Errand Boy in the Mooseland Hills is a little-known classic of 19th-century Canadian literature, never before translated from the original Icelandic.
The book is based on Magnus Bjarnason's experiences as a young boy when he and his family migrated along with other Icelanders to the Mooseland Hills, in rural Nova Scotia. The stories chronicle his adventures as a hired hand working for a farm family, and then at a gold mine. The author introduces the men with whom he worked and retells stories that, like the Norse sagas, present men of strength and high principle tried by hard circumstances.
Errand Boy in the Mooseland Hills, presented to English audiences for the first time in this appealing translation by Borga Jakobson, will endure for its high literary quality and for its unmatched portrait of a rare chapter in Nova Scotia's rural life.
"A stimulating and uniquely entertaining collection of tales, Errand Boy in the Mooseland Hills is storytelling that both informs and fires the imagination."
- Atlantic Books Today
"If you've ever wondered what it must have been like to be dumped into the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a few primitive tools and the clothes on your back, Errand Boy in the Mooseland Hills will bring you there."
- Paul O'Connell The Chronicle-Herald
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