So ... I have a plot point where my characters start out on a rowboat in a lake, Lake Thingvallavatn (in Iceland), and need to get to a place called Selfoss, in the south, about 70km away. (This is long, long before cars, trains, planes and all the rest). They can only walk or row ... and time is critical. So, I found them 3 options: 1. They can march down to the Ölfusá river (which'll take 8 hours), try to find a bridge, and then walk another 6 hours. This is the safest but longest route. 2. They can march to start of the Sogið River (6 hours' march away), and paddle down the river all the way (another 6 hours, not including breaks). But again, that'll take longer than paddle all the way from their starting point ... and there's no guarantee that there'll be a boat. 3. They'll paddle down (22km) down the Sogið River to its confluence with the Hvitá River, where together they form the Ölfusá River. Then they can then relax a bit, but not too much – otherwise the river will take them out to the Atlantic Ocean. This is the quickest route. It can be done within 10 hours or so (not including rest breaks; boating down rapids is hard work). However, I'm not sure how dangerous it is. Does anyone know if boating down rapids is safe, dangerous, or even possible? I've done my research (looking at maps, doing calculations, looking at maps again from another angle etc.), but I don't know about hidden dangers etc. Thanks!
I'd be worried about using a wooden boat vs a rubber one. I've done some rafting in the relatively mild waters of New England but wouldn't want to be in anything that doesn't bounce off rocks or isn't similarly protected. I have no idea what the waters of Iceland or the boats of the time were, though.
The little bit of reading I have done about Indigenous peoples and early settlers travelling across the wilderness and frontier a few hundred years ago here, tells me that whenever possible, the water route is taken, and they would only lift their boats out of the water and portage across land when the river became impassable. In fact, I live close the Niagara Falls, and one of the main streets is named Portage Street, and it follows the route where the early travelers took their canoes or bateaux out of the water, went around Niagara Falls, and then returned back to the Niagara river when the danger was past.
Hmm, the boats of the time were definitely wooden (no rubber in the year 1000! ), which is one reason I'm concerned. Given that Norse gods and mythological Norse creatures are also involved -- because, hey, the ancient Norse believed in them -- I'm not too worried about strict accuracy. Still, I'd like to be as "close to accuracy" as I can. I've heard about the portage system, and how the Norse used it to get around Russian rivers etc. Thank you, Louanne. Hmm ... perhaps I could write in river blockages like animal-built dams etc. *thinks* No, of course the North American beaver wouldn't swim across half the Atlantic just to build a few dams in Iceland. But maybe some Eurasian beavers, who are common across Russia and Scandinavia (as well as much of Europe and Asia), might hitch a lift on someone's longboat, hide among the food packages (and nibble on them), and then get off in Iceland, scamper away, and start building dams. What? Stranger things have happened, dam it! (Sorry). What do you think? Does it sound reasonable?
Well, there are no beavers in Iceland, and no historical records of beavers in Iceland, so I don't think I would go that way.
Some beavers in Maine managed to derail a freight train not too long ago with an ill-placed damn. Industrious little bastards, they are.
Oh, yeah! They are on the 50 Cent coin, I believe. I will have to look. I have some CAD in my collection. I know the boat is on the 10c, the elk on the 5, and the goose is on the 1 and 2?
I’ve never seen a fifty-cent coin, but I guess they exist. It’s actually the Bluenose on the dime, a famous schooner from Nova Scotia. There is a caribou (not elk) on the quarter, but the beaver is on the nickel. It’s a loon (not a goose) on the dollar-coin (so we call them loonies) and a polar bear on the two-dollar coin (called a toonie).
