthy French family that had immigrated to Canada in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Her father, Nehemiah Beckwith, moved from New England in 1780 and owned a successful ship building business. Julie-Louise had given up her Roman Catholic faith when she married, but Julia spent a lot of her early life visiting her French cousins in Nova Scotia and Quebec. One of her cousins became a nun of the Hotel-Dieu in Montreal.

Her mother’s previous religious background was the source of the idea for her first novel St. Ursula’s convent, or the nun of Canada. She wrote it in Fredericton when she was seventeen and it had complicated plots, romance, suspense, and heroic adventures. It was not to be published for almost ten years.

     In 1820, in order to lessen the burden on her mother after her father’s death by drowning, Julia moved in with her aunt in Kingston, Upper Canada (now Ontario). She married George Henry Hart on January 3, 1822. George was a bookbinder and Julia operated a boarding house for girls. Her novel was published in 1824 by Hugh C. Thomson as St. Ursula’s Convent or, The Nun of Canada; Containing Scenes from Real Life. According to Beckwith’s wishes, the author was listed as anonymous. It was the first work of fiction written by any man or woman who had been born in Canada and the first to be published in what is now Canada. Julia Beckwith is considered Canada’s first novelist.

     Julia and her husband moved to Rochester, NY, in 1824 where her second novel, Tonnewonte; or, the adopted son of America, was published and portrayed as having been written by an American. It, too, had suspense and depth of feeling, but as some critics said it had the same stilted expression and moral overtones as her first novel. Besides entertainment value, Julia wrote to express attitudes toward society.

     By 1831 Julia and George had six children and they moved back to Fredericton. There she contributed to the weekly paper, the New Brunswick Reporter. She also wrote her third book Edith (or The Doom), which was never published.

     Julia Catherine Beckwith died in Fredericton, New Brunswick on November 28, 1867, the age of 71.

 

Raymond Fraser was born on May 8, 1941 in Chatham (now Miramichi), New Brunswick, the youngest of three children. His older sisters left home and his mother died when he as a teenager. He spent a lot of his alone time reading. He attended St. Thomas University in Fredericton. There he played sports in his freshman year and was co-editor of the student literary magazine Tom-Tom in his junior year.

     He worked as a teacher for a year then moved to Montreal in 1965 where he and poet Leroy Johnson created the literary magazine Intercourse: Contemporary Canadian Writing (1966-1971). He was also one of the founders of the Montreal Story Tellers Fiction Performance Group, which put on readings in local high schools. To earn money while writing he worked as an editor, chief staff writer, and a freelance writer for the tabloid newspapers. Fraser’s first book of short stories, The Black Horse Tavern, was published in 1973.

     Raymond Fraser and his wife, Sharon, travelled through Europe during the 1970s. The Struggle Outside came out in 1975 and The Bonnonbridge Musicians in 1978. The Bonnonbridge Musicians was a finalist for the 1978 Governor General Literary Award for Fiction. He finally settled in Fredericton and began writing full time. He also was the Writer-In-Residence at the Fredericton High School.

     Raymond Fraser wrote a total of eight books of poetry and fourteen novels and short story collections, five of which were listed in Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books (2009). He also received the first Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for High Achievement in the Arts that year. He became a member of the Order of New Brunswick in 2012 and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from St. Thomas University in 2016.

     Fraser died in Fredericton on October 22, 2018, at the age of 77 from cancer.

Are There Rule For Writing by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

 https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike

https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

Are There Rules to Writing?

Some new writers believe there is a formula for writing, that something should happen by a certain page in the manuscript and another thing so many pages further. In some genres, like romance, that may be the case but for most it isn’t. And even some of those who write romance say they just present the story. For mystery stories, some believe it should start out with the murder, or disappearance, or some sort of mysterious or secretive action while others begin their story with the characters and setting. And remember there are all sorts of sub-genres with every genre and for each one of them the story can be started according to the author’s taste.

So, if there are no rules for writing are there rules for being a writer? Maybe. It depends on who you listen to. Some writers follow a set pattern of writing, such as outlining, using a certain software, or doing their first draft with pen and paper. But there are more dimensions to writing other than putting words on paper.

Don’t try to write like a famous author you admire. You have your own way of writing that is your style and voice. Stay with it.

Before a manuscript is sent to an editor, agent, publisher, or beta reader, it should be free of mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and in the story line—make sure there is no change to a character’s hair colour or what a character did when in the story. Don’t have a character talk about something before they’ve even experience it or witnessed it.

Once their manuscript is complete some writers look for beta readers to give them feedback on the story. It is important to remember that not everyone will like the same story. Even famous writers can’t please their readers all of the time. So don’t be angry or hurt if someone doesn’t like yours. Take what they have to say about your manuscript and see if it needs changing. Bottom line, though, is that it is your work so your opinion comes first. And to add further, there are a lot of people who will resent your success. Ignore their cutting remarks.

Don’t sit back after you’ve sent your manuscript away. Start your next book, compose a short story, keep writing. And if you find that the writing of a story isn’t going well, feel free to set the manuscript aside and start another. You can pick the first one up again at a later time.

