Irresistible North: From Venice to Greenland on the Trail of the Zen Brothers

By Andrea Di Robilant

From the author of A Venetian Affair and Lucia comes a charming odyssey in the path of the mysterious Zen brothers, who explored parts of the New World a century before Columbus, and became both a source of scandal and a cause célèbre among geographers in the following centuries.

This delightful journey begins with Andrea di Robilant’s serendipitous discovery of a travel narrative published in Venice in 1558 by the Renaissance statesman Nicolò Zen: the text and its fascinating nautical map re-created the travels of two of the author’s ancestors, brothers who explored the North Atlantic in the 1380s and 1390s. Di Robilant set out to discover why later, in the nineteenth century, the Zens’ account came under attack as one of the greatest frauds in geographical history. Was their map—and even their journey—partially or perhaps entirely faked?

In Irresistible North the author follows the Zens’ route from the Faeroes to Shetland to Iceland and Greenland, greeted by characters who help unravel the enigmas in the Zens’ account. The medieval world comes to life as di Robilant guides us through a landscape enlivened by the ghosts of power-hungry earls and bishops of the old Norwegian realm and magical tales of hot springs and smoking mountains. In this rich telling—an original work of history and a travel book in one—the magnetism of the north draws us in as powerfully as it drew the Zen brothers more than six centuries ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307596628

Reviews for Irresistible North

[pbjwelch · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I thought I would enjoy this book far more than I did. Not that it wasn't interesting, but the topic is so fascinating and so little is known that I had hoped it would be a page-turner. It wasn't but that doesn't mean I didn't learn some interesting facts about northern exploration during this great age of exploration. For example, she relates the story of Deborah Sabo, "an archaeologist excavating Thule Inuit ruins on Baffin Island" [who] dug up a haunting little ivory figure depicting a Norseman wearing a long tunic and a cross on his chest. It was carbon-dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century" (p. 125)--an interesting factoid for those of us who collect stories of early Norse travels to the New World. He also alerted me to a book I had never heard of which is definitely on my "to read" list--Jane Smiley's novel, The Greenlanders, which describes "the decline of one family in the vanishing Norse colony. The story begins in the second half of the fourteenth century" (p. 138). But most astonishingly, I learned that John Cabot, explorer of Newfoundland, was a Venetian (born Giovanni Caboto in Genoa)! who anglicized his name when he moved to London around 1484 (p. 132). But I wish the actual story of the Zen Brothers had had more depth to it, but then the resources are slight, which only left me longing for more.

[pdcread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting history of the first from the med to reach Iceland and the far north