Orthodox Celtic Monks,the First in America?

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck

originally posted by: seabhac-rua
a reply to: beansidhe
I think you might be referring to The Voyage Of St Brendan?

St Brendan

Make no mistake, I don't just toss these speculations out all willy-nilly. I prefer it out on the fringes, but I recognise the need for proof before we call it fact. I enjoy reading the more literate conjecture, and welcome new ideas. It would be great if we could actually confirm St. Brendan, Sinclair, even find proof of further Viking and Basque incursions into this new land.

But...we need to be mindful about our standards of proof. Just my 2 cents worth...

Johnnycanuck,
One fact of history that is often overlooked, is that by 900 English cod fishermen were fishing the grand banks. By 1100ish they sailing the equivalent of factory ships there to make salt cod.
I'm unclear if there was a boiler ship or each vessel had a boiler, but they boiled seawater ship board to make salt and the fish were salted on board.
These expeditions would be away for up to a year, the only way they could have done that was to make landfall in north America for wood to stoke the fires.

originally posted by: punkinworks10

But...we need to be mindful about our standards of proof. Just my 2 cents worth...

Johnnycanuck,
One fact of history that is often overlooked, is that by 900 English cod fishermen were fishing the grand banks. By 1100ish they sailing the equivalent of factory ships there to make salt cod.
I'm unclear if there was a boiler ship or each vessel had a boiler, but they boiled seawater ship board to make salt and the fish were salted on board.
These expeditions would be away for up to a year, the only way they could have done that was to make landfall in north America for wood to stoke the fires.


The difficulty of this that you have to proof that such a thing occurred, cod can be caught else where in the Atlantic and still is.

Present day range of cod shown in blue centuries earlier it would have been more extensive.



The North Atlantic is a very punishing difficult sea, why would they push into it when cod was right off the coast - they moved off the coasts once these supplies were exhausted and naval technology improved.

You might want to do a separate thread on the evidence for early contact with Newfoundland/Nova Scotia by those who were not Norse, Inuit, Beothuk, Mikmack and Innu.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: HardCorps

Hi HardCorps (and everyone else). I was looking at stone carvings for another thread (I haven't forgotten Log, I promise!) when I came across this article which you all might already know about, but it was new to me.

The Peterborough Petroglyphs

In short, these date from around 900-1400AD, so quite 'modern' really (although some suggest a much,much earlier date), and are found in Ontario, Canada.
They have a couple of curious features:

The boat carvings bear no resemblance to the traditional boat of the Native Americans. One solar boat — a stylized shaman vessel with a long mast surmounted by the sun — is typical of petroglyphs found in northern Russia and Scandanavia.

... Another vessel depicted in the petroglyphs is a large ship with banks of oars and figure-heads at bow and stern. There is a large steering oar at the stern, a necessary feature only for vessels that are 100 feet or more in length.
However, the Algonkian people who inhabited the region never produced anything more seaworthy than a birch-bark canoe or a dugout. Even reluctant archaeologists admit that the ships “do not look like real Algonkian canoes” but steer away from any uncomfortable conclusions about pre-Columbian visitors by speculating that the vessels are simply a shaman’s idea of magical canoes that travel the universe.

Some historians and researchers believe there is more to the petroglyphs than meets the eye. Some maintain that they are in fact a sky map of the heavens based on European tradition from 3100 BC. Evidence includes four signs which are the same as those found for the identical astronomical position at Lewes, England, leading to a possible speculative connection between the Peterborough petroglyphs and the megalithic people of Ancient Britain.

Here's the boat with the rudder:

And the 'sun God':

Some more info here

Was a community documenting visitors who came to their shores, using borrowed iconography to illustrate their identity? It's an exciting thought.

I am reasonably well acquainted with the Petrogylphs. I have been there a number of times, have had them explained to me, have walked the greater area of the site, have visited them with a cultural rep, and had an elder interpret them as well. I know the person who 'revealed' them, I've discussed laser scanning of them to bring out some of the finer work...and I am leading a tour there next month.

It is a sacred Anishnnabe site...and it is a living breathing site, still relevant to the people today. Walk the landscape, you'll find tobacco ties on the trees. Folks come by in reverence. I am not going to take apart the post above, just to say that the difference between a 'sunship' and a canoe with a turtle nearby is about a two inch line. The designs were chalked in by someone who lay upon the rocks and felt the designs. That 'mast' is kinda arbitrary.

And...it is disrespectful of the Anishnaabe people, and the cosmology, that their sacred sites get co-opted by new-agey types and are thereby diminished.

I agree with punkinworks that the possibilities are there. In fact, chatter out of the Red Bay Basque site in Labrador is that they may well have pre-dated Columbus. And of course the Norse connection can't be disputed. However, Hanslune nails it:

originally posted by: Hanslune
The difficulty of this that you have to prove that such a thing occurred...

