Hello! Among other ideas in my head right now (never mind the two projects I'm working on) I've been toying with the idea of creating a stroy based off the Tribal lifestyle. Not talking about Conan the Barbarian kill everyone type tribal here, but actual tribes trying to live, hunt, survive, love, and exist in a land that is largely still wild, and quite far north. So living in the tundra essentially. Curious if anyone can recommend some reading that might help give me a better perspective on life in that environment, or maybe some novels that have already been written that may help inspire or guide my idea. Thanks!
I'm doing something similar to this. It's about a 'tribe' of guerrillas who live in the wilderness, and is set in the 1100s in the Highlands of Scotland. I don't read novels; I read modern-day accounts of life in the Siberian tundra and amongst indigenous Amerindian populations. Also try reading letters and diaries from colonists in various uninhabited regions of the world. Also, try living in an authentic tent for a couple of days or cooking a nomad meal. I did it with some native Scottish plant life. Not good for the digestion, but it works wonders for your plausibility.
Good idea, though it is about 12 degrees here at night recently, hence why I was hoping to read about it instead
There's a brilliant novel called Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong. It was translated into English. It's spectacular. Seriously. It's a fictionalisation of Jiang's actual experience in the '60s of moving from China onto the Mongolian grassland and working with the natives there. A whole load of Chinese students did it. It's mostly about grassland life and the role of wolves in Mongolian history, but it has a lot about how they survived as nomads.
what time frame are you wanting to set this in?... today?... or some period of the past?... and in what part of the world? for starters, you should find 'nanook of the north' at your video store... it's a classic documentary on arctic nomadic life...
The Story of the Weeping Camel and The Cave of the Yellow Dog are two really good documentaries on nomad family life. I think they are both available free online. Even though they were filmed recently, the life they show hasn't changed much.
