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Even those who have only dipped a toe into hidden history know the story of St. Brendan. His name is sometimes spelled Brenden or Brandon, but “Brendan” appears most frequently in the medieval manuscripts that survive to this day. And there are a lot of them — 120 manuscripts still survive to tell his story.

Brendan was born in County Kerry, Ireland in 486AD. He lived for 91 years and established many churches but he is best remembered for the times he took to the sea. By the time he hit 60 years of age he was already an accomplished sailor. He had taken the gospel to far flung lands all over Northern Europe and Scandinavia and knew his way around currents and winds. He was approached by a mysterious man — a monk — named Barthinus and told that he must sail to “the land promised to the saints.” Barthinus never appears again in history, but Brendan certainly does. He left Ireland in 546AD in a large curragh (we’ve mentioned them before. They are frame boats covered with stretched hide) with either 14 or 17 other monks (the accounts differ).

From the detailed descriptions of their voyage and the lands and people they encountered we can say with confidence that Brendan visited the Shetland Islands, the Faeroes, and Iceland. We can also say it is likely that one land he described was Newfoundland. By the way, if you wonder why Newfoundland — which most people couldn’t find on a map — seemed to attract everyone who sailed the North Atlantic, it is because the currents take you there and the ice forces you to steer that direction.

Brendan gives us our first written description of icebergs and walruses. Wouldn’t you love to have been there when they spied those — to their eyes — bizarre creations?

Brendan remarks that he was not the first to sail that route to the Northern lands across the sea. He speaks of a St. Finbarr. Sadly, we know nothing of him.

In 1976, Tim Severin and Trondur Patursson sailed from Ireland to Newfoundland in a curragh. National Geographic published an article on their voyage and simultaneously introduced a generation to the stories of St. Brendan. Later, when Vikings took to the sea to find new sources of plunder, land, and trade they took St. Brendan’s stories with them as their “maps” to lands we would eventually call the Shetlands, the Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. After them, Prince Henry St. Clair would take those same stories and combine them with ancient maps recovered from the Holy Lands and make the same journey that St. Brendan accomplished 800 years before him.