Oh, rats. You're right ... I was only thinking it might've hitched a lift (as did other rodents, like rats and mice). Wait a moment - I think I found something else. Here's a guide to wildlife in Iceland (with beautiful photos) ... but is it possible that the blockage is caused by a polar bear? Let's see: the bear drifts over from Greenland on an ice floe and disembarks in Iceland. It's famished, and runs away from humans into the wilds. It finds rodents and foxes to snack on (if they're too slow to get away), but it wants fish. So, it wanders in search of rivers and settles down to fish. It jumps into the river for a refreshing swim ... and that's where our heroes, on their boat, run into it. Does that sound possible? Or plausible? *crosses fingers* I've never seen a bear except in pictures, so I hope it's possible! Fascinating! Thank you, Louanne. What is that on the penny piece? Here's a link to our coins, which can explain it better than I can. I don't know much about Australian animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_Australian_dollar#Table We don't have one-cent or two-cent coins any more, unfortunately. We also have $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes, all in different colours. Here's what they look like - from Westpac Bank.
I think the geography will provide enough obstacles? Maple leaf. But we haven't used pennies in years and years.
I grew up in the bush of Northwestern Ontario, a long drive from a small city. We were always canoeing and fishing in the nearby lakes and rivers. For summer vacation, we'd often go on canoe trips that involved paddling up and down rivers, across lakes, for tens of kilometers. I know about this stuff ! A rowboat down rapids would be risky. The boat is too wide and slow to maneuver around obstacles, but a canoe is ideal for this scenario. There's pretty much three methods here, and it depends on what you're observing in the river, mostly the flow (too much or not enough water). And of course it varies from stretch to stretch. If the water's too low, the easiest thing to do is to "walk" the canoe down the rapids. One person guiding the canoe from the shore with a rope, with maybe another on the other side doing the same, or just walking in the river itself. If the waters are too high, rough, and risky, you simply portage to the next stretch. But the most fun you can have is when the conditions are just right. Mind you, it's best for someone to scout the stretch from the shore and make sure it looks safe enough to paddle through. You don't want to navigate rapids on the fly. As a preteen, I'd be in the front of the canoe while my dad was in the back. He'd have a wider view of the stretch and guide us accordingly, and my job was to take care of the immediate and often unseen obstacles (a kind of scary responsibility!). Pushing away from shallow boulders and such before we hit them, that kind of thing. We were always very careful and the worst we'd ever get was getting soaked, taking on a bit of water, and then bailing it out. Since before I was born, he and his friend would take risky runs for a thrill, and though mostly successful, a couple of times they got overturned, and once their canoe got split into three pieces. But generally, if you're smart about it, navigating rivers is very much safe and not all that risky.
Fascinating. Thank you, Set2Stun. It gave me some new avenues of research -- i.e. did the Norse (during the Viking era) ever use either canoes or kayaks? -- and based on the following articles, it seems that they did use canoes ... but not kayaks. Skin boats in Scandinavia (Ancient Origins) Greenland History, Canoes, and Kayaks (Kayarchy) The Viking Longship (Discover Magazine; not too relevant to canoes, but still pretty awesome). Still, my setting is Iceland in the year 1,000 AD. So, can we say that the canoes we have today are the same as they were then? Probably not, but they probably used either a rowboat or a skin boat (i.e. a canoe made by stretching hides over a wooden frame and nailing them together). It was light and maneuverable, but the skins shrunk rapidly and needed to be repaired or replaced. So it may be that, for the purpose of my story, a skin boat (or skin canoe?) may be just what I need. As for spotters and "walking" the canoe down the rapids ... hmm. My difficulty is that there are only two people in the boat (either rowboat or canoe), and the terrain changes from river to lake and back to river. So, I'm not sure if it's possible for one of them to get out and then get back into the boat in time ... is it possible? (By the way, if you google "Thingvellir to Selfoss" on google maps, you'll see what I mean. Obviously I can't chart a river-going voyage on google maps, nor can I use the car/bike/airplane methods -- those didn't exist 1,000 years ago! But I used the walking distance and time (8 hours to cover 36.5km) as a very rough guide. Then I zoomed in and out of the rivers, inlets and lakes to plot a rough course ... though, of course, google maps is not reliable in terms of possible danger on the rivers. But I can hardly drop everything and fly to Iceland to see for myself). Still, since the story goes back 1,000 years, and also involves mythical creatures that the Norse believed in -- such as draug, a huldra, and a werewolf (but no sphinxes/vampires etc., since they don't appear in Norse myths) -- I think I'd be forgiven if I'm not exactly right. Do you agree?
