Category Voyages

               Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd was a Welsh prince, who sailed to America in 1170, more than three hundred years before Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492.

               Madoc was the son of Owain Gwynedd, the King of Wales. The king died in 1170, and soon Wales degenerated into a state of civil war as his sons fought over the throne. At one point, Madoc couldn’t bear the pain of his family fighting, and he decided to start a voyage to the west. He set up a successful settlement at Mobile Bay in modern Alabama.

               The ‘Madoc story’ has always been the subject of much speculation in the context of possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. No conclusive archaeological proofs about Madoc could ever be found.

               However, speculation abounds, connecting him with certain sites, such as Devil’s Backbone, located on the Ohio River at Fourteen Mile Creek near Louisville, Kentucky. The township of Madoc, Ontario, and the nearby village of Madoc, are both named in the prince’s memory.

            Like the Polynesians, the Vikings too gave importance to their water crafts as they helped them in expanding their territory. Ships were an integral part of Viking culture. They facilitated everyday transportation across seas to establish colonies in coastal regions.

            The Viking ships had religious importance too. There were basically three types of Viking ships: long-ships, heavy freight carrying merchant ships and light freight carrying merchant ships. Prominent among these ships was the long-ship. They had a long, narrow hull and shallow draught to facilitate landings and troop deployments in shallow water.

            The Vikings were brilliant ship designers and builders, and are undoubtedly among the greatest voyagers of all time. 

               Leif Erikson, son of the Norse explorer Erik the Red, was the first European known to have discovered continental North America excluding Greenland, before Christopher Columbus. He established a Norse settlement at Vinland, tentatively identified with the L’Anse aux Meadows, on the northern tip of Newfoundland, in modern-day Canada.

               After spending a winter in Vinland, Leif sailed back to Greenland, and never returned to North American shores.

               The location of Vinland had been debated over the centuries, and various spots along the northern Atlantic Coast had been cited. In the early 1960s, excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows produced evidence of the base camp of the 11th-century Viking exploration.

               The voyage by Leif Erikson was marked as an exceptionally remarkable one. Unfortunately, the death of Leif Erikson had not been mentioned in the sagas of Greenland.

        The American mainland was later discovered by Christopher Columbus of Spain.

               Erik the Red is credited with the discovery of Greenland; he ushered in the country’s Viking era. According to sagas, Erik the Red migrated to Iceland in 960 AD. His father, Porvaldr Asvaldsson, was exiled from Norway for instigating crimes. Porvaldr took his entire family to Iceland, and settled there.

               From the top of the mountains of western Iceland, another island that lay to the west was clearly visible. It lay across 289.6 kilometres of water. When Eric was exiled for three years as a punishment, he sailed west to that scenic island, and spent three years there.

               After he returned to Iceland, Erik exaggerated the merits of the island he had explored. He deliberately named the island ‘Greenland’, to make it sound green and fertile.

               Erik the Red was a born leader. He went on another voyage to Greenland later, leading a fleet of 25 long-ships. On board were around 500 men and women, domestic animals, and all the other elements required to create a new existence in a new place. 

            The Vikings were Norse sea-farers, mainly speaking the Old Norse language. The Vikings were from three countries of Scandinavia: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. They sailed across the North Sea, sometimes to the east coast of England, where they raided and looted.

            Sometimes, they took their ships to the north of Scotland, then round to the west coast of Scotland, and on to Ireland and the west coast of England. No coastal community was safe from their unpredictable raids and loots.

            The Vikings knew that there was an uninhabited island towards the setting sun in the North Atlantic. They explored the island and called it Iceland, because most of the island was covered in ice and snow. The recorded history of Iceland began with the settlement by Viking explorers in the late ninth century.

            A group of Norsemen, headed by Ingolfur Arnarson, who instigated a blood feud with the Norwegian king Herald I, sailed and migrated to Iceland. Ingolfur called the place where they landed ‘Reykjavik’, meaning smoky bay. The settlement was a huge success, and the population grew steadily. By the middle of the tenth century, it had reached several thousands.

               The Vikings were Scandinavian seafaring traders, warriors and pirates who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe. They travelled in long, open ships. The Viking ships, also known as ‘dragon-ships’ or ‘long-ships’, were designed to travel at a comparatively high speed.

               The largest Viking ship could carry about 100 sailors at a time. Their unique construction made them seaworthy. They were ‘clinker built’, which is a method of boat building, where the edges of hull planks overlap. They were usually finished with copper nails. These Scandinavian pirates were infamous for their raiding and invasion skills. They used to attack, raid, and loot coastal areas without any warning. The Vikings conquered most of the places they raided, and established their colonies in many of these lands.

               Though the Vikings travelled mostly for trading, their interest in raiding and looting made them the most-feared pirates of their time. They mainly targeted the British Isles, the Atlantic, and the North Sea shoreline of the Carolingian Empire, which included most of what is now France, Germany, and to the east of what became Russia.