There are shadows on the northern seas. Fish cities have shrunk to hamlets, old ports have been levelled and harbours are full of warming water, yet there's barely a single ship. An Arctic author asks, how do you say goodbye to a glacier? A burnished skipper, four score years of staring at horizons, leans across the table and says, you know, we were more tolerant in those days, when we sailed and steamed and brought home stories. More storms are gathering. The book's three central themes are living with environmental change around the North Sea and the Atlantic; story-telling through history in these lands; reconnecting with nature and our ancient heritages so as to live well and responsibly. 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. This is the territory of sagas, the Norse and Anglo-Saxon gods of old, and the mythic era of Viking expansion by clinkered longships.
Jules Pretty OBE is Professor of Environment and Society and Director of Centre for Public and Policy Engagement, University of Essex. He is both a scientist and storyteller. His books include The East Country (2017), The Edge of Extinction (2014), This Luminous Coast (2011, 2014), The Earth Only Endures (2007), Agri-Culture (2002) and Regenerating Agriculture (1995). Presenter of the 1999 BBC Radio 4 series Ploughing Eden; contributor to the 2001 BBC TV The Magic Bean, he is Chief & Founding Editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. He received an OBE in 2006 for services to sustainable agriculture and the British Science Association Presidential Medal (Agriculture and Food) in 2015. He is currently a trustee for WWF-UK and was appointed President of Essex Wildlife Trust in 2019. This Luminous Coast was winner of New Angle Prize for Literature in 2013, and The East Country was winner of the East Anglian book of the year in 2018. He is a regular invited speaker at conferences and festivals, and to community and conservation groups. He has spoken at book festivals, on national and local radio. Festival appearances include the Hay Festival, Oundle Book Festival, Larne Folklore Society, Aye Write Festival (Glasgow), Chipping Camden festival, Dartington Festival of Words, Essex Book Festival, River Stour Festival, First Light Festival. Radio work includes for BBC Start the Week, BBC Five Live, and regional BBC talk shows.
