Out in the Cold. Travels North: Adventures in Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Canada

by Bill Murray

An inspired tale of high adventure, Out in the Cold is Bill Murray’s vivid portrait of his travel across the vast Northern Atlantic from the Arctic north of Norway to Nova Scotia. Murray begins in pursuit of a total solar eclipse in Svalbard, 800 miles from the North Pole. He tests the pleasures of wind-dried sheep in the tiny Faroe Islands, befriends Inuit bone carvers in Greenland and camps with an itinerant Italian musician who dreams of building Greenland’s first luxury resort. He stands naked and freezing on an Icelandic glacier and later (with his clothes on), on the wind-battered Canadian bog where the first European stood 500 years before Columbus.

With a light touch, wry analysis and remarkable depth of reportage, Bill Murray weaves high adventure with practical science and absorbing history, taking the pulse of an under-explored, fragile region on the precipice of change. By turns evocative, astonishing and always a jolly good ride, Out in the Cold is a sprawling and rewarding tour of the Atlantic northlands today.

338 pages, Paperback

Published March 20, 2017

About the author

Adventure traveler and author Bill Murray has visited over 120 countries and territories in 25 years of off-the-beaten-track travel. He and his wife Mirja live on a farm in the Appalachian mountains of Georgia.

Third book just published: Out in the Cold Travels North: Adventures in Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Canada.

Other books: Common Sense and Whiskey, Modest Adventures Far from Home, a collection of fifteen dispatches from some of the world's most off-beat locations, and Visiting Chernobyl, a considered Guide for Travelers.

Two books are now available as audiobooks narrated by the author, and Out in the Cold will be available soon. Here is Common Sense and Whiskey and here is Visiting Chernobyl, a Considered Guide for Travelers . Please note that the author is NOT the actor Bill Murray.

Visit the Common Sense and Whiskey blog and follow @BMurrayWriter on Twitter. See also the web site EarthPhotos.com, with over 15,000 photos from around the world.

Reviews

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bill Murray has spent 20 years or more travelling to ‘the North’ and has compiled his experiences in this book. The most remote destination is Svalbard which he visited most recently to watch a solar eclipse. He also visits the Faroe Islands to watch another solar eclipse. It’s his thang!! In a Paul Therouxy sort of way, he befriends the locals so that he can learn about their lifestyle and history. His trips to Iceland read more like a lads weekend away than serious travel writing but that changes when he flies to Greenland. The connecting theme is Vikings as he traces their history from Norway to Iceland, from their expulsion from Iceland to settlement in Greenland, to their ‘discovery’ of North America, aka Vinland. Murray visits L’Anse aux Meadows, the excavated Viking settlement in Newfoundland.

Because it’s a compilation, it’s sometimes difficult to know what decade he’s talking about and he can jump between them within paragraphs. It’s a light hearted, enjoyable journey and I’m looking forward to visiting all these places in September - all except Svalbard which I’ll have to save for another time. The appendix is a very good source for other reading and has resulted in several more additions to my to read list. Would I read another Bill Murray book? Probably not but I enjoyed this one and would recommend it to anyone likely to be travelling to any of these places.

[Iftekhar Naim · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book contains many interesting stories and local history and legends, the storytelling style was a bit slow and passive. Not one of the best travel stories I read. Still it was entertaining and I feel I learned something about that part of the world.

[Lorna Stuber]

DNF The structure of the content is very disjointed and the writing style is very confusing.

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had potential, but the poor copy editing and poor prose took me out of the journey.

[Andrew Kramer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter is excellent. The book: not so much. Murray's leftists rants disturb what could have been a cool travel story.