Learning About Famous Christians

by Kai Sunderland

Saint Brendan

Many people believe that Christopher Columbus was the first white man in North America, and others think that Leif Ericsson, the Viking, was the first white man to set foot here. They appear to be wrong in either case. The first white men ever to come to North America were probably Saint Brendan and his crew of pious monks, from the southwest coast of Ireland. Saint Brendan’s journey was immortalised in the Navigatio, his manuscript dating from the sixth century C.E., hundreds of years before the Vikings and almost a thousand years before Christopher Columbus. This is the Christian about whom I am going to write.

Saint Brendan was an abbot who lived in Ireland during an age of learning and discovery between periods of European barbarism. The Vikings’ vicious raids had driven most of the monks westward to Ireland, and they had brought their books and knowledge with them. The area was home to fishermen, farmers, and other peaceable mediaeval folk. The Norsemen’s havoc had not yet reached as far as Ireland. Brendan and his crew left Ireland, though, because they wanted to find solitude.

Brendan’s voyage from Ireland to Newfoundland was made in a leather boat known as a curragh, which was commonly used during the time. It would have been made of roughly forty-nine stiff oxhides stretched over a wooden frame, sewn together with handrolled flax thread and then coated in foul-smelling, rancid, wool grease. These were good, seaworthy boats and the design is similar to that used to this day by many Irish fishermen (but with canvas and modern sealants instead of oxhides and grease). This wonderfully flexible craft had square sails and no keel - a broad steering paddle fastened to an H-frame on the port-stern controlled the vessel. The wooden frame was lashed together by over two miles of leather thong.

A truly fantastic story is set down in Saint Brendan’s Navigatio. It is about St. Brendan’s voyage from Ireland, past Greenland, to a land that scholars today believe was Newfoundland. He set out with seventeen others and returned with fourteen. He described an island of sheep, where the sheep could stay outside day or night, summer or winter. This island is believed to be one of a set of islands that are currently known as the Faroes, north of Scotland. The climate in the Faroes is much milder than in the rest of Britain, so sheep can stay out almost year round. Interestingly, our word for these islands, Faroes, is based on a Viking word meaning “Sheep Island”. Another place that St. Brendan described was a paradise of birds lying to the west of the island of sheep, believed to be one of the many cliffs that are home to thousands of birds. These cliffs are everywhere in the Faroes. St. Brendan and his crew describe large numbers of gigantic fish, which nowadays are assumed to be whales. Once, when they thought that a whale was an island, they lit a fire on its back only to have the “island” dive into the Atlantic with the fire still burning on its back! They named the “big fish” Jasconius. In the Navigatio, St. Brendan speaks of a “pillar of crystal.” Mediaeval experts think that Brendan was talking about an iceberg that he saw off the coast of Newfoundland. Further on, Brendan talks about being near the edge of Hell and he accurately describes an underwater volcanic eruption.

St. Brendan’s return voyage was much easier because he was travelling with the Nor’easterlies, winds which blow almost constantly from Newfoundland to Ireland.

Does this account seem farfetched? In 1976, the Brendan voyage was repeated by a man named Timothy Severin and his crew of four, leaving little doubt about Saint Brendan’s account. So, neither Christopher Columbus nor Leif Ericsson the Viking was the first white man to set foot in North America. Instead, it was a brave abbot from Ireland and his crew. Their journey in the sixth century C.E., hundreds of years before the Vikings and almost a thousand before Christopher Columbus, was brave, daring and exciting, by a group of Christian men seeking solitude.

Want to learn more?

Severin, T. (1978). The Brendan Voyage. London, England: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. London, England.