Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1991, Page 20

24
PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT .
In or about 825 A. D. an Irish Scholar,
learning and teaching at the court school
of Charlemagne at Aachen (Aix-la-Cha-
pelle) finished a learned compilation of the
most advanced knowledge of geography of
his time. Liber de mensura orbis terrae.
The only new knowledge he had to add
was the information of some obscure is-
lands situated in the ocean north of Brita-
in. They had been deserted (»deserta«)
since the beginning of the World. After
having described a country that must have
been Iceland he relates:
There are many other islands in the ocean north of
Britain which can be reached from the northern is-
lands of Britain in a direct voyage of two days and
nights with full sails filled with a continuously favo-
urable wind. A devout priest told me that in two
summer days and the intervening night he sailed in
a two-benched boat and entered one of them.
There is another set of small islands, nearly all
separated by narrow stretches of water; in these
for nearly a hundred years hermits sailing from our
country Scotia (Ireland) have lived. But just as
they were always deserted from the beginning of
the world, so now because of the Northern pirates
(»causa latronum Normannorum«) they are emp-
tied of anchorites, and filled with countless sheep
and very many diverse kinds of sea-birds. I have
never found these islands mentioned in [the books
of] the authorities (»in libris auctorum memo-
ratas«).'
These are the words of the learned
Dicuil who may have come from northern
Ireland or from northern Scotland.2
There are, however, other Irish sources
that can, if not prove, then make likely,
Dicuil’s statements. There exist also pre-
Dicuilian indications of Irish discoveries in
the ocean to the north of Scotland, making
at least likely that they had, as the first
seamen of the North, discovered the is-
lands which were later to become known
as the Faroe Islands, i.e. the sheep
islands.3
I shall try for a while to return to sources
and literature to make these indications if
not clear, then credible.
In a sensational lecture, at least for his
time, presented before a learned audience
in 1891, the German professor of Greifs-
wald, Heinrich Zimmer, gave his views
»Úber die frúhesten Beruhrungen der Iren
mit den Nordgermanen«.4 What is inter-
esting in his lengthy elucidation is that the
contact between »die Germanen«, in our
sense the Nordic peoples, with peoples not
only of Celtic/Gaelic descent, but also with
an amalgamation of peoples of Gaelic and
Pictish descent, began much earlier than
later historians have imagined. His state-
ments have been severely criticised, first
by Finnur Jónsson,5 later by F. T. Wain-
wright as »unsupported speculation«, hav-
ing confused »several subsequent wri-
ters«.6
It has been a commonplace in North At-
lantic history that the Irish - who other-
wise in no way were a seafaring people -
nevertheless developed a tradition for sail-
ing. One wonders whether most of the
voyages related, many of them totally leg-
endary and far from any believable reality
are not invented instruments, necessary to
illustrate sinful man’s search for Heaven
and Paradise. To concrete-thinking
Medieval man such Promised Lands must
have some geographical location in order
to give any meaning. Christian life as a
troublesome journey towards eternity sur-
vived the Middle Ages.
To what extent this legendary material
can be used as historical evidence has to be
carefully re-considered, especially in the