Vikings in America (27 page)

The voyage which Nicholas of Lynne joined was not an English venture, but rather a military expedition carried out on the orders of King Haakon of Norway on which an Englishman was present. Possibly he – or Edward III – paid for the privilege; possibly the Norwegians required an expert in the use of the astrolabe, a skill which no Norwegian may have possessed. The expedition had orders to travel to Greenland, then to the lands west from there. That it took place is beyond doubt, and we know that multiple accounts of it once existed, though no complete account has survived. We are, therefore, left to piece together the story from fragmented sources.

The simplest confirmation of the visit to Greenland is the existence of two Inuit kayaks which the expedition took as souvenirs, and which were for many years kept in Oslo. So Archbishop Claus Magnus writes: ‘In the year 1505 I personally saw two skinboats above the western entrance within the cathedral dedicated to the sainted Halward . . . It is stated that King Haakon captured them when he with his battle fleet passed the coast of Greenland.'
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After Greenland the expedition travelled to Labrador, and as far as 54° south, which is the latitude of Hamilton Inlet. The expedition then travelled north along the Labrador coast, west through Hudson Strait and into Hudson Bay.

Very little is recorded about Nicholas of Lynne. Richard Hakluyt (
c
. 1552–1616), Professor of Geography at Oxford, states that he took part in a voyage to lands near the North Pole around 1360. By the North Pole he meant the north magnetic pole, so the reference is to what is now the Canadian High Arctic. He is described as ‘a priest with an astrolabe' and ‘an English minorite from Oxford', that is, a priest in the Minorite order of St Francis. As the astrolabe was used to make maps, we can infer that Nicholas of Lynne was working as a map-maker for Edward III. His 1364 report to the king was described as an account of lands from 54° north towards the Pole. Called the
Inventio Fortuna
, this document is now lost. So too is the account that was given by the expedition to King Haakon of Norway. An account deriving from Nicholas was written down by a Dutch explorer known to later English writers as James Cnoyen of Boise-le-Duc. Again this account, written in ‘Belgica Lingua' (presumably the Flemish language) is lost, but it was read by Gerardus Mercator (1512–94), the cartographer who gave us the Mercator projection. Mercator made notes which he passed to John Dee (1527–1608), mathematician and man of letters.

What information has survived is from John Dee's notes, and relayed through the rather long list of intermediaries as set out above. The account we have is abbreviated, fragmentary, and many steps removed from the original source. John Dee's notes read as follows:

As Mercator mentioneth out of a probable author, there was a frier of Oxford who himselfe went verye farre north abouve 200 years ago . . . He reporteth that the southwest parte of that lande is a fruitful and holesome soil. The northeast parte is inhabited with a people called pygmei, whiche are not at the uttermose above four foote high . . . there is never in these parts
so much wind as might be sufficient to drive a cornmill . . . it is divided into four partes or Ilandes by foure greate guttes, in-drafts, or channels, running violently and delivering themselves into a monstrous receptacle and swallowing sincke, with such a violent force and currant, that a Shippe beying entred never so little within one of those foure indrafts, cannot be holden backe by the force of any great winde, but runneth in headlong by that deep swallowing into the bowels of the earth . . .

The story as it has come down to us is a curious one, though resolves reasonably well into a coherent description. An astrolabe was a mediaeval instrument for determining the altitude of the sun, or any other celestial body. Using this information, along with the time of day and the date, it was possible to calculate latitude. Thus the astrolabe was an early sextant, though rather harder to use, and in the absence of tables to look up a reading and get the latitude, it required a fair competence in mathematics to use. The astrolabe seems to have been invented by the Arabs around the eighth century
AD
, and knowledge of it was brought back to Europe through the crusades. In the late fourteenth century the use of the astrolabe was something of an English speciality. Geoffrey Chaucer, remembered today for the
Canterbury Tales
and other literary works, was known in his own age as the author of
A Treatise on the Astrolabe
, written around 1391 and the oldest description in English of any complex scientific instrument. Chaucer compiles his work for the latitude of Oxford, which is the city associated with Nicholas of Lynne. Presumably the Norwegian expedition required an expert in the use of the astrolabe, and employed an English expert.