We did have the privilege of maps from previous adventurers who marked Xs where the river got rough. But it's not easy to translate a tiny map to real life, so you'd just have a general idea of when the river might start to get rough, at which point you'd get out and scout. But you'd have to kind of guess if you'd reached that point on the map by what you're seeing. So, I don't think it's that far off from going into it completely blind. You'd look for visual clues of things getting dodgy, and then get out and scout ahead as necessary. Generally speaking, rough patches of rivers aren't very long. There are just brief stretches here and there, and then it gets back to easy traveling. And sure, why not look for signs to guide you, like watching the behaviour of birds, or analyzing the entrails of fish?
Hmm ... my outline and beat sheet don't say much about navigation problems. My heroine has much to deal with: homesickness, an irritating new guide, and a fight scene. I've included some birds (and other Icelandic wildlife) in my 0th-draft, but I could work in bird behaviour too. But what kind of thing would birds do, if there's a rough patch coming up? I tried googling this, and the best I found is that waterfowl are active, noisy, and conspicuous. (No surprise there), but there's no specifics. Could you elaborate, please? Hmm: my heroine grew up by the sea, so she probably would know about such things. Her guide, on the other hand, is an inlander (so probably wouldn't). She could watch out for birds and warn him. (I also wrote in a bit where they she spots a log drifting towards their boat and shouts "Log!", alerting her companion so they can steer the boat around. Could there be logs floating in rivers? Iceland isn't massively wooded - less than 15% of the country has forests - so there aren't massive lumberyards around. On the other hand, could there be wooden obstructions (probably larger than branches but smaller than cut logs)? I'm not sure of the exact terminology, sorry).
Oh, I meant this more like as a religious/divination kind of thing - ornithomancy. I got to learn a new word, heh. As for the logs, yes, we often encountered them while navigating rivers, but they were never floating. They were either embedded in the bottom and sticking up towards the surface, or held in spaces between boulders. They likely end up in such places during spring floods. Important to note that all the rivers I've paddled down/up have been surrounded by boreal forest, so logs are common. Sure snagged a lot of em with my fishing lures. I don't recall obstacles outside of beaver dams. It's possible such barriers could form naturally, but they'd likely be dismantled by the spring floods.
Ah, that! The only people I remember doing that are the Greeks and Romans -- but of course, other seafarers have done the same (e.g. hearing the noise of many birds means that land is not far off). I may be a landlubber, but even I know that one. Speaking of religious divination and birds, one of the funniest stories I've read was about the Roman admiral and the sacred chickens. OK. So if (say) a large branch falls off a tree and into a river, it would never float along until it gets trapped between boulders (or sucked down by a whirlpool)? *curious*
Course it would, but you'd probably never see it. I'd never witnessed logs floating down the river while I was canoeing. It's just because that stuff mostly happens during periods of flooding, either spring thaws or during/after extended heavy rains. Poor Publius Claudius. Shoulda listened to them chickens.
Oh! *brow clears* As luck would have it, the night before my heroes start rowing, there's a deep, but brief, snowstorm (for reasons of plot). Also, the timeline for my story is early June, which makes it early spring (in Iceland, anyway). So, the roads would be covered with melted snow and slush ... which means that fast travel by road is impossible, so my heroes have to use a canoe. Cool! I love it when geography cooperates with narrative causality. Thanks, Set2Stun. Yep. Pulcher was heavily fined and censured for disobeying an omen from the gods. He was lucky, though: some admirals (e.g. John Byng, a British admiral in the late 1750s) were executed for far less.
