Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Exploring Irish Monk

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

There’s a long-standing legend that an Irish monk was the first European to sail to America - in 500 CE! Is there any evidence? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, Dave's here in spirit,

so that's a short stuff quorum. That's all you need. And this is short stuff. That's right. And we're here, we're here to dispel the rumor that Christopher Columbus discovered America. No, that's so old. That is pretty old. Are we really going to talk about that? No, no, we don't have to do that. That was definitely a 2008-ish, 2009-ish kind of thing to say. But what are we going to dispel? Well, so I think one of the things we should at least say, because not everybody knows this, is like the first Europeans definitively to reach North America were the Vikings. I know a lot of people know that, but not everybody knows that, Chuck. Not everybody knows that. There's a Viking settlement that was discovered that I think

they'd suspected for a long time, because I think in the North Saugas, they basically said, yeah, we made it to Newfoundland, that the Vikings actually had made it to North America. And then finally, in the 60s, I think, they found a real deal bonafide, totally incontrovertible Viking settlement from about 1,000 CE, a place called Lanso Meadows, which I've always wanted to go to, because I've always wanted to go to Newfoundland for one, but to see like a Viking settlement in America would just, that'd be something else. That would be great. We could go berserker. Right. Take a bunch of shrooms, get a battle axe. Yeah. And then celebrate the fact that they were the very incontrovertibly, the very first Europeans to touch that soil.

Or were they? I was going to wrap up short stuff. You're right. There is a chance that the Vikings were even beat. So the Vikings would have beat the Age of Exploration by about 500 years. There's a theory, and it's got some legs conceivably, that somebody else beat the Vikings by 500 years themselves, and that some sometime in about the 6th century showed up somewhere in North America. And who is that, Chuck? The Irish. And I don't buy this, but I think it's a great story. You don't buy it. No, I think it is folklore. Okay. But we'll talk about it anyway, because it is a fun story. But in the 6th century, as the story legend tale goes, St. Brendan was an Irish monk, very good sailor and seafarer. Very saintly. Very what, saintly? Saintly. Oh, saintly

and saintly. Yeah. Supposedly undertook this voyage, a joyous voyage, a voyage, and with some fellow monks, and went looking for paradise, the land of promise of the saints. And after seven years, came upon what he thought was this place, an island so vast that they did not reach the far shore after 40 days of walking, that had a river that was too wide to be crossed, a forested wooded land with lush fruits, and he and the fellows filled their boats full of gyms and returned home. So the Irish found it first. Yeah. And I mean, like, if you, like, he ain't talking about the Azores, you can definitely walk across them in 40 days. There's not a lot of islands in between Ireland and North America. So it's really not clear, you know,

what St. Brendan was talking about, where he went. And he wasn't like a dummy. He didn't accidentally stumble onto Europe. Like he'd sailed to Europe before. He was like a skilled navigator. So he is assumed, is presumed to have known enough that he knew what direction he was traveling in, and that this really was like an all new place that his kind had never set foot in before. That's right. And in the ninth century, so several hundred years later, there was an account, actually an account of this surface called Travels of St. Brendan, Navigacio Sancti Brendani. Magna Carta, Master Charger. You take the bus. We all take the bus. It was a big hit. It was translated into a bunch of languages. And, you know, it was the account of the journey.

There are all sorts of crazy things in here. Oh, yeah. Which maybe we should save that for the second half, because that's where it falls apart a bit with me. But should we talk a little bit about the Vikings maybe lending some support to this idea? Sure. Yeah. So the Norths have those sagas that I was talking about, right? Where it's basically like, we did this. This is neat. This is cool. Here's something else we did. And there's like a lot of credulity to it. It's not just like Norse mythology. That's almost like a separate thing, although it's definitely intertwined. Like they think that these are actual like historical documents in a lot of cases, or at least have a large kernel of historicity in them. And so in those sagas, they talk about arriving

in Greenland around 1000 CE, around the same time they would have set up the place in Newfoundland. And finding Irish missions that were already there. That's a little odd. And also, we should say, the Norse were familiar with the Irish already. So they would have known an Irish mission if they came upon an Irish mission. Yeah, sure. So that would suggest that the Irish beat them to Greenland, at least, which is pretty significant. Yeah. There was another saga where they talked about meeting some of the Native Americans who already had seen white men. They're like, we know guys like you. And we've encountered guys sort of like you. They were dressed in white and they came from a land across from their own, or our own, I guess, if I'm in character. And then

there was a third saga that talks about the Norse encountering a tribe of Native Americans who spoke a language that even sounded like Irish. Right. So a lot of little clues here. Yeah, these are recorded by the Norse and they definitely do suggest that there was possibly some Irish who made their way over to the New World before the Vikings even did. But like you said, there is a lot of, there's a heaping, helping of folklore along with all of this. And for people like you, Chuck, it breaks down everything. I like to hold out hope that this is possible and true. And let's talk about it a little more after these commercial breaks. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The

hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We're in a divided camp. How's divided? This is when the petroglyph comes in. Barry Feld, who is a marine biologist at Harvard University,

found some petroglyphs, which are rock-carved writings in West Virginia in 1983. And he said, you know what these are? This is Ogam script. This is an Irish alphabet. And it was used from the 6th to the 8th century. And I even think I know what it's saying. They're talking about the Christian nativity. Sure. What else are you going to write on a rock? Sure. And that's Irish. Clearly, it's not from Native Americans. And Feld said, here everyone, take a look at this stuff. And the academic world said, I don't know about that. I don't even know if this, I don't know about your methods. It's definitely not a fact. They said, aren't you a marine biologist? Exactly. And this could be Ogam script, but it's really not proving anything. No. So it's still not definitively

been shown who wrote that. It's called the Horse Creek Petroglyphs near Clear Fork, West Virginia. And they don't know who wrote it. But I think the local archaeological society came out and said, it's pretty racist to assume that rather than the local indigenous people leaving these petroglyphs, that it was some mythical Irish monk who made his way over here allegedly, rather than the people we know were here in this area at that time. But regardless of whether that's the case or not, like no one has said, oh, well, it was these people and this is what it says. So there's still definitely room for speculation. But from what I understand, there's virtually no academic who believes that this is, in fact, Ogam script. And even if it isn't Ogam, that it doesn't necessarily

talk about the nativity. So we can kind of discard that as evidence. There's certainly not incontrovertible evidence of Irish presence because of those petroglyphs. Yeah. And where it falls apart for me, but not I've been thinking about it. Maybe not completely is when you start to look at the account, the Navigacio, the Travels of Saint Brendan, which was the account of his voyage. It is really out there and wacky. It talks about an island with an Ethiopian devil, an island with monks who celebrated Christmas, who were just there. They fought a griffin at one point and killed a griffin. All kinds of fantastical stuff. They went to one island and set up camp. And then it turned out, oh, my goodness, this is not an island.

We're actually on a giant whale. So let's hold communion. So let's have communion. I don't know if that was where the communion was. It was a bunch of whale stuff, but they definitely held communion on a whale at some point. It might have been that chapter, but it's kind of crazy stuff. And I started looking into it. What it is is an Irish Imram, which were the 7th and 8th century seafaring adventure tales written by the Irish. And it fits in with that. And so I immediately dismissed it. I was like, no, this is just an Imram. And it's just made up. But I thought, well, maybe not. Maybe it took the style of that because that was what was popular. And maybe it really did happen, but it just, they gussied it up with these fantastical tales. They dressed it up.

Yeah. And the Navigatio was written about two to 300 years after Saint Brendan would have lived. Right. So it certainly wasn't his own account of it. But it's almost like, to me, it's almost like Hamilton. Like if you came along and saw Hamilton, the musical, you're like, this is ridiculous. They didn't rap. Hamilton wasn't a rapper? Right. There's a larger point to it in that there was a person named Alexander Hamilton. He did do these things, you know, but is dressed up to make it palatable or understandable to people at the time. And then embellished, I'm sure, although I don't think Alexander Hamilton would have given communion on the back of a whale. But it's still in the same ballpark. And to me, just because somebody came along and dressed it

up with folklore, clearly folklore, doesn't mean that there's, it doesn't remove the possibility that there is a lot of kernels of truth still in there somewhere. Yeah. I kind of got there during the last eight minutes. I'm glad about that. What is interesting is one of the things that they kind of used to say, no, this probably couldn't have happened was the fact that the sailing technology at the time, the boating technology that he would have likely used is this little boat called a Kirak and it a C-U-R-R-A-C-H. And it's this, you know, it's a homemade boat, basically made out of wood with an ox hide and like tar and stuff to put it together. And they're like, there's no way this guy could have made it that far in one of these Kiraks. And in 1976, an author and adventurer

named Tim Severin said, you know what, I'm going to see if this is possible. And he built one of those supposedly in the style that they would have built them back then. And he retraced that route that Brendan is believed to have taken from Ireland to Iceland and Greenland and eventually Newfoundland and he made it. Yeah. It took me a year. He showed it is entirely possible. And again, this same Brendan was supposed to be a very skilled navigator. So it's possible at least that that happened if same Brendan actually did exist. Who knows. So like many stuff you should know Shorties, this ends with a big shoulder shrug. A big shoulder shrug, a puffy question mark with a heart for the Dodd. Amen. And by the way, you can read this article that we found on How Stuff Works. I wrote

it myself back in the day. And with that, Short Stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.