A strange comment in the description is that an area of the north: ‘there is never in these parts so much wind as might be sufficient to drive a cornmill . . .' While this seems implausible there is in fact a place which fits this description. Uniquely, Hudson Bay is ‘singularly free from storm or fog' (
New International Encyclopedia
), while meteorological records confirm the virtual absence of high winds on Hudson Bay, and often the absence of any significant wind. The description plausibly refers to Hudson Bay, and cannot reasonably refer to anywhere else in Europe or North America. The four channels of the description can be understood as the entrance to Hudson Bay, where Hudson Strait is obstructed by three islands, Salisbury, Nottingham and Mill islands, forming four channels as it passes them. The reference to strong currents is correct for this location. Within Hudson
Bay, the south-west suggests the area around the estuary of the Churchill River. This is a forested land which could reasonably be described as fruitful and wholesome. The north-east of the same land mass is the Chesterfield Inlet region. Today the indigenous people are Inuit; however, the Inuit have arrived subsequent to the fourteenth century. In the time of Nicholas of Lynne the people living there were members of a pre-Dorset Culture, known by the tools they have left as the Arctic Small Tool Tradition. I cannot find a reference to their height as no cemetery appears to have been excavated, and therefore cannot comment on the appropriateness of the description ‘pygmies'. The African people today sometimes known as pygmies were, of course, unknown to the mediaeval world. Rather the mediaeval term ‘pygmy' relates to descriptions by Pliny and Aristotle of an apparently mythical people of short stature. The tradition from Nicholas of Lynne is simply that a people of short stature lived in this area.

In John Dee's account of the voyage of Nicholas of Lynne we have a plausible description of Hudson Bay and the lands around it. We also have an indication of the interest John Dee had in the Arctic lands.

British exploration of the Americas is inspired by John Dee (1527–1608), surely the strangest figure of the Elizabethan age, as well as its greatest scholar.
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Shakespeare modelled Prospero in
The Tempest
upon him, and the character of Prospero encapsulates his many achievements: scientist, historian, alchemist, magician, a curious mix of renaissance scholarship and mediaeval gnosticism. It was Dee who provided the English explorer Martin Frobisher with the Viking sailing directions for America, and Dee who asserted Britain's claim to America on the basis of what he believed to be the discovery and settlement of America by Celts and Vikings. Furthermore, it was Dee who provided the intellectual and legal foundation for the idea of a British Empire, along with the concept of Britain's God-given right to govern an empire. Without Dee, Queen Elizabeth I would not have commissioned the English voyages to America, and perhaps Britain would not have embraced imperial expansion.

Educated at Cambridge and immersed in his studies throughout his long life, John Dee is the outstanding mathematician of his age, responsible for reintroducing the sixteenth century to the work of Euclid. He provided Martin Frobisher with navigational instruments and tables which he had
himself designed, as well as a synthesis of the best descriptions available of sailing routes to North America. This much is tangible achievement of the sort that the twenty-first century understands and approves. Yet it scarcely touches the surface of Dee's world. Dee saw himself not as a scientist but as an alchemist – a mediaeval designation with a long pedigree, even used much later by Isaac Newton – and saw the scientific and humanistic work he did as based upon his spiritual understanding. Queen Mary I imprisoned him for witchcraft; subsequently her sister, Queen Elizabeth I, made him her personal astronomer and her friend. Protected by Elizabeth and funded by her, Dee collected a personal library of over 4,000 volumes, most of which had been scattered during the dissolution of the monasteries – and most of which were subsequently destroyed by a mob who attacked his library. It is clear that Dee had many remarkable works in his collection. For example his writing shows that he was familiar with the
Book of Enoch
, an apocryphal book of the Bible which was thought lost until rediscovered in 1773. He pursued studies which were occult and cabbalistic, claiming divine inspiration for his work, and is associated with the Gnostic Rosicrucian movement, of which he may have been the founder. The twenty-first century is sufficiently ill-at-ease with these ideas to feel a need to treat Dee with caution, and there has perhaps been a tendency to minimise his body of work, yet his undoubted achievements in mathematics alone are sufficient to earn his place as a great thinker.

