DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY THE IRISH

The geography of the western world, according to the old Norsemen, consisted of

Gudleif was son of Gudlaug the rich, of Straumfjord, and brother of Thorfinn, from whom the Sturlungers are descended. Gudleif was a great merchant, he had a merchant ship, but Thorolf Eyrar Loptson had another, that time they fought against Gyrd, son of Sigvald Jarl; then lost GYRD his eye. It happened in the last years of the reign of King Olaf the Saint, that Gudleif undertook a trading voyage to Dublin; but when he sailed from the west, intended he to sail to Iceland; he sailed then from the west of Ireland, and met with north-east winds, and was driven far to the west, and south-west, in the sea, where no land was to be seen.

But it was already far gone in the summer, and they made many prayers that they might escape from the sea; and it came to pass that they saw land. It was a great land, but they knew not what land it was. Then took they the resolve to sail to the land, for they were weary of contending longer with the violence of the sea. They found there a good harbour; and when they had been a short time on shore, came people to them: they knew none of the people, but it rather appeared to them that they spoke Irish. Soon came to them so great a number that it made up many hundreds.

These men fell upon them and seized them all, and bound them, and drove them up the country. There were they brought before an assembly, to be judged. They understood so much that some were for killing them, but others would have them distributed amongst the inhabitants, and made slaves. And while this was going on saw they where rode a great body of men, and a large banner was borne in the midst. Then thought they that there must be a chief in the troop; but when it came near, saw they that under the banner rode a large and dignified man, who was much in years, and whose hair was white. All present bowed down before the man, and received him as well as they could. Now observed they that all opinions and resolutions concerning their business, were submitted to his decision. Then ordered this man Gudleif and his companions to be brought before him, and when they had come before this man, spoke he to them in the Northern tongue, and asked them from what country they came. They answered him, that the most of them were Icelanders. The man asked which of them were Icelanders? Gudleif said that he was an Icelander. He then saluted the old man, and he received it well, and asked from what part of Iceland he came. Gudleif said that he was from that district which hight Borgafjord.

Gudleif and his people put to sea and they landed in Ireland late in harvest, and were in Dublin for the winter. But in the summer after, sailed they to, Iceland, and Gudleif delivered over there these valuables; and people held it for certain, that this man was Bjorn, the Champion of Breidavik, and no other account to be relied on is there in confirmation of this, except that which is now given here. The mention of Sigurd Jarl of the Orkneys, Palnatoki, Styrbjorn the nephew of Erik of Sweden, the battle of Fyrisvold, Snorri Godi, "the latter part of the reign of king Olaf the saint," gives a chronological character to the narratives, and enables us to fix with confidence, nearly the exact period of the principal events. Hence it appears that Gudleif Gudlaugson, sailing from the west of Ireland in the yeare 1029, with a N. E. wind, is driven far to the south and south-west, where no land was to be seen, and that after being exposed for many days to the violence of the winds and waves, he at length finds shelter upon a coast, where Bjorn Asbrandson, who had left Iceland with N. E. winds thirty years before, had become established as chief of the inhabitants of the country.

The locality of the newly discovered country is next to be determined: Now if a line be drawn running N. E. to S. W. the course of Bjorn Asbrandson, from the western coast of Iceland, and another in the same direction (the course of Gudleif Gudlaugson) from the west coast of Ireland, they would intersect each other on the southern shores of the United States, somewhere about Carolina or Georgia. This position accords well with the description of the locality of their country, given by the Skrælings to Thorfinn Karlsefne, and which the Northmen believed to be White Man's land or Great Ireland, as also with the geographical notices of the same land which have been already adduced; and when to these evidences be added the statements of Gudleif and his companions respecting the language of the natives, "which appeared to them to be Irish," there is every reason to conclude that this was the Hvitramannaland, Albania which is situated opposite Vinland the good, or Ireland ed mikla of the Northmen and which the merchants formerly called Hibernia Major or Great Ireland, and lies, as has been said, to the west of Ireland proper.

If the White Man's Land, or Great Ireland of the Northmen was the country situated to the south of Chesapeake Bay, including North and South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida. It is well known that the Esquimaux Indians formerly inhabited countries much further south than they do at present, and a very remarkable tradition is stated to be still preserved amongst the Shawnese Indians, who emigrated 87 years ago, from West Florida to Ohio, that Florida was once inhabited by white men, who used iron instruments. A German writer also mentions an old tradition of the ancestors of the Shawnese having come from beyond the sea.

