First Across the Atlantic : 107 



explain the background for the Viking voyages. It is generally ac- 

 cepted that the Bronze Age in southern Europe and the Mediterra- 

 nean ran a different course from the Bronze Age in northern 

 Europe. The use of bronze in northern Europe seems to have been 

 at least as old as 2000 b.c. The speed with which the Bronze culture 

 spread in northern Europe and the way in which bronze tools, orna- 

 ments and other objects were distributed can only be explained by a 

 very extensive system of trade around and across the North Sea, 

 involving the Hebrides, the Orkneys and other island groups and, 

 of course, including Ireland. 



What is true of the Bronze Age is also true, in a measure, of the 

 distribution of products of the Iron Age that preceded it. Even if we 

 move back into the Stone Age in northern Europe, including exten- 

 sive areas in the Scandinavian peninsula, the archaeologists who deal 

 with this period believe that there was then a very extensive use of 

 seagoing vessels in the North Sea, and along its shores. During his 

 lifetime. Professor A. W. Br0gger was in charge of the Viking ships 

 and conducted extensive studies in the arts and industries of this 

 period. He also devoted much time to the late Stone Ages and their 

 artifacts. These included drawings, carved in rocks, of ships of con- 

 siderable size. Br0gger believed that vessels, such as represented in 

 the rock drawings, were used not only for coastwise voyages but also 

 for connections across the North Sea, so that the record of a devel- 

 oping seamanship in this part of the world is very old indeed. 



We return now to the records of written history. It is the skin boat, 

 or curragh, of the Irish that was probably used by the earliest north- 

 ern sailor known to us by name — the Irish priest Brendan. No doubt 

 he was a great traveler, but he could not possibly have completed all 

 the voyages that are attributed to him or lived through as many ad- 

 ventures as cluster about his name. Stripped of its more exuberant 

 and extravagant details, there is enough factual description left to 

 make it seem probable that on one of his trips St. Brendan encoun- 

 tered either the glaciers or the icebergs along the eastern Greenland 

 shore and visited the south shore of Iceland. 



Discuil, in 825, produced a work on geography which refers spe- 

 cifically to the theory that the earth is round and deals with its meas- 

 urement under the title Mensura Orbis Terrae. In this volume he 

 speaks of a voyage to Iceland as though it were an accepted matter 

 and not a singular or rare occurrence. This voyage, described by Dis- 

 cuil, took place some thirty years before the time he was writing — 

 that is, at the end of the eighth century. It is, apparently, a recoUec- 



