Everyone knows by now that Columbus did not discover America. Not just that the indigenous people were here already; Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, features a Viking settlement that predates Columbus by about 500 years. This was all recorded in the Vinland Sagas, which have, over time, proven surprisingly accurate.
But in the Vinland Sagas, the Vikings do not claim to be the first Europeans to settle in North America. When they arrived, they report, the Irish were already here.
Carl Christian Rafn, the very historian who first pointed out the references to Vinland in the ancient sagas, and identified them correctly as describing the coast of North America, also quotes a manuscript codex from the time of the sagas to read:
“Now are there, as is said, south from Greenland, which is inhabited, deserts, uninhabited places, and icebergs, then the Skraelings [the Viking term for native North Americans], then Markland, then Vinland the Good; next, and somewhat behind, lies Albania, which is White Man’s Land; thither was sailing, formerly, from Ireland; there Irishmen and Icelanders recognized Ari the son of Mar and Katla of Reykjaness, of whom nothing had been heard for a long time, and who had been made a Chief there by the inhabitants” (Beamish, The Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Century, London, 1841, p. 183—a translation of “The Manuscript Codex, 770, c. 8vo”).
If the Viking sources have been proven correct on so much else, why not give them credit here? They say there were “white men,” not skraelings, living somewhere south and west of Vinland.
Sailors generally tend to overstate their exploits. What motive would the Vikings have to instead understate the significance of their exploits? This makes them almost seem pedestrian–as though there had been fairly steady commerce across the North Atlantic for some time.
If, as archaeological evidence now suggests, Markland was Labrador, and Vinland was Newfoundland, what is south and west of Newfoundland? What, from the direction of Europe, is “somewhat behind”? New Brunswick, the Gaspé, and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence: the Canadian mainland.
The Landnamabok states that this “White Man’s Land” is also called “Great Ireland.”
This implies, first, that the land mass was much larger than Ireland proper, and second, that its inhabitants were in some significant part Irish.
The Eyrbyggja Saga says the people there “seem to speak Irish.” And the Viking chroniclers should have known: they knew the Irish well. The voyage described in the saga began in Dublin. Some of the sailors with the expedition are likely to themselves have been Irish, as is specified in the case of the Manuscript Codex. “Seem to speak Irish” is the impression we would expect of a group that had been cut from the mother country for some time; just as Quebeçois might “seem to speak French.”
The Landnamabok says the people of this Great Ireland across the sea were Christian, and baptized captured Vikings. Again, the Viking chroniclers should know whereof they speak: many of the Vikings were Christian converts, including Leif Eriksson. The Hauksbok says these Great Irish had white skin and white (blonde?) hair. In the Saga of Eric the Red, skraelings report to our narrator that the inhabitants of Great Ireland wear white clothing, carry poles in procession to which clothing is attached, and call out with a loud voice.
What can that mean? Possibly a religious procession, with chanting. There is some evidence that white was the ecclesiastical colour among the Irish and, later, the Danes (Mulloy, The Irish in America 1000 Years before Columbus, p. 9; citing Munch, “Symbols Relating to Ancient History,” and the Book of Ballymote). In any case, the passage says that the Great Irish had cloth, unlike the skraelings, who wore skins.
Note the multiple sources. The Landnamabok, the Saga of Eric the Red, the Eyrbyggja Saga, and the Hauksbok all speak of this “Great Ireland” off to the south and west of Vinland. It is rare to get this level of confirmation of anything we consider solid history in the ancient or Medieval world.
Is there corroborating evidence outside the sagas? There is, in Irish legend.
