BRUNSWICK

Award-winning author James L. Nelson has turned his story-telling skills toward the unique history of the Viking raids and settlements in medieval Ireland, the influence that the Norsemen had on Irish culture, and vice versa. His novel, “Fin Gall” – which means “White Strangers” in Gaelic, the Irish term for the Norwegian Vikings – first of the Norsemen Saga, tells the story of the Viking incursions into the island, and the violent opposition they met at Irish hands.

He will be discussing this little known story and signing copies of his book at an Author’s Chat at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, 2018, at the People Plus Center, located at 35 Union St. It is free and open to the public.

By the year 795, the Roman Empire was long gone and all of Europe was solidly in the Dark Ages. Among those countries, Ireland stood out as the great refuge of Christian culture and Western Civilization, an island nation largely untouched by outside influences. That is, until the Irish were visited by most unwelcome guests — Viking raiders from Norway, who plundered the exposed and barely protected monasteries along the coast. For the next 200 years the Vikings came, and eventually their raiding voyages became voyages of settlement, and rather than tear monasteries down they built cities up. By the mid-800s, the only city of note in all of Ireland was a Viking settlement at a place that the Irish called Dubh-linn.

Nelson was born and raised in Lewiston, and graduated from UCLA with a degree in motion picture/television production. For six years he worked on board traditional sailing ships before realizing it would be easier to write about sailing rather than actually doing it.

His career as a writer began in 1994 and he has since written more than 20 works of maritime fiction and history. He is the winner or the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award and the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award. Nelson has lectured all over the country and appeared on the Discovery Channel, History Channel and BookTV. He currently lives in Harpswell, with his former shipmate, now wife, Lisa, and two of their four children.

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