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Saint Brendan
Saint Brendan of Ardfert and Clonfert, also known as Brendan the Voyager or Brendan the Navigator, was born in 484 near Tralee in County Kerry. After being ordained priest by Saint Erc in 512 he built some monastic cells until 530 when he probably started with his famous voyage to Terra Repromissions, which can be translated as Promised Land of the Saints or just as Paradise.
Terra Repromissions
All we known about this voyage is described approximately 500 years after it took place in Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis and is therefore legendary.
According to the legend a monk told him about a land far across the ocean. Eager to convert Saint Brendan left Ireland, accompanied by 17 to 150 monks, in a curragh, a wood-framed boat covered in sewn ox-hides, for a journey on the Atlantic Ocean that would take seven years.
It is written that they reached a beautiful island with a luxuriant vegetation and precious gems. Unfortunately they did not have a Global Positioning System at their disposal and the exact location of this paradise is lost in history. Of course cartographers and historians have tried to pin-point the position of Terra Repromissions. It is interesting to notice that increasing knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean pushed the position of this island further and further away from Ireland in the course of the centuries.
On the Catalonian chart of 1375 this legendary island is dropped not particular far from the southern part of Ireland. Later on in the fourteenth century the island is located on the same spot where in the fifteenth century the Canary Islands were situated. This forced the cartographers to push the Promised Land of the Saints further away. Actually they mapped the island of Madeira spot-on.
The desperate cartographers Apianus and Ortelius probably used a dart when they positioned the island again near the south coast of Ireland at the end of the sixteenth century.
Great Ireland
In the nineteenth century the belief in the existence of the island was completely abandoned, that is until some Irish scholars claimed that Saint Brendan, thus Ireland, has discovered America.
Proof for this claim is shaky. It is based on the Norsemen who named a region south of Vinland, modern day Newfoundland, Irland ed Mikla, or Great Ireland, and on a legend of the native inhabitants of Florida that their country was once inhabited by a white tribe using iron tools. The scholars also conclude that the creatures and plants described in the legend of Saint Brendan originated from America.
There is however no watertight archaeological evidence whatsoever to support the idea of European, let alone Irish, presence in Newfoundland or Florida prior to the arrival of the Norsemen around 800. The earliest evidence of Irish presence in America, West-Virginia to be precise, are inscriptions using the Ogham alphabet and Christian symbols which are dated somewhere between 500 and 1,000. The unique grammar and vocabulary of these inscriptions provoke both interest as suspicion.
Tim Severin
In a courageous attempt to silence the opponents of this theory Tim Severin built himself a curragh and sailed to Newfoundland in 1976 and 1977.
During this passage they saw similarities between the legend and the actual local situation. Near the Faeroe Islands Severin encountered flocks of seabird near what could have been Brendan's Paradise of Birds, they saw playful whales which could have been the black sea monsters in the legend. The volcanoes of Iceland could have been responsible for the pelting with flaming, foul smelling rocks and the icebergs are indeed towering crystals".
Severin also found a plausible reason for the long time Saint Brendan needed for his roundtrip: on the way westwards he could take advantage of the domination winds and favourable currents, but it was almost impossible to sail against the currents and winds with the curragh.
The curragh of Tim Severin, with the very suitable name Brendan, is now on display in the Craggaunowen Project, a heritage park near Quin in County Clare.
By accomplishing this journey Severin proved that it was possible to cross the Atlantic with a curragh, but how did Saint Brendan navigate? After all Ireland was on the edge of a flat world in those days.
One assumption is that he just was lucky. He set sail and was caught by the favourable currents and winds. This hypothesis can not explain how Saint Brendan found his way back to Ireland. Beaching on a arbitrary shore of America is one thing, finding Ireland again is an other.
A second theory is that Saint Brendan extensively studied the astrological perfect aligned megalithic monuments, such as stone circles and tombs, and created some sort of a navigational aid, coincidentally shaped as a Celtic Cross. Supporters of this theory find evidence in rough versions of that alleged instrument inscribed in slaps in the monastery of Ardfert. Our unpretentious opinion: as it looks like a Celtic Cross on a monastic site it is very likely to be a Celtic Cross.
The last riddle in the legend is the monk who told Saint Brendan about the land across the ocean. Who was he and how did he know?
After his voyage he founded around 550 a monastery on Inis-de-druim (present Coney Island, County Clare). Subsequently he spent three year in Wales and Iona, where he became close friends with the likewise travel-mad Saint Columba. After establishing several monasteries, among which the monastery of Clonfert in County Galway, throughout Ireland he died in 577. Considering his adventurous life the final words of Saint Brendan are remarkable: I fear that I shall journey alone, that the way will be dark; I fear the unknown land, the presence of my King and the sentence of my judge.