Proof is a good thing.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Sorry Johnny, I didn't mean to disrespect the Anishnnabe people. It sounds like you know the area and the glyphs really well, so I'll defer to your better knowledge. The article caught my eye, and I thought about HardCorps thread and thought he might like to see it.

I'm seeing the glyphs for the first time, from my own frame of reference, and I am woefully ignorant of their culture (as you can clearly tell!) so thanks for helping me out. Apologies if my post seemed rude - it wasn't intended to be so.

a reply to: beansidhe
Not at all rude, Dude. If I have a beef, it is with purveyors of such stuff. If you're in the UK, then your only point of reference is second hand, and one may be forgiven for expecting that one will not be fed hooey. U2U me with your email and I will scan a paper and pass it along.
Here's a little more info:
Link

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck
I agree with punkinworks that the possibilities are there. In fact, chatter out of the Red Bay Basque site in Labrador is that they may well have pre-dated Columbus. And of course the Norse connection can't be disputed. However, Hanslune nails it:

originally posted by: Hanslune
The difficulty of this that you have to prove that such a thing occurred...

Proof is a good thing.

Yes the possibilities are there but the possibilities run into the shredder called evidence. We really need a Basque ship wreck or some Azorean pottery or a habitation site or good lord a burial ground where those who died on the trip were interred.

All we have to do is find just one of those, just one!

One of my friends from college spent his life (in his spare time) looking at sites in New England searching for another Viking LAAM site, never found it.

He died a few weeks ago still quite annoyed by that.

originally posted by: Hanslune
Yes the possibilities are there but the possibilities run into the shredder called evidence. We really need a Basque ship wreck or some Azorean pottery or a habitation site or good lord a burial ground where those who died on the trip were interred.

Fortunately, this (internal) chatter is from the Parks Canada staff who administer the site. Check out Red Bay...heck, it's even featured in Renfrew and Bahn.

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck

originally posted by: Hanslune
Yes the possibilities are there but the possibilities run into the shredder called evidence. We really need a Basque ship wreck or some Azorean pottery or a habitation site or good lord a burial ground where those who died on the trip were interred.

Fortunately, this (internal) chatter is from the Parks Canada staff who administer the site. Check out Red Bay...heck, it's even featured in Renfrew and Bahn.

Well yeah but its dates to the 16th century - we need 13th.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Many thanks for the link, and I've sent you a U2U.
I'm in Scotland and I guess my frame of reference is coming from a completely different perspective. As you know, our oldest books in Scotland and Ireland have been pretty much rubbished as myth. You'll notice I'm elbowing my way into Ireland's past, since we only have one remaining book here, The Pictish Chronicles, in which the earliest listed Kings are considered mythical, yet the latter ones are accepted as historical fact. Similarly with the Irish annals, the stories and allegories are now pretty much dismissed as fantasy. I love folklore and I believe in folk-memory, and I think that these books hold a good deal of truth.
The Tuatha were said by some to have come from the West, and I wonder if that could be true? There's not a scrap of evidence to support my thinking other than the books. But if I accept the books as genuine then...hmm.

Anyway, the examples I posted above has a solid explanation by people who live with, and understand the rocks, and they are obviously not quite as 'mysterious' as the article seemed to (sensationally) suggest. I'll look forward to reading the paper you mentioned, not least because I'm (selfishly) hoping that their symbols and glyphs might help to shed light on some of Scotland's unknown symbols too!

Irish sweat lodges, similar to those found in the Americas:

"Tucked away in the back of many fields and in out of the way places in Ireland are small overgrown huts that look like miniature tombs. They are constructed of stone with small entrances and covered with sods, they are, in fact, sweat houses. It may come as a surprise to many that Ireland has its own tradition of the ‘sweat lodge', mostly we associate this with the Native American culture and, for some time, American style sweat lodges have been conducted here also. These are mostly based on the Inipi ceremony of the North American Plains Indians and a sweat is undertaken usually for initiation, purification or in preparation for the vision quest. Were our own sweat houses used for similar purposes?

Firstly, it must be stated that little information has survived to tell us what exactly they were used for. Although sweat houses seem to have been constructed up to the end of the nineteenth century(1) the knowledge of their use has been forgotten through lack of interest, embarrassment or as a result of the destruction and mass emigration of the famine. It has been pointed out that, in post-famine Ireland, there seems to have been a kind of aversion to old ways and natural things that has resulted in the outwardly respectable and ultra-conservative attitude that can be found in many parts of the country today. An example of this was the idea of "famine food", which was the eating of any kind of wild food, i.e. blackberries, implying that one had to be hard up to eat it.

