North Sea adventures

I got sidetracked into SF author Fred Pohl's theory of a fourteenth-century expedition to the New World. I hadn't heard this shocking theory before. On further investigation, this theory has indeed since been deemed tripe, by anyone luckless enough to run across it again. You gotta take care when reading Pohl. However.

The theory comes from the Zeno family in AD sixteenth-century Italy. The Zenos had lifted tall-tales of the North Sea, two centuries and more prior. There exist some fine resources on mediaeval North Sea exploration and piracy. During the Hundred Year War especially, what the Caribbean would become in the sixteenth century, so was the North-Baltic sea complex in the fourteenth.

Phillippe Dollinger in 1970 singled out the Vitalienbrüder, that these bros had explored up to the Caspian Mountains and there met savage tribes. Although, pace some people - that points rather to river explorations in Mongol Russia. East, not west. Somewhat like Rurik out of Kiev. More like how his forefathers got to Kiev in the first place.

To sum up: along the Tuchmanist line that the fourteenth century represented Europe's totter toward a Later Antiquity and a Dark Age, happily re-righted; these North Sea shenanigans represent a revival of the Viking age. If any went astray and landed in Newfie, I'd not be shocked. But it seems that none of them came back to tell of it. There was plenty of fun and loot to be had raiding Picardy.

As for Hy-Brasil: at a guess, these were Bristol fish stories, cod specifically. Maps were not good before the Galilean telescope. After that first hundred mile offshore, the 1325 AD navigator was making stuff up. I do agree that John Jay in the late fifteenth century had set anchor furthest west since the Eriksons. I don't think he found the Porcupine Bank although I won't rule out that this Bank once had outcrops enough to annoy Iron Age fishermen.