Growing up Protestant, I knew very little about saints…although I recognized that many towns, churches and schools were named for them. Today, if my sources are correct, there are over 10,000 recognized saints, so I will likely never be able to keep up with them all and the many volumes of hagiography that have been written down through the ages will most likely go unread by me.

Nonetheless, in 1995 – while I was researching the history of my province for my book Nova Scotia: Shaped by the Sea – I was stunned and fascinated when to learn of St. Brendan the Navigator, born around 489, who set off from Ireland with thirty men in search of paradise on earth. Some said that he found his way to the shores of Nova Scotia. This was all news to me – an Irishman who “discovered” North America long before all the other restless European explorers.

But wait. There are several versions of this story. Some are pure oral history – and is that really history at all, or just storytelling? Some were written down but not until hundreds of years after Brendan was gone. Facts about anyone in the sixth century are hard to come by, even concerning world-famous saints. So, let’s just assume this is a story with some shred of possible truth, but a good one it is.

The one I settled on went like this.

A message from God tells Brendan to set off in search of a peaceful place. Along with thirty men, he sets off across the Atlantic in a curragh, which must have been one sturdy large sea vessel even though it was made from wicker and the skins of slaughtered animals. He encounters sea monsters, demons and much more, fails to find his destination but tries again, eventually ending up on an island where he meets a lone shipwrecked Irishman who tells him of the desired idyllic island. There, Brendan finds his paradise (known as St. Brendan’s Isle to some), and is greeted by a man wearing brilliant white feathers.

There are many variations of this story, this legend, this myth, or whatever it is. But, let’s face it, it’s a damn good tale. However, here’s what is tweaking in my brain right now about the connection between me – a 21st century modest Canadian peripatetic scribe and St. B – a famous sixth century Irish mystic; I live on the shores of Nova Scotia, where the revered one once (perhaps) landed. In the last year or so I have travelled to Newfoundland, Maine, Madeira, the Canary Islands, and the Azores – all destinations that stake a claim to have been visited by the wandering saint. Clearly, he remains a most popular fellow. While in Tenerife, I learned about a nearby phantom island, San Borondon, which is supposedly that very promised land the pilgrim and his crew were searching for. However, the locals made it clear I couldn’t visit there since it comes and goes according to its own whims. It is, after all, what they call a phantom island.

As a storyteller, I do find the whole business much more interesting than many less-intriguing threads of real history.

And it really is quite charming that so many locales lay claim to a very personal connection to Brendan. According to various legends, his famed isle could have been anywhere from the Faroe Islands in the far north to some unnamed islands near the equator. If any of it is true, he must have been an extraordinary navigator indeed – which may explain why he is the patron saint of whales, sailors, The U.S. Navy, and (much to my delight) senior citizen adventurers. He must still be rather popular because I see there are dozens of St. Brendan medallions, pendants and other jewelry on sale on Amazon although I am not in any hurry to buy any of the stuff.

So, yes, I should really prepare my weather gear and get on up to the Faroes and, more importantly, make my own pilgrimage to Tralee on the wonderful Dingle Peninsula where our hero was born, and then on to the Clonfert Cathedral where he is buried, to pay my respects. And if the venerated monk’s body is buried there, that more than suggests that he really existed, right? So, somewhere there is a trail of evidence of how his life truly played out. Perhaps. But I won’t go there yet, for fear the true yarn of his mortal years would be much less exciting.

But there is a bit more to my own tale concerning me and the saint.

And it goes like this.

In June of 2024, my intrepid and long-suffering wife, Linda and I circumnavigated Iceland – by car, I admit, not curragh. It was on our bucket list and a relatively short, direct flight from Halifax to Keflavik. We’d been told the weather would be mild in June. It wasn’t. A fierce North Atlantic storm had been assaulting the island nation and the very proper Viking-sized car rental agent warned me more than once to be careful when getting into our rented Corsa because so often the gusty winds would rip the doors right off the cars. This fact, and the pelting steely rain, did not bode well for our foray. We lingered in Reykjavik until the wind gods of Valhalla relented. It was in the national museum there that I detected the first historical hint that the Irish had been here. And they’d been here a long, long time ago, maybe well before the Vikings even. And legend has it (as they say), that Brendan the Navigator himself had set foot on Iceland on one of his journeys. I was floored.

While sipping a surprisingly large lager at a downtown pub called Bastard Brew & Food, I scrolled through several websites looking for further clues concerning anything Celtic in Iceland. According to Sunna Olafson Furstenau on Irish Roots in Iceland, I came across this: “It is believed that Irish Christian Monks and/or hermits came to Iceland in the 8th century. The Vikings started settling Iceland by the year 874, and the claim is that the heathen Vikings chased the Irish monks out of Iceland. The ‘Islendingabók’ tells of the Celtic monks that left the island of their own free will because they did not want to mingle with the horrible heathen Norsemen.”

