Who Came First, Brendan or Leif?

 A Viking replica ship arrives in the fishing village of L'Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, on July 28, 2000.SHAUN BEST/REUTERS

We have notions of the Vikings as a rowdy, pillaging lot who laid waste to just about everywhere they came ashore from their dreaded longboats. With time we've come to realized that this isn't the full picture of Viking culture but there is no doubt that they were courageous explorers. In my school days I learned that Erik the Red and Leif the Lucky ventured to Greenland (Erik) and North America (Leif). We were taught that they "discovered" these lands, a bit of oversell given that they were already occupied by Indigenous peoples. 

                                                         L'Anse Aux Meadows National Historic Site

I began my ministry in Newfoundland, which was the landfall for Erik so I always pay attention to stories related to the L 'Anse Aux Meadows Viking settlement. A few days ago we were informed that science has established that these settlers arrived exactly 1,000 years ago. Here is a bit from the Globe and Mail article:

Scientists on Wednesday said a new type of dating technique using a long-ago solar storm as a reference point revealed that the settlement was occupied in 1021 AD, exactly a millennium ago and 471 years before the first voyage of Columbus. The technique was used on three pieces of wood cut for the settlement, all pointing to the same year.

One more reasons to take all those Christopher Columbus statues down and and forget about the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. 

While we don't have any definitive proof of earlier European voyages to the so-called New World there is also the intriguing story of St. Brendan the Navigator, a 5th/6th century Irish monk who set out with a small crew in a leather boat for parts unknown. It has long been thought that the text known as the Voyage of St. Brendan, is a work of fiction but in the 1970's Tim Severin and crew set sail in an oxhide boat made in the traditional way with the goal of sailing the Atlantic. They eventually landed in a small community in Newfoundland just down the shore from the outport where we lived only a few years later. 

Did Brendan and his crew scoop the Vikings by a few centuries?  We'll never know for certain, but it is intriguing. I imagine that the Indigenous peoples of the continent wished the whole lot were lost on the highs seas, or at the very least made a U-turn.