I read a lot and I made up my own stories about Vikings and about dragons. It was a very direct inspiration and, of course, if you're out on an island without any television for six weeks, you make up your own stories. There were ruined houses all over the island and we were living like those people lived. Indeed they did live on that west coast of Scotland, because when the islands were invaded by Vikings, that was the first place they came to. I suppose we were living how people had lived for thousands of years, like the Vikings themselves. So we went out on the boat and caught our own food. So we were there all summer and we got a boat at that stage because you obviously can't take a large amount of food out there for six weeks. we had the house but there was no electriticy and no television. I grew up mostly in London, so to spend the summer in this wilderness. As I got older, my dad had a house built on the island, so we then spent the whole summer out there. It was a very unusual experience for a child. At that age, we were camping, cooking on an open fire outside.

We didn't have a boat or a way of contacting the outside world at all. It was so small that when you stood on top of it, you could only see sea, all around you, maybe a mile across. We would be dropped off on the island by fishermen and picked up two weeks later. Can you talk a bit more about that experience and how the stories your father told you led into writing How to Train Your Dragon?Ĭressida Cowell: Well, it really inspired the books because it was a very unusual experience, to have as a child. I read about the island you spent so much time on when you were a child and I was really intrigued by that.

How to train your dragon novel series