[kenney] the legend OF ST BREXDAX 57 



It is to be noted that the Norse name Faroes also means Sheep 

 Islands. 



Of Iceland, which he identifies with the Thule of classical writers, 

 Dicuil says: 



It is now thirtj' years since I was told by certain Irish ecclesiastics, who had 

 been on that island from the 1st of February to the 1st of August, that not only at 

 the time of the summer solstice, but also during the days before and after, the setting 

 sun at evening hides itself as if behind a small mound, so that it does not become 



dark for even a very brief space of time A day's sail northward from it they 



found the frozen sea.i 



Dicuil is an interesting personage. He was an Irishman who 

 probably entered the monastery of lona before 772, and went to the 

 continent before 810, perhaps fleeing before the Viking raids on lona 

 of 802 and 806. He became closely associated with the Prankish court 

 and may have been a teacher in the palace school. He wrote several 

 books, of which the most famous is his geographical treatise, De 

 Àlcnsura Orbis Termer Although mainly a compendium of classical 

 sources, it contains an amount of original information and personal 

 observation which for the time is truly remarkable. From it we 

 learn that this man who had conversed with anchorites from Iceland 

 and the Faroes had also, when a youth, listened to the narrative of 

 one of a band of Irish monks who had visited Egypt and Palestine 

 before 767, and himself in France had seen the elephant which Harun 

 al Raschid, Calif of Bagdad, had presented to Charlemagne in 804. 

 The recital of these facts is sufîfîcient to make clear the possibility 

 that streams of influence many and varied beyond immediate appre- 

 hension may have entered into the composition of the Navigatio 

 Brendani. 



Dicuil's testimony as to the residence of Irish monks in Iceland 

 is corroborated and expanded by that of the Norsemen. The oldest 

 antiquarian of Iceland, Are Frode Thorgilsson, in the Islendingabok,^ 

 written about 1130, after speaking of the first Norse settlements in 

 the island, says: 



There were Christians here whom the Norwegians called 'papar;' but they 

 went away afterwards, because they would not be here with pagan men; and they 

 left behind them Irish books, and bells, and cioziers, from which it could be learned 

 that they were Irishmen. 



Similar statements are to be found in other passages of early 

 Icelandic literature. 



1 Ibid.VU ii. 



* Edited by Walckenaer (Paris, 1807); Letronne (Paris, 1814); and Parthey 

 (Berlin, 1870). 



* Published with English translation in Vigfusson and Powell's Origines Island- 

 icae (Oxford, 1905), vol. I, pp. 279-306. 