John Dee used the account of Nicholas of Lynne to support an English claim to the North Atlantic lands the Vikings had discovered. In his role as the alchemist and antiquarian attached to the court of Queen Elizabeth I he was encouraged to develop an academic framework for British interests in the area. His view is that Britain had a legal right to these lands, as is neatly set out in a very long chapter heading to the last chapter of his
Volume of Great and Rich Discoveries
: ‘That all these Northern Iles and Septentrional Parts are lawfully appropriated to the Crown of this Brytish Impire: and the terrible adventure and great loss of the Brytish people and other of King Arthur his subjects perishing about the first discovery thereof. And the placing of Colonies in the same Iles and Regions by the same King Arthur. And an entire and general Description of all the part of the world within 12 degrees of the North Pole and somewhat more.'

The supposed justification is that King Arthur ruled not only the whole of the British Isles and much of continental Europe but also the people who discovered Iceland, Greenland and lands to the west. This strange idea was
not completely a creation of John Dee. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's
History of Britain
, which enjoyed much popularity in the Elizabethan age, we read of King Arthur that ‘After an entire conquest of Ireland, he made a voyage with his fleet to Iceland, which he also subdued.' However John Dee extends the story by reference to an otherwise unknown, lost manuscript, which he calls both
Gestae Arthur
and
Principio Gestorum Arturi
. This apparently dates Arthur's conquest of the north to 530. While there can be no credence in these stories, what can be seen is that John Dee is presenting the English state as the successor to all the peoples of the British Isles – including the Vikings – and therefore the rightful owner of the lands visited and settled by the Vikings.

It is in the British exploration of North America that a tangible link with the Viking tradition may be sought. The clearest evidence for this link comes from the information on Viking routes that was given to Martin Frobisher for his 1576 voyage to Greenland, but earlier voyages bear witness to knowledge in England of the Viking achievement.

The lands reported by Christopher Columbus on his return from his first voyage of 1492 would not have been considered a new discovery by the mariners of England. Fishing on the Grand Banks just a few hundred miles off the coast of North America had become commonplace, with most of the ships setting out from Bristol. Storm-driven ships inevitably sighted land to the east. What the Spanish proclamation of their discoveries did was convince England of the need formally to stake a claim to these new lands. In 1496 King Henry VII was persuaded to authorise a westward voyage of discovery, and he did not choose an Englishman to lead it, but the adventurer John Cabot. Genoese by birth, Venetian by adoption, and a resident at times of both Spain and Portugal, Cabot was a truly international figure. He had travelled widely in the eastern Mediterranean, and said he had visited Mecca. Cabot's was a name which lent international credibility to the voyage. That said, the expedition which Cabot led out of Bristol in 1497 was a thoroughly English affair. It was funded by England, and Cabot's ship, the
Matthew
, was crewed by Englishmen and flew the English flag. Crucially, it followed in the footsteps not of Columbus, but of the countless Bristol fishermen who had sailed to the Grand Banks. In the course of a voyage from Bristol to America and back to Bristol that lasted for less than three
months – a shorter round-trip than some one-way voyages in the following centuries – Cabot made a successful reconnaissance of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and reported to Henry VII the existence of these lands. It was scarcely a new discovery, rather a formal confirmation to the king and to the world of the existence of lands the Bristol merchants already knew existed, and a proclamation of English interest.

English exploration of John Cabot's discoveries made a slow start. Cabot was instructed to make a second expedition, this time with five ships, departing in 1499. Of the five, two turned back and three vanished, presumed wrecked and sunk. Cabot himself was in one of the missing ships. This disaster brought about a pause in formal exploration, though fishing on the Grand Banks continued. At that time there was not a sufficient motive for exploration, certainly not for exploration that resulted in this sort of loss of lives and ships. The coast of North America was without resources that England wanted, and the expense of voyages was too great for them to be undertaken purely in a spirit of adventure. Rather the demand was for a sea route to the riches of India, China and the Far East. Within England hopes were directed on the belief in a Northwest Passage – the idea that there was a sea route around the north of America through which ships could reach an unknown ocean and subsequently China and India.