Book review by Erika Vatland: “Sjøfareren”: What a book!

Many people think that 700 pages is too much. This reader certainly did too, before the beginning: it had to be too much, too lexically, too confusing.

But Erika Vatland's new book, “Sjøfareren. A Journey Through Portugal's Lost Empire.”

Because once you're a passenger on board Fatland, we go with you – as in the two large freight cars in which I traveled, first from the coastal town of Santander in a marked cabin Fourth engineer And on a new ship in Durban it was flagged off Junior officer.

Fatland himself became a great writer and traveler.

In order to reach the entire Portuguese Empire, I traveled of course by sea, but also by small plane, by boat wrecks between islands and rivers, with broken-down cars in deserts and on the back of dilapidated motorcycles.

She suffers from burns and infections, and lacks food, drink, and housing.

She fearlessly gives it her all, getting guides, drivers and interpreters – who alone represent a colorful gallery of people. She makes her way to the diamond city of Dundo, visiting countless Portuguese forts and fortifications along the African and Asian coasts, visiting museums, and speaking with politicians, activists, and the general public.

Erika Vatland travels chronologically in the text of the book by following Portugal's expansion into the world, with skilled sailors:

From the gradual Portuguese conquest and clearing of territory along the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and encountering dangerous and unknown ocean currents, to the east coast of Africa, then to the Indian Ocean and to new islands and lands.

The book contains beautiful maps with facts at the front of each new place she visits, and photographs from her travels – and a helpful timeline at the back.

The text alternates between today's contemporary Fatland conqueror and stories dating back hundreds of years.

It's a fun book to read and you learn something all the time. This is a well-written non-fiction book by the particularly courteous and committed Vatland, who during his research traveled to 29 countries, 20 of which are mentioned in the book.

There are bloody and brutal conquests behind the rise of Portugal's colonial empire: countless expeditions with caravels and other ships. Fatland writes that there was a crusade at sea in the wake of Henry the Sailor.

Here you can read about famous and unknown people, including Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and the brothers Dias and Cabral.

The map of Gama's sea voyage in 1498 where he found the sea route to India was guarded as a state secret in Portugal.

But it cost lives. The ships sank, and the crew died in shipwrecks, in battle, from disease. Between 1500 and 1800, two million sailors died from scurvy. But if they get the life-giving orange that contains vitamins C, they can recover.

The treatment of the people conquered by the Portuguese was appalling.

Between 1514 and 1867, more than 12 million slaves were sent in chains across the Atlantic. The Portuguese accounted for half of the transatlantic slave trade.

Fatland meeting with seated men and women.

Such as a visit to the small village of Hoba in Angola, where the San people – the famous bushmen – live in tents as well as in a refugee camp. Fatland asks with a translator what people were like, before and now. They answer that they froze and starved before but are fine now, but do they speak freely? The mediator hardly believed it, as the government officials came.

Angola's oldest museum houses the world's largest collection after the Chokwe people. Now the museum has been robbed, but anthropologist Fatland describes the mask section with enthusiasm. But he also writes resignedly: “African thatched huts will soon become objects of curiosity, something that belongs in ethnographic museums.

Vatland has published several travelogues that have gone viral, such as “Sovitstan” (2014), “Greenson” (2017), and “Hoyt” (2020) — and in “Sjøfareren” she once again manages to captivate the reader.

I wonder if Erika Fatland has made her best travel book.

I can already imagine how a writer like her could enter other empires. expected!