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Permalink Reply by Ryan O'Rourke on May 15, 2013 at 2:25am

The story of Brendan has fascinated me since I first heard it.  I'd say it's a stretch that a vessel like his could have read across the raging Atlantic, but not an impossibility.  I've been to the spot where he supposedly launched his bark down in Kerry.  It's a tiny little inlet, off the beaten path and very unremarkable looking ... which, to me, makes it even cooler!

Thanks for the discussion, and thanks for posting the link to that video, Belinda.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Curley on May 15, 2013 at 5:58am

Remember reading Severin's book when it first came out. Exciting story. I guess that if you "island hopped," which is what Brendan was said to do, it would be possible. So It wasn't a trip,say, from Kerry to Boston, but shorter trips - from Kerry to the Faroes to Iceland to Greenland, then to North America.

I suspect that in Brendan's time, Ireland was still the Ultima Thule, It was the land the Romans never set foot on, it was beyond civilization (though as Tom Cahill pointed out, its monks saved much of the history of classical civilization). That's how Columbus, an Italian sailing for Spain, was the first "European" to discover The New World.

Thanks for posting this, Belinda. We Irish have a storied past, my friends.

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