The American Discovery of Europe by Jack D. Forbes

Author:Jack D. Forbes
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

6.

The Inuit Route to Europe

The Dutch community of Zierikzee has had a tradition that in 849 CE one Zierik arrived by sea to found the city. The local people also have believed for some time that he arrived in an Inuit kayak from Greenland, a kayak long on display in the Community Museum. This tradition was in existence as early as the seventeenth century, when an author stated that he no longer believed the story. By the eighteenth century Zierik’s alleged kayak was already hanging in place, although current opinion is that the kayak only dates from that same century. Nonetheless, it is a genuine West Greenland kayak.1

The Zierik story seems to be the first in a long series of incidents involving Inuit visits to Europe or the finding of alleged Inuit harpoon heads in Scotland and Ireland. It is a very compelling subject, because of its inherently interesting, romantic, and also tragic elements, and also because of serious questions about whether northeastern American boats, whether of the Beothuk-Newfoundland, umiak, or kayak types, were capable of remaining afloat for a long enough period to reach Iceland, the Faeroes, and other islands of Europe.

Before dealing with this question, however, we should note that the advocates of St. Brendan’s alleged voyages westward from Ireland have never seemed to have any doubts about the ability of Irish curraghs covered with hides to remain at sea for long periods. Similarly, E. F. Greenman and other anthropologists who have advocated ancient European voyages to America seem to believe that skin-covered craft could make the trip even in the virtually impossible east-to-west direction (possibly drying out the craft on convenient ice floes).2

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