by Steven Sora
In 1981 another archeologist, Peter Schledermann, reported on chain mail found on Ellesmere Island in the Northwest Territories and other Viking finds in Canada.14 Such physical evidence as the artifacts found in the Arctic and in Labrador corroborated the literary evidence, and it became impossible to deny that Norse settlers and traders had traveled the new lands. Just how extensive were these wanderings of the Norsemen is still the subject of debate. While historians now accept the ability of the Norse to reach and settle Newfoundland and Labrador five hundred years before Columbus, further proof is required to accept Norse explorers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, or farther west. The camp in favor of further explorations has documentation in the recent studies of linguistics that indicate the Norse not only reached these areas but also stayed and even intermarried. In separate studies, at least two writers, Arlington Mallery and Barry Fell, have come to the conclusion that northeastern native tribes had commerce with Europeans before Columbus.
Arlington Mallery was a navigator and engineer by trade.15 In 1951 his work The Rediscovery of Lost America was published, detailing the connections between Amerindian peoples and the Norse. His thesis was that the Iroquois and neighboring Huron peoples had encountered and borrowed technology and even language from the Norsemen. The Norse word for “devil,” for example, is loki—and the Huron word is the same. In both cultures he was considered to be not the horned, tailed demon of Christianity, but the “trickster” god, evil yet comical at times. To the oceangoing Norsemen, Niord, a sea god, was of primary importance among a host of deities. In Huron, he survives as Niyoh. Barry Fell, in America B.C., compiled an extensive list of Celtic and Algonquin words that he thinks rules out any coincidence of similarities between the languages.16 He believes that even earlier crossings than those of the Norse traders and Irish monks took place. The Norsemen may even have given the Iroquois their style of dwelling. As the Norse built their communal longhouse, so did the Iroquois, separating themselves from the other tribes of the United States and Canada.
Linguistic evidence alone cannot be accepted as proof, since it is at best an inexact science. There is ample evidence to substantiate the ability of pre-Columbian Europeans to sail to America; not only could the Norse make the journey, but so could Irish sailors from even earlier dates. The primary source for this information is the Norse themselves. In the sagas, there are several references to monks and Irish-speaking peoples who reached America first. The Landanamabok tells of the Icelander Ari Marson, who was driven by storm to Hvitramannaland, or Greater Ireland. The land is described as being near Vinland, and Marson found Irish Catholics there.17
Another written record of an Irish crossing of the Atlantic is the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, or the Voyage of St. Brendan. This work is preserved in the library of the British Museum and tells the tale of Saint Brendan, dubbed the “Navigator,” who crossed the Atlantic in A.D. 539. Brendan is one of Ireland’s most important saints, and features of his life and his numerous travels are extensively documented.18 Saint Brendan sailed to the Shetlands, the Faeroes, and Brittany. His greatest adventure was transatlantic. The Navigatio describes his leaving Ireland from County Kerry with eighteen monks. It also provides modern readers with wild descriptions of the sights seen by these medieval monks. While his descriptions seem fantastic, to monks who had never before been aware of the Arctic, its icebergs, glaciers, whales, volcanoes, and native Inuit might have been truly fantastic.
From the written description left behind by Brendan, we learn that he and his monks first landed on Saint Kilda, an island in the Outer Hebrides, and then sailed to the “Sheep Islands.” These islands are now known as the Faeroes, and they are still famous for sheep raising. From there to Iceland is a short hop equal to the distance between Scotland and the Faeroes. It was a dangerous voyage, however, to sail the cold Atlantic in boats made of skin, but the Saxons had sailed to Great Britain in such vessels, and archeologists have determined that humans have used such vessels for five thousand years. From the islands north of Scotland, it is estimated that the journey required two days on the open sea. The peaks of Iceland could be seen for half the way. In Iceland, Brendan and his group were treated to their first view of a volcano. Volcanic activity in Iceland exists today, an unforgettable sight for modern travelers as well as medieval monks. From Iceland to Greenland is another equally short hop, not without danger. Whales and giant ice floes could be both fatal hazards and incredible visions for any visitor.