As for the sweat houses many nineteenth century antiquarians variously reported that it was used as a ‘sweating cure' for many different ailments - and this seems to be true up to a point. However, as in many societies when faced with foreign anthropologists, the temptation to lead them up the garden path is enormous. It has also been pointed out that the investment in turf required to heat one of the sweat houses would have been in the order of two and a half donkey loads. This would have been an extravagant expense simply to get rid of the few aches and pains that most of the population suffered from anyway. In order to be more worthwhile, the use of these structures must have been important indeed.

The sweat houses are distributed over a number of counties, primarily Leitrim, Louth, Cavan, Fermanagh and parts of Sligo. These were all poor counties so it is doubly interesting given the economic investment in the use of the sweat house. Sweat houses are also sited away from dwellings and are often close to streams. They can be quite hard to find as I can attest to having looked for examples on the Cooley Peninsula. The houses are usually about 1.75m high and 2m in diameter with a small entrance and often a small smoke hole which could be covered with a flat slab. The method of heating was described as building a fire in the house and allowing it to completely burn out, the ashes were then raked out and rushes or other plants strewn on the floor. A stone was placed over the smoke hole and the patient entered naked. The door was blocked and the patient sweated profusely, the plants on the floor giving off moisture to give an effect similar to a sauna. Soot has been found inside the sweat houses showing that a fire was built in them, however, John Matthews assures me that he has come across references to the use of hot rocks heated outside the sweat house and then placed inside - much the Native American methods. After the sweat, the patient would emerge and go for a swim in the river as in modern Scandinavian saunas. If old or infirm they would go to bed for a few hours(2). It has also been recorded that mixed groups of men and women used sweat houses, again entering naked.

So why go to the trouble simply as a cure for aches and pains (which is the accepted explanation)? Clearly there may have been other uses for the sweat house, as has been mentioned earlier, the fuel needed to heat one was sufficient to suggest a community involvement. The energy needed to cut, stack and dry turf is considerable and such an intensive use would exhaust a family's supply quite quickly. Obviously, I am presupposing a ritual function which is evident in a lot of the traditional sweating practices of the circumpolar cultures (of which Ireland is one). However, the sweat house tradition may not reach back to pre-Christian Ireland but might, in fact, be a relic of the sauna practices of the Vikings brought to Ireland in the ninth or tenth centuries. A ritual interpretation does have its problems though - what ritual and how would it fit into what was essentially a Christian culture from the sixth century onwards. None of these questions can be satisfactorily answered, but given the survival of much Pagan material through the fairy faith it is not impossible to suppose that a sweating tradition - if it provided enough practical gain for a community - could survive.

It has been noted that sweat houses are sometimes difficult to find, being tucked away from dwellings and it has also been reported that sweat houses were mostly used at this time of the year - around Autumn(3). Of course, this is close to the great festival of Samhain with its Underworld associations and ideas of mingling with the dead and of travelling between the worlds. It is well known that sweat lodges produce a consciousness altering experience and I suggest that this alone would make it a valuable practice for a community to retain. If the experience provides conditions in which people can interact with the spiritual forces that dominate their lives (whatever their religious framework) through vision, then this could take place in a Christian context as much as a Pagan one. The allied function of healing is still present but can take on a more spiritual aspect also. The proximity to Samhain would suggest an ancestral role with perhaps the consultation of important or wise ancestor figures by the local community which is a practice that is quite well attested in the Irish mythological tradition.

Such functions, if they existed, might have become simply folk traditions by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - enacted because it was necessary to do so or some disaster might happen, or as a way of propriating ‘The Gentry' (the fairy folk) or some other practice relating to the Sidhe. If anyone is in doubt about the strength of the fairy faith in Ireland you simply have to look at the case of Brigid Cleary in the early twentieth century who was burned, as it was believed that she was a changeling(4).

October is also a time when magic mushrooms appear in many fields up and down the country and at least one author has suggested the use of psilicybe to the purpose of the sweat houses. It is an intriguing suggestion as the timing is right and the association would link to the festival of Samhain. Although a secret mushroom taking cult in recent history might seem a little far fetched, when one looks at it from the perspective of the many (sometimes strange) practices undertaken as part of the fairy faith in Ireland - it becomes less outlandish. Certainly the combination of sweat, sensory deprivation and, perhaps, a mushroom drink connected with some significance relating to the time of the year or a Samhain cult of the dead could provide potent visions for all practising it. But as to the true purpose, who knows!"

originally posted by: Gododdin
Irish sweat lodges, similar to those found in the Americas:

"Tucked away in the back of many fields and in out of the way places in Ireland are small overgrown huts that look like miniature tombs. They are constructed of stone with small entrances and covered with sods, they are, in fact, sweat houses. It may come as a surprise to many that Ireland has its own tradition of the ‘sweat lodge', mostly we associate this with the Native American culture and, for some time, American style sweat lodges have been conducted here also. These are mostly based on the Inipi ceremony of the North American Plains Indians and a sweat is undertaken usually for initiation, purification or in preparation for the vision quest. Were our own sweat houses used for similar purposes?