Sir Erlend Thordson had obtained from abroad the geographical chart of that Albania, or land of the White men. This chart had held accurately all those tracts of land, and the boundaries of Markland, Einfætingjaland, and little Helluland, together with Greenland, to the west of it, where apparently begins the good Terra Florida." This Sir Erlend was priest of the parish of Staden in Steingrimsfjord, on the west coast of Iceland, in the yeare 1568, but no further information has been obtained respecting the chart, which probably contained the outlines of all the countries known to the Northmen soon after their discovery of the American continent.

From what cause could the name of Great Ireland have arisen, but from the fact of the country having been colonized by the Irish. the Irish visited and inhabited Iceland towards the close of the 8th century, to have accomplished which they must have traversed a stormy ocean to the extent of about 800 miles; that a hundred years before the time of Dicuil, namely in the yeare 725, they had been found upon the Farœ islands; that in the 10th century, voyages between Iceland and Ireland were of ordinary occurrence; and that in the beginning of the 11th century, White Man's Land or Great Ireland is mentioned,--not as a newly discovered country,--but as a land long known by name to the Northmen.

The Firbolgs are reckoned amongst the first adventurers who colonised Ireland. A number of years later (A.D. 254) the migration of a colony of Irish Cruithneans from Ulster to Man is registered by Tighernach. Tighernach, the most accurate and most ancient prose chronicler of the northern nations, belongs to Clonmacnoise, and probably also Dicuil (q.v), the world-famed geographer. In this school were composed the "Chronicon Scotorum", a valuable chronicle of Irish affairs from the earliest times to 1135, and the "Leabhar na h-Uidhre", which, excepting the "Book of Armagh", is the oldest Irish historical transcript now in existence. The Irish priests and monks, or the Papes, as they called them, had sufficiently learnt to know in Ireland and the Sudreys, as well as in Orkney and Shetland, where islands, called Papey, and districts called Papyli, bear sufficient witness of their existence. According to the oldest Icelandic writer, Ari Frôði, the Papes even continued to reside in Iceland till the arrival of the Norwegians, and left it only because they would not live together with pagans. Among the daughters of Ketil Flatnef, one had a son, called Ketil after his grandfather; he was brought up as a Christian, and, migrating, like his relatives, from the Sudreys to Iceland, took his territory on the south-eastern side, at the foot of the immense glaciers of Skaftd and Sida. Christian ecclesiastics from Ireland, had formerly resided here. It is greatly confirmed by the indisputable authority of Dicuil, who says that some Irish clergymen told him that about A. D. 795 they had passed the time from February to August on an island which they believed to be Thule, where the sun at the summer solstice was but a short time below the horizon, and that it was only a day's sail from the frozen sea.

The discovery of Vinland and Great Ireland appear to have been totally independent of each other: the latter is only incidentally alluded to by the Northern navigators; with the name they were familiar, but of the peculiar locality of the country they were ignorant, nor was it until after the return of Karlsefni from Vinland in 1011, and the information which he obtained from the Skrellings or Esquimaux who were captured during the voyage, that the Northmen became convinced that White Man's Land or Great Ireland was a part of (Appalachians) the same vast continent, of which Helluland, Markland, and Vinland formed portions.

The traces of Irish origin which have been observed among some of the Indian tribes of North and Central America tend also to strengthen the presumption that these countries had been colonized from Ireland at some remote period of time. Irish settlement on the southern shores of North America, for they set up no claim to the discovery of that part of the Western continent, their intercourse being limited to the coasts north of Chesapeake Bay. Upon the early voyages of the Irish to Iceland and the similitude between the Hiberno-Celtic, and American Indian dialects. Moreover, Iceland was discovered and partially inhabited by the Irish before its discovery and occupation by the Scandinavians; and when we find that the Icelanders, descended from the Scandinavians, discovered North America, it will appear less improbable that the Irish, who, at that period, were more advanced in learning and civilization, should have undertaken similar expeditions with success:" the name of Irland it Mikla he also considers to be a sufficient indication of the Irish having emigrated thither from their own country.

It seems to be generally admitted by historians and antiquaries that the main stream of colonization has flowed from east to west, the Celts preceding the Teutonic and Sarmatian races, by a long interval of time. Herodotus, four centuries before the Christian era, places the Celts beyond the pillars of Hercules, and upon the borders of the most westerly region in Europe, and Cæsar in the first century finds them in Gaul and Britain; that their successors, the Goths, should have driven them to seek for regions still further westward is therefore in full accordance with the course of their former migrations, and the same nomadic principle which brought them from Asia to the British isles, might have wafted them in later ages to the western world. Various circumstances shew that Great Ireland was a country, of the existence of which the Icelandic historians had no doubt; it is spoken of in the Saga of Thorfirm Karlsefne as a country well known by name to the Northmen; in the account of Ari Marson's voyage, and the geographical fragment, its position is pointed out:--"west from Ireland, near Vinland the good"--"next and somewhat behind Vinland."

 

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