Where did Brendan make landfall? One intriguing site preserved on ancient maps is the island of Icaria, which since has disappeared (though there is another of the same name in Greece).19 Although there are several theories concerning the location of Icaria, the name itself may be a clue. Kerry in Ireland was Brendan’s home, I Caria, and may have been the name given to the site where Brendan and his party landed. In Brendan’s time the Church in Rome became afraid that the religion of the Celtic Christian Church did not always conform to their own dogma. The Celtic priests wore their hair in an ancient style more closely resembling the pre-Christian Druids, for example, and they celebrated major feast days on days different from those set by Rome. They resented the intrusion that Rome seemed to force on their Irish ways.
Later, the Celtic priests of the Celi Dei, a monastic organization, came to believe themselves to be more closely following their God than did the bishops and pope in Rome who they often considered corrupt. They isolated themselves from the main Church and fled as other monastic groups had, to remote outposts. From the Norse descriptions of the dress of the Irish they met in Vinland, it seems that the Celi Dei might have followed Brendan across the Atlantic. Brendan’s voyage might have paved the way to Iceland for other Irish Christians. The Norse recognized that the Irish had settlements there and preserved records of the Irish in Iceland. The sagas refer to Papay, an island off the southern coast of Iceland, named for the Papars. Papar was a term the Norse used to describe the Christians who adhered to the doctrines of the pope in Rome. The suffix “-ay” or “-ey” indicates an island. The records of the Norse add credibility to such annals of the Irish.
Iceland and the islands to the west had their own rise and fall. In 1347 the Black Death (bubonic plague) made its way to Iceland. It decimated the population, and the reports that one third of Europe had died from the plague might have sent some settlers farther west instead of east. The combined effect of the plague and the depopulation due to fear left Iceland much less populous. After a second plague in 1402, the monasteries of Iceland were abandoned. But the country was not forgotten, and Columbus visited Iceland before his voyage to America. By the time Columbus sailed to Iceland in 1477, he must have been aware of the stories of Norse voyages to western lands. That same year he had also been in Ireland, and while he was visiting in Galway, two flat-faced bodies washed ashore. They might have been Inuit or North American natives who drowned while fishing, but Columbus decided they were Asians. Columbus was a mapmaker and seller during the years he lived in Portugal, and he collected the tales of pilots and seafarers from all over the world. He even visited the Azores, islands in the mid-Atlantic that were governed by the family of his wife, and may have known about the existence of Vinland. Columbus, however, was not looking for a better fishing ground or lumber; he was searching for the riches of China, known to him as Cathay.
Others, however, did travel west looking for the better fishing grounds of the Grand Banks of Labrador and Newfoundland. In Newfoundland, Harold Harwood says that the Basques had fished there for whales since 1450.20 Orkney fishermen had fished in “Estotiland,” believed to be the Maritime Provinces of Canada, from 1371. British ships from Bristol had fished in Icelandic waters from the early 1400s, and despite the lack of records (fishermen have not been known to keep written records), Bristol’s history tells of exploring the seas west of Ireland in 1480 for better fishing grounds. The French ships from La Have that met Jacques Cartier on his voyage of exploration had been sailing west for yea
rs. European knowledge of Iceland and points west had been unbroken from at least A.D. 1000. It was, in fact, a fisherman from the Faeroes who first told a Scottish earl and a Venetian shipowner about the place called Estotiland that lay one thousand miles west of Frislandia (northern Scottish Islands). The Scottish earl and his new friend, the shipowner from Venice, were impressed. They decided to find this new land. And they did.
Chapter 4
THE SCOTTISH DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
Once upon a time the inhabitants of the remote islands off the coasts of the North Atlantic had a particularly brutal custom toward visitors. If a storm blew them ashore, the islanders would rush from their homes, kill the survivors, and divide the booty. The practice gives a new dimension to the phrase “tourist trap.” It was from these dire consequences that a chance meeting occurred that came to unite two of the greatest families of the pre-Columbian seafaring world, Sinclair and Zeno.