(snip)

It is an intriguing suggestion as the timing is right and the association would link to the festival of Samhain. Although a secret mushroom taking cult in recent history might seem a little far fetched, when one looks at it from the perspective of the many (sometimes strange) practices undertaken as part of the fairy faith in Ireland - it becomes less outlandish. Certainly the combination of sweat, sensory deprivation and, perhaps, a mushroom drink connected with some significance relating to the time of the year or a Samhain cult of the dead could provide potent visions for all practising it. But as to the true purpose, who knows!"

The material above was taken from the following site Irish sweat
houses

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck and Hanslune
The source for the information in my previous post
was course material for an excellent European history class I had in Uni. The professor had garnered the information from historical sources in Britain, while working on his PhD. He had gathered period textual sources from the maritime archives.
The reason some English went so far west was the Norse control of the north sea fishing grounds and Norse piracy, and later to avoid taxation by the new scandanavian monarchies.
During this period currents were favorable to trips to NA and back.
During the earlier period the ship's couldn't carry enough cargo, a good portion of the catch was consumed by the crew, to make a real economic impact.
By the time the use of the boiler ships came around, most if not all of the very good quality salt cod was sold to the continent.
These weren't individuals or families but were really analogous to the large fishing corporations we have today. The local fisherman continued to fish close to home, and that was consumed locally until the political-economic climate made it profitable to exploit the closer north sea grounds.
Here is a link to an archeological study that covers the growing international fish trade in England of the 13 th century.
www.sciencedaily.com...

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: JohnnyCanuck and Hanslune
The source for the information in my previous post
was course material for an excellent European history class I had in Uni. The professor had garnered the information from historical sources in Britain, while working on his PhD. He had gathered period textual sources from the maritime archives.
The reason some English went so far west was the Norse control of the north sea fishing grounds and Norse piracy, and later to avoid taxation by the new scandanavian monarchies.
During this period currents were favorable to trips to NA and back.
During the earlier period the ship's couldn't carry enough cargo, a good portion of the catch was consumed by the crew, to make a real economic impact.
By the time the use of the boiler ships came around, most if not all of the very good quality salt cod was sold to the continent.
These weren't individuals or families but were really analogous to the large fishing corporations we have today. The local fisherman continued to fish close to home, and that was consumed locally until the political-economic climate made it profitable to exploit the closer north sea grounds.
Here is a link to an archeological study that covers the growing international fish trade in England of the 13 th century.
www.sciencedaily.com...

Did he published? IF he didn't then find him and slap him around until he does : ].

My paternal side of the family were 'Greenlander's ie those northern Irish/Scots who were involved in the whaling fleets in the Arctic....until 1739 when they were 'requested' to leave Northern Ireland after the latest Jacobite rebelling which they supported....so a lot of family legends about whaling in those waters and also cod fishing which they did when they couldn't find whales.

a reply to: Hanslune If he did publish it would have been more than fifty years ago.
I wish I could track him down,but that was more than thirty years ago, and I was to young to realize the significance. He also studied in Japan and had found references to a Buddhist Japanese voyage in the 10th-11th centuries, the description of which was such.
They sailed from Japan, keeping the coast on the left and sunrise to the right for many weeks until they reached the cold grey stormy seas. For several weeks they sailed along some islands, which they kept on the left as the sun was obscured by clouds. Eventually they came across a rainy rugged coast with few hospitable places to put into shore.
And they were astonished when the sun rose on the left over the land.
They continued to sail with the sun and coast on left as they came to a land with a rugged coast and great rivers. Eventually the rugged coast and forests gave way to a land of vast beaches and a warming climate.
Eventually they came to dry parched land, still with the sunrise and shore on the left.
After many weeks they rounded a point and the next day the sunrise was again on the right with shore on the left. After a few weeks they came to the mouth of a great river delta, surrounded by a land of inhospitable heat and dryness.
A few days upriver they came across an impassable set of rapids at which was a villiage of,"Ainu". The professor said that Ainu was the closest translation for primative people that are not Japanese.
Here they stayed for a season, trying to bring Buddhism to the "Ainu" who werent much interested.
They eventually sailed back the way they came but several monks stayed behind.
A ship may have been lost on the return but they rerurned to Japan after being away for five years.
This tale was also gathered from historical sources in Japan.
For class materials we had Meiji period transcripts of the originals source materials, that were translated into English.
When I moved about fifteen years ago I had to decide what to keep, and I never thought I would find those materials useful as I had gone into an engineering career, and like a dumbass I tossed em.
Big giant Dohh