Three in Norway, by Two of Them

In 1882, three men board a ship bound for Norway with a peculiar cargo of canoes and camping equipment, seeking the wildest corners of a landscape that still belongs to the wolves and the weather. The Skipper, a weathered sea captain with a troubled soul, leads the expedition; Esau, a perpetually hungry and inexhaustibly cheerful companion, provides the laughter; and John, a tall Irishman on his first great adventure, supplies the wide-eyed wonder. Together they paddle remote fjords, stalk reindeer through ancient forests, and discover a Norway that no tourist brochure could capture, one where logistics are solved with brute force and good humor, where a meal might be caught, cooked, and eaten in the same breathless hour, and where the landscape itself feels less like scenery than a living presence. Lees writes with the dry wit of a man who has learned to laugh at discomfort, and his affection for his companions shines through every misadventure: the lost baggage, the capsized canoes, the elaborate schemes that collapse into hilarity. This is travel writing before the age of comfort, when a journey demanded everything of you and gave everything back.