Henry Sinclair was the earl of the Orkneys. These windswept islands that lie off the northernmost point of Scotland had been inhabited by Scots, Picts, and—before Sinclair’s day—Norse settlers.1 His family had received these lands through inheritance and marriage. The Sinclairs already owned large stretches of land in the Scottish northlands and strategic property near Edinburgh, which had been a reward for fighting alongside William the Conqueror in A.D. 1066. In 1390 Henry Sinclair was showing his strength in his new possessions by sailing there with his fleet. His arrival came just in the nick of time for Niccolo Zeno, an Italian of royal blood who had traveled north as an adventurer. Zeno’s father was a nobleman descended from one of the strongest, wealthiest families of Venice. His brother Carlo, a naval war hero, had saved Venice from a Genoese invasion. Not one to live in the shadow of his brother’s glory, Niccolo was out to make a name for himself. On tiny Fer Island, however, he almost lost his life.
He had sailed from Venice north up the Atlantic along the coast of Britain and planned to explore still farther north. On this tiny island, between the Shetlands and the Orkneys, Zeno’s ship ran aground on a reef just off the shore. The islanders there still have a custom called grindadrap, which means whale hunt, but the term does not come close to describing the gruesome scene.2 Anywhere between a handful and a group of a hundred pilot whales will swim close to the shore, and the war cry grint, goes out through the island. Within minutes the entire population is on the scene carrying everything from ten-inch knives to harpoons. Men in powerboats in modern times force the whales to shore. If the event takes place at a sloping beach, many of the whales will be forced on to the beach, where groups stand ready for them. A handful of men will rush a beached whale, thrusting their knives into the whale’s spinal marrow and causing the whale to thrash violently and thus break its own spinal cord. More men then descend on the whale and attack it with knives until the bay froths with its hot pink blood. Lawrence Millman describes the modern scene in Last Places, complete with the image of local children playing with a whale kidney and heart as their parents complete the butchery. All of the islanders eat well, since all would share in the bounty. The Lonely Planet travel guide to the Faeroes describes the scene as a “Greenpeace sympathizers’ nightmare” and goes on to say that “to most Faeroese [it is] as much a part of life as Christmas.”3
Just as the whales are considered fair game today, so were the explorers and windswept fishing boats of a few centuries ago. The islanders were ready to grindadrap Zeno and his crew with their ten-inch fishing knives until the earl of the Orkneys arrived at the last minute. Henry Sinclair, their nominal ruler, dispersed the crowd and spared the sailors’ lives. This fortuitous meeting of Niccolo Zeno and Henry Sinclair became a momentous event for both of them. The two seafarers swapped tales of their adventures and their knowledge of modern warfare. Sinclair had heard of Niccolo’s famous brother Carlo. Called the “Lion of Venice” for his role in the Genoese-Venetian War, he was famous throughout the world.4 The Crusades also had brought the not-too-distant ancestors of Henry Sinclair in touch with the Zeno family—Scots and Britons had taken Venetian ships on the last leg of travel to the Holy Lands.
Sinclair was impressed enough by the Zeno name to appoint Niccolo as his admiral. Niccolo wrote home to another brother, Antonio, of his appointment by “Prince” Henry Sinclair and instructed Antonio to join him in Scotland.5 Sinclair and Zeno joined forces to assert the Sinclair claim to the islands around Scotland. Niccolo, the explorer, traveled the lands that Sinclair had inherited around Scotland and even made a trip to Greenland on his patron’s behalf, where he mapped the coastline.
Henry Sinclair had learned that lands existed west of Greenland from a Faeroese fisherman who had been captured during a voyage to the Grand Banks. The fisherman’s story was remarkable. He described his capture by natives in this strange land and how he had met a man living with his captors who spoke Latin and had books. He traveled south in the new land with six other fishermen who had been with him when their ship was wrecked. In the south they fell victim to cannibals, who ritually murdered his companions but spared him because he taught them how to fish with a net. He was allowed to return to the north through a land called Drogio and finally found his way back to Estotiland. From there he built a vessel large enough to make the eastern crossing to Europe.
