AMERICA’S DISCOVERER

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19639, 27 July 1935, Page 14 (Supplement)

AMERICA’S DISCOVERER

In these modern and enlightened times even Fame Itself —with a capital F —is an uncertain and elusive thing. We have been told that 'Moses did not write the Ten Commandments; that Shakespeare was not responsible for the plays. And now a Swedish professor tells us that Columbus did not discover America! “Sounds funny,” he -says, “ but it’s true.” The author of the idea is Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer, and last month he grabbed the golden bauble of glory from 'Christopher Columbus, who has held It for four hundred and fifty years, and handed it to an Irishman! This revision of history came out during an address to the Pennsylvania Historical Society, when Dr. Stefansson said an Irish expedition braved 600 miles of open sea to reach Iceland, and added; “ The discovery of Iceland was the discovery of North America, because from Iceland you can see Greenland, and from Greenland the next island, and so on west till you see the mainland. We don’t know the name of the discoverer, but we know he was Irish, and probably a clergyman. “ In 820 A.D. an Irish monk named Dicuil wrote a book —one manuscript of which Is at Oxford—ln which 'he • said he had spoken with clergymen who were in Iceland twenty-five years earlier, or about 795. “ About the same time the Norsemen conquered a large part of Ireland and learned from the Irish that they had discovered a large island to the north-west, so they went to look for it. This ,was about 850 A.D„ and is not to be disputed by the Norse, because they reported they saw Irish clergy and peasants when they reached Iceland. A Common Mistake. “Attention should be called to a common mistake about the matter. Many persons say the Norse found only men on the island, but that was not true, since the Irish clergy was not celibate at the time as it is now I" By which learned inference the explorer decides that Columbus needs to be torn, from his throne. Irish history certainly has a story of an early discovery in the West, a story which goes back even further than the good Dicuil quoted above. It is the legend that St. Brendan, in the sixth century, found a Western land. This story, well authenticated, .says that the saint .set out to discover the promised land of the saints, which he believed existed in the West. During a long and difficult sea trip the .party landed on what they took to , be a large island; and pressed on be-

Columbus’ Fame in Danger. Arctic Explorer’s Theory.

yond that, until they sighted a. bis body of land. , , Returning home, they claimed ?\ave discovered a western country which they named St. Brendan a Island, and which was duly charted, in the vague kind of way common to early cartographers. But after years and years of wrangling, and the absence of any definite data about the strange'country, it was crossed off the maps, and replaced again by an uncertain tract of uncharted sea. It was even decided 'that what St. Brendan saw was a mirage. And so the sain.. missed the credit for his labour! There Is a good reason to believe, however, if mythology or the very dubious history of those misty early days can he believed, that the Irish adventurers did strike land; possibly part of 'the great continent which was brought to definite knowledge by Columbus nearly a millennium later. Last of the Seadogs. Even if the Irish navigators did not actually discover the New World, the Norsemen have legends that in the ninth or tenth centuries the last of the seadogs journeyed in their menacing galleys from Scandinavia to lee'jnd, thence to Greenland, and into the cold coasts of Labrador. Perhaps they did. But they did not leave sufficiently accurate trace of their pathway. r > l hey did not bring back any definite information. They did not chart the. coast, or open it up. Whoever set foot first upon the American coast, it remained for Columbus to forge the link which made it' accessible to the old-world adventurers. And so the laurel wreath shall rest upon the Genoan’s brow . . . But he’s not getting away with it as easily as that. A letter to the Editor of the New York Times questioned whether his name should really be “ Columbus." The correspondent says “ Columbus’ name is rightly Colom, as the great navigator himself, affixed it in the second paragraph of the postscript in the letter to his intimate friend, Luis de Santhngel, dated February 15, 1493.” He goes on to say that the name Colom was unduly arid incorrectly translated into Latin, Columbus, when j it should have been Colomus, and, in- j asmuch as proper names remain intact, it should .strictly have been translated Colom. There are many manuscripts extant from the ■ date, bearing the name of the first Admiral Colom, Thb name also appears as Colom in dictionaries 'Of tile Catalan tongue. So that even 'if he did discover America, his mother, in all probability did not call him Columbus.