And yes, the 8th century was too modern to connect with Brendan, but it revealed that he was not the only Irish settler on these frigid shores. But then I came across this dubious but jaw-dropping “fact” – “Genetic studies in Iceland reveal about 20 percent of the males and 63 percent of the females have Irish ancestry.” Whoa, Nelly.

I began to ponder why so many more women would have Irish blood in them than men and that deserved at least one more round of Bastard brew as I explained to Linda that, from here on, we would be on the look out for more clues concerning Irish influences and their whereabouts in Iceland.

That night, as the gales finally began to abate, in a further attempt to overcome my Protestant handicap in understanding more about my now favourite saint, I turned to The National Catholic Register (online). Ignoring newsworthy pieces about the Eucharistic Congress and gossip about the Vatican, I found further embellishment concerning the saint’s voyages. One other variation on the travelling story asserted that, “The 93-year-old St. Brendan fasted and prayed for 40 days on a mountain peak on the rugged Dingle Peninsula, in County Kerry, the southwestern most point of Ireland, in order to discern if he should go on a pilgrimage to Paradise. When he made his decision, he gathered to himself anywhere from 18 to 150 other monks, depending upon the source, for a voyage that lasted seven years.”

That helped to explain why he is the patron saint of elderly travellers.

But more importantly to my continuing research, the legend told of Brendan and his crew encountering “floating crystal palaces” and “mountains in the sea spouting fireballs.” To many, this is interpreted as Iceland, the land of fire and ice.

In the days that followed, the weather improved as we drove across the south coast. Here, we drove though sulphur-stenched fields of volcanic vents, climbed to the top of the Kerid crater, ventured behind the spectacular Seljanblands Falls, and wandered among beached islands of crystalline ice at Diamond Beach – undoubtedly those “floating crustal palaces” that awed Brendan. We also nearly wandered into a quicksand field at the base of the melting Jokulsarlon Glacier, which is being carved away year by year by global climate change. Clearly Iceland was still a land of fire and ice, beauty and danger.

We did our best to hit the high spots like the basalt canyons of Studlagil, the mud pots of Hverir, another crater at Hverfjall and Godafoss, and the falls of the gods, to name but a few. But as we took a break from all the driving, holed up in a hotel in Akureyri, just 62 miles from the Arctic Circle, I realized that we’d strayed far off the path of my quest for St. Brendan or anything remotely Irish.

Fortunately for us, I was overheard expressing my concern for this at the Akureyri Backpackers pub. A heavily bearded fellow sipping some sort of blue cocktail introduced himself as a history professor from the local university and, after some perfunctory small talk, he offered up the advice that we really needed to visit Akranes on the southwestern shore of the island which was fortunately on our last leg of our circumnavigating journey. He claimed it was the most Irish town in all Iceland. I said we’d make a beeline for it.

On the way there, we had a most excellent hike through one of the most exhilarating lava fields of the journey and ventured on up to the top of another fine crater at Grabok.

Akranes calls itself a “classic fishing port” and boasts a population of 7600. We drove through an industrial area on our way to the folk museum and lighthouse, which looks somewhat like a concrete dilapidated 1950s Buck Rodgers rocket ship perched on the stoney shore. Inside the lighthouse were some bold innovative paintings by local artists and nearby was a huge fish factory wall with images of…well, fish and various fish-related things.

It was a drizzly, chill day, alas but reminiscent of days back home on the cold damp coast of the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, so we felt right at home in our rain gear as we pitied other Akranes visitors running for shelter. While wandering about, we learned that we were a bit too early for one of town’s most festive events, Írskir dagar. According to Adventures.com, “Irish Days is a fascinating event that commemorates the Celtic heritage of the town. It is observed on the first weekend of July. People, dressed in Lopapeysa, the Icelandic sweater, party the whole day. The most exciting part of the day is the competition on who has the reddest hair.”

So, yes, indeed there was a very important Irish connection here. In fact, the town was first settled by two Irish brothers, Thormódur and Ketill Bresason, who made their home here along with family members and friends in the year 880. This made it one of the first Christian settlements in Iceland. And the rest, as they say, is history.

As we walked along the bleak lava shoreline away from the lighthouse, it was hard to imagine why this particular stretch of coast would lure the Bresason brothers to forgo the green pleasant land of Ireland for such a stark and forbidding parcel of coastal volcanic rock. Anyone’s best guess would be that they had good reasons – religious, political, economic, or social – to leave their native home and move their families here. Perhaps it was the wealth of fish in the sea…for even today, these are still healthy well-stocked fishing grounds.

I had to admit that it was unlikely that St. Brendan himself had set foot here a few hundred years before his latter countrymen. However, looking eastward toward Akrafjall, the mountain towering gloomily above the town, and then turning my face west again, into the salt-laden North Atlantic wind, I was sure I could feel the spirit of the old, blessed seeker right here with us in the far northern reaches of the planet and waiting to guide us on to whatever “blissful Island” we might find next. ~ Story by Lesley Choyce

www.lesleychoyce.com