Böcker av Jules Pretty

There are shadows on the warming, northern seas. Long ago, refugees fled Doggerland when seas encroached. Now rising seas threaten the low-lying shores once again.Sea Sagas of the North interweaves prose chapters and alliterative sagas. Each chapter tells of travels across shores, seas and islands. These are heroic crossings in warming waters. Each saga tells of tales and times from across the ages. Icelanders ask, "How do we say goodbye to a glacier?" This is the territory of sagas, the Norse and Anglo-Saxon gods of old, and the mythic era of Viking expansion by clinkered longships. It was when dragons protected people from themselves by hiding gold and silver hoards.These crossing tales and sagas begin at elemental wilds of north-west Iceland. They take in the Lofoten Isles of Norway, Sjæland and the Øresund in Denmark, cross the sea to the eastern shore of England, and travel to the north lands of deepwater ports, inland abbeys and the holy shore of Lindisfarne, and then to the Atlantic isles of Shetland and St Kilda, and wind-torn fragments of the Faroes, completing the circle back at Iceland's fire and ice.The book reaches its conclusion with the saga of the Drowning of Doggerland and how the once-dry steppe was flooded by the warming seas, making the people of the plains refugees. The book finishes as Ragnarök looms. What can be done to avoid more fire and flame? These are times when new stories will be needed.Heroes are a central feature of the Sagas; heroes face enemies and evil, the fierce sea and storm, the changing climate, cruel kings concerned with only their own survival, invaders seeking only money, planners plotting destruction of the fishing villages, ship and fleet owners exploiting labor and preventing safety investments, and financiers lending on the paper fish.The heroes stride: women and men confront indifference and evil. We hear of people who consider themselves to be heroes--Vortigern the King; Æthelred the Ill-advised; Olaf the Norse King; Kör the Wicked; Hrolleif the Horrible and his son Slídr; Wulfstan the Archbishop; and numerous ship owners.So, we hear of shaman Sky-Ryder at the flooding Doggerland; Queen Erce of the coast; Hildr the Drover and abbess of Whitby monastery; and Herne the Hunter King. In sagas of sail, we hear of Skaði, the girl with magic and healing powers; Grim the longship leader; Sigi the slave singer; Ingimund the generous; and Byrthnoð the bold Earl. In the Sagas of fish, we hear tell of Ólíni the nurse; Alf the apprentice boy and later Mate; fisher Ned and cobbler Waxy Jack; Magnus the goði farmer; the slave boy An; and Freddie the deckie learner. There is also Unni the island girl and rescuer; Skipper Jack the last bargeman; þordur the Life-Saver; and Gibbie the whaler. We hear, too, of Lily and Rita and other women activists of Hull, as well as Mary the first female mayor.Also included are a glossary of Norse Gods, a timeline, brief notes on walks connected with each chapter, stories, chapter notes, and a bibliography. The book is illustrated with monochrome images by the author, and maps by Chris Pretty to depict the territories of tales and stories, as well as a map of the whole region and regional maps for each chapter.

Over the course of a year, Jules Pretty walked along the shoreline of East Anglia in southeastern England, eventually exploring four hundred miles on foot (and another hundred miles by boat). It is a coast and a culture that is about to be lost-not yet, perhaps, but soon-to rising tides and industrial sprawl. This Luminous Coast takes the reader with him on his journey over land and water; over sea walls of dried grass, beside stretched fields of golden crops, alongside white sails gliding across the intricate lacework of invisible creeks and estuaries, under vast skies that are home to curlews and redshanks and the outpourings of skylarks.East Anglia's coastline is as much a human landscape as it is a natural one, and Pretty is equally perceptive about the region's cultural heritage and its "e;industrial wild"e;: fishing villages and the modern seaside resorts, family farms and oil refineries, pleasure piers and concrete seawalls, cozy pubs and military installations. Through words and photographs, Pretty interweaves stories of the land and sea with people past and present. He is a passionate and sensitive guide to a region in transition, under stress, and perhaps even doomed, as finely attuned to its history as he is to its unique sensory world.

In The Edge of Extinction, Jules Pretty explores life and change in a dozen environments and cultures across the world, taking us on a series of remarkable journeys through deserts, coasts, mountains, steppes, snowscapes, marshes, and farms to show that there are many different ways to live in cooperation with nature. From these accounts of people living close to the land and close to the edge emerge a larger story about sustainability and the future of the planet. Pretty addresses not only current threats to natural and cultural diversity but also the unsustainability of modern lifestyles typical of industrialized countries. In a very real sense, Pretty discovers, what we manage to preserve now may well save us later.Jules Pretty's travels take him among the Maori people along the coasts of the Pacific, into the mountains of China, and across petroglyph-rich deserts of Australia. He treks with nomads over the continent-wide steppes of Tuva in southern Siberia, walks and boats in the wildlife-rich inland swamps of southern Africa, and experiences the Arctic with ice fishermen in Finland. He explores the coasts and inland marshes of eastern England and Northern Ireland and accompanies Innu people across the taiga's snowy forests and the lakes of the Labrador interior. Pretty concludes his global journey immersed in the discrete cultures and landscapes embedded within the American landscape: the small farms of the Amish, the swamps of the Cajuns in the deep South, and the deserts of California.The diverse people Pretty meets in The Edge of Extinction display deep pride in their relationships with the land and are only willing to join with the modern world on their own terms. By the examples they set, they offer valuable lessons for anyone seeking to find harmony in a world cracking under the pressures of apparently insatiable consumption patterns of the affluent.

The East Country is a work of creative nonfiction in which the acclaimed nature writer Jules Pretty integrates memoir, natural history, cultural critique, and spiritual reflection into a single compelling narrative. Pretty frames his book around Aldo Leopold and his classic A Sand County Almanac, bringing Leopold's ethic-that some could live...

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