And after having said all that, here are some of my quirks about my writing. I have a set way of developing the story before I start to write it depending of the genre. If it’s historical I will do a lot of research to get to know the era, the clothing, the hairdos, etc, before starting and continue researching as the story advances to make sure I get all the facts right. If it’s a mystery then I decide on the death or disappearance then add the characters and let them tell the story. A lot of the time I don’t know who did it until part way through or even at the end of the manuscript. If it’s a romance, then I start with the characters and the setting and see what happens.

I say that I am a pantser writer in that I don’t use an outline but once the story progresses then I will plot out scenes that will be coming next so I do a bit of outlining.

Bottom line about writing: do what works best for you and ignore the rest.

Canada's Deserts by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

https://books2read.com/The-Travelling-Detective-Boxed-Set

https://books2read.com/u/bapW6a

Canada’s Deserts

Only forty-one of the one-hundred ninety-five countries on this earth have deserts but the deserts cover almost one-third of the earth’s land mass. I am a Canadian writer and all my mystery, historical, romance, and young adult novels are set in Canada. Canada is the second largest country in the world and home to one desert and three pseudo-deserts. A pseudo-desert is defined as an area that has some of the qualities that make up a desert, but does not meet the technical standards to be termed a true desert

There are three main features of a desert: less than 250 millimetres (10 inches) of precipitation each year; sparse vegetation; and severe weather changes. Other characteristics include humidity, high winds, little cloud cover, and aridity. The types of deserts are semi-arid, cold, coastal, and hot and dry.

The people of the Southern Interior of British Columbia claim that Canada’s only desert is in the Osoyoos area. Many of the businesses in the region have the word ‘desert’ in their names, such as the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre and the Osoyoos Desert Centre. Tourists come to this part of British Columbia to see this popular desert.

But others say that, although it does have desert type plants like cacti and animals such as the sage grouse and tiger salamander, it is not really a desert because of the precipitation which is 323 mm (12.7 in) annually. It is defined as a pseudo-desert.

Another pseudo-desert in Canada is the Carcross Desert, located outside the community of Carcross in the Yukon. At 2.6 sq km (1sq mi) it is called the smallest desert in the world. But while it is termed a desert it is actually the remains of an ancient glacial lake which left the sand dunes when it dried up. In spite of the strong winds from Lake Bennett which bring in more sand, kinnikinnick, Yukon lupine, Baikal sedge, and lodgepole pines are able to survive.

The local people used the dunes for sandboarding, hiking, beach volleyball, and all-terrain vehicles and there are scenic tours for tourists.

The third pseudo-desert in Canada is the Great Saskatchewan Sand Hills covering 1,900sq km (734 sq mi). Like the Carcross Desert they are desert-like sand dunes situated just north of the village of Sceptre in southwestern Saskatchewan. Also like the Carcross Desert, the hills were left when glaciers melted 12,000 years ago and are home to a variety of plants and animals that have adapted to the dunes.

The Canadian Arctic Tundra is considered the only true desert in Canada. However, it isn’t a hot desert; it is a cold polar desert and covers a large area in northern Canada. The land is covered by thick layers of ice instead of sand and has a cold, harsh climate with temperatures dropping as low as -40 degrees Celsius (-40F). Trees have a difficult time surviving in the permafrost during the short growing season so the tundra is covered mainly by small shrubs, mosses, and lichens. A number of animals--arctic hares, muskoxen, polar bears, arctic foxes, and caribou--manage to live in this cold desert in the far north because they have thick fur coats to keep them warm.

Pantser Writing by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

https://books2read.com/Romancing-the-Klondike

https://books2read.com/Rushing-the-Klondike

https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike

 

 Pantser Writing 

If I had to chose between being called a plotter or a pantser writer I am definitely a pantser. I have never worked with a solid outline or arc for my novels, whether they are mystery, historical, romance, or young adult. And this is mainly because I find that my characters seldom end up the way I first pictured them and the plot never takes the route I thought it would.

I either start with an idea or a character and decide the setting and then start writing. I do begin the story with a character in his/her everyday life so the reader can get to know them then I put in the trigger that is out of the control of my main character or starts the mystery. This puts the main character on his/her quest for a solution.

I do have scenes pictured where characters are going to have a certain conversation or be at a certain place but unexpected conversations or character twists surface as I am writing the story. Some of these are surprises or mishaps or problems that get in the way of my character’s quest. I strive not to make these predictable nor so far out that they don’t make sense to the story. They should leave the reader with the thought that (s)he should have figured that would happen. I find that it is no fun to read a book where you can foresee where the story line is headed and what is going to happen before it does.

 

Sometimes, part way through my story, I have to go back and add chapters at the beginning because one of my characters has decided to say to do something unexpected. I have even had characters try to hijack my story and make it about them. An example is in Sleuthing the Klondike. I had two main characters Helen and Baxter and decided that Helen needed an lady's maid. I introduced Mattie who was supposed to be a very minor character but she suddenly began telling her story and almost took over as the main female character.

For the climax of my stories my character goes through the action of resolving the problem or solving the mystery. This has to be fast paced and sometimes at a risk to the character. By this time the reader should be rooting for the main character and wanting him/her to succeed without injury. Hopefully, too, this is where the surprise comes in, where the reader goes. “Wow, I didn’t see that coming." or "I never thought it would be that person.” I have even been surprised or saddened or happy by the ending of my novels and have said that.

 

I believe that if my emotions are rocked by the ending so, too, should those of the readers.