The fisherman described Estotiland as being smaller than Iceland, from where his original fleet had started. He said that this land had a great mountain in the center and four rivers. The people there had traded with “Engroueland” (Greenland), receiving goods for the furs and pitch they brought from their own country. Sinclair heard this story in 1397, and the next year he set sail west to see firsthand these lands beyond Greenland. He was no stranger to the existence of Greenland. The bishop of Orkney had been sent there by Pope Boniface IX in 1394, and it was a Sinclair ship that provided passage for the bishop. The Church in Greenland was centered in Gardar, a settlement on the western coast of that island. From western Greenland to Canada is not a longer distance than the number of miles from there to Iceland.
By the time Henry Sinclair was ready to make the voyage, Niccolo’s brother Antonio had joined them. Before the journey could take place, Niccolo died, and so it was Antonio Zeno who accompanied Henry Sinclair to America and recorded the entire history of the voyage. Antonio inherited his brother’s titles and wealth, although he never received the title admiral from the earl. Part of this inheritance included the maps and reports compiled by Niccolo, who had spent his last few years exploring and charting the coast on a three-ship expedition. The voyage of Henry Sinclair and Antonio Zeno was preserved for posterity in the maps and letters that Antonio sent to Venice, which were published in 1558. They recorded the first expedition since the Norse crossed the Atlantic. Zeno even sent home a map of the New World.
It is possible that Sinclair already knew of lands west of Greenland. The Sinclair family had Norse connections through marriage, and they were aware of the Norse settlements in the western isles. Sinclair may have known of lands in America even before the fisherman told him of his capture. The most intriguing part of the fisherman’s tale might have been the warmer climates described in comparison to the frozen northern isles inhabited and explored by the Norse. The story of the discovery of America loses part of the drama without the tales of the sailor’s fears of ships toppling off the edge of the known and flat land, but such tales are fiction. The fact that the Earth was round was understood from at least Roman times. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, compiled in the first century, records the controversy concerning the measurement of the circumference of the Earth. Such calculations had been debated more than a thousand years earlier. By Henry Sinclair’s day the eastern coast of Canada had been reached by intrepid Norse sailors for hundreds of years. In fact, this chain of knowledge had been unbroken as evidenced by the records that became known as the Norse sagas and by the communications between Rome and the far-flung bishops of the Church. Discovery, then, becomes a relative term.
The Voyage of Sinc
lair and Zeno
In 1398 Henry Sinclair and Antonio Zeno were ready to sail, but their expedition was marred by the death of the fisherman just three days before they were to embark. He had given Zeno and Sinclair directions in terms that medieval seafarers understood. They measured distance from their home in terms of the height of the sun. The altitude of the sun was calculated with a tool called the astrolabe. This tool combined with a shadow board allowed the sailors to calculate latitude. The journey would go on.
The expedition started in Scotland, and as seems to have been the custom for such western voyages, it was made by hopping from one island to the next. From Scotland, through the Orkneys, past tiny Fer Island, and then farther north. The Faeroes, a group of islands two days north, were most likely the first planned stop. There is some disagreement among later historians trying to trace the voyage—the result of variations in spelling. On Antonio’s map, Fer Island, where Sinclair had rescued Niccolo, was written as “FerIslanda,” and later as “Frisland.” Fer Island is only one day away from the Orkneys, and although sailors liked the landmarks, it was unnecessary to stop so close to the home base.
In an article on the voyage written in 1951, William Herbert Hobbs claimed that Iceland was also called Frisland.6 Tim Severin, author of The Brendan Voyage, studied pre-Columbian Atlantic crossings and declared that the Faeroes were just where Zeno said they were.7 Faer meant “sheep” in the Old Norse language, and “Faer-Eyjaer” was the Norse name given to the Faeroes, where, as noted earlier, sheep raising was the main industry.8 Fishermen from the Hebrides called the Faeroes the “Faraways,” which was most likely a pun in their language, a mixture of Old Norse and Old English. The “Faraway” Faeroes were really only two days’ sailing.
From the sixth century onward Irish hermits had set sail with their sheep to the western islands to live in peace and freedom from Norse attacks. The Norse arrived in the ninth century. Iceland was also reached by these early Irish, and the Norse could have easily applied the Faer-Eyjaer label to Iceland as well.