This
week's blog is about six lands at one time believed to be real but since have been
proven to be no more than myths.
Ancient
travelers (and by ancient I mean many
centuries ago) told stories of mysterious places located in the unexplored
reaches of the world—fabled cities, phantom islands, and exotic
civilizations. Even though these lands
were usually dismissed as myths and legends, a few of them found their way onto
world maps and helped inspire some of history’s most important journeys of
discovery. From a fabled Christian
empire in Asia to a supposed lost kingdom in Canada, find out more about six of
the most influential lands that never were.
1) Thule
A
subject of fascination for ancient explorers, romantic poets and Nazi
occultists. Thule was an elusive
territory believed to be located in the frozen north Atlantic near Scandinavia.
Its legend dates back to the 4th century B.C. when the Greek journeyman Pytheas
claimed to have travelled to an icy island beyond Scotland where the sun rarely
set and land, sea and air combined into a bewildering, jelly-like mass.
Many of
Pytheas’ contemporaries doubted his claims, but that didn't stop distant Thule from lingering in the
European imagination. It eventually
became synonymous with the northernmost place in the known world. Explorers and researchers variously
identified it as Norway, Iceland and the Shetland Islands, and it served a
recurring theme in poetry and myth. The
island is perhaps most famous for its connection to the Thule Society, a
post-World War I occult organization in Germany that considered Thule the
ancestral home of the Aryan race. The Munich-based group counted many future
Nazis among its members, including Rudolf Hess, who later served as Deputy
Führer of Germany under Adolf Hitler.
2) The Kingdom of Prester John
For more
than 500 years, Europeans believed a Christian king ruled over a vast empire
somewhere in the wilds of either Africa, India or the Far East. Talk of this mythical land first surfaced in
1165 after the Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors received a letter—most likely
a European forgery—from a monarch calling himself Prester John. The mysterious
king claimed to serve as supreme ruler of
the three Indies and all its 72 kingdoms.
He described his realm as a utopia rich in gold, populated by exotic
races of giants and horned men. Perhaps
most important of all, Prester John and his subjects were Christians—even the
name Prester meant Priest.
Despite
the fact that a Papal mission to find Prester John’s court disappeared without
a trace, the myth of his kingdom took hold among Europeans. Crusading Christians rejoiced in the idea
that a devout ruler might come to their aid in the struggle against Islam
during the Crusades, and when Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes conquered parts of
Persia in the early 1200s, many mistakenly credited Prester John’s forces with
the attack. The kingdom later became a
subject of fascination for travelers and explorers. Marco Polo provided a questionable account of
encountering its remnants in Northern China.
Vasco da Gama and other Portuguese mariners searched for it in Africa
and India. While explorers eventually
discovered a Christian civilization in Ethiopia, it lacked the grandeur and the
gold Europeans had come to associate with Prester John’s realm. By the 17th
century, the legend had faded, and the famed empire was dropped from most maps.
3) Hy-Brasil
Long
before Europeans ever stepped foot in the New World, explorers searched for the
island of Hy-Brasil, an ethereal land said to exist off the west coast of
Ireland. The story of Hy-Brasil most
likely comes from Celtic legend—its name means Isle of the Blest in Gaelic—but its precise origins are
unclear. Hy-Brasil first appeared on
maps in the 14th century, usually in the form of a small, circular island with
a narrow strait splitting it in two.
Many mariners accepted it as a real place until as recently as the
1800s, and it became popular as the basis for myths and folktales. Some legends described the island as a lost
paradise. Others claimed that it was
perpetually obscured by a dense curtain of mist and fog, only becoming visible
to the naked eye every seven years.
[which sounds as if it might have been the genesis of the Lerner &
Lowe musical Brigadoon about a
village in Scotland that appeared out of the mist every one hundred years]
Despite
its somewhat whimsical reputation, Hy-Brasil was widely sought after by
Britain-based explorers in the 15th century. The navigator John Cabot launched
several expeditions in an attempt to find it.
It's suggested that he had hoped to locate it during his famous journey
to the coast of Newfoundland in 1497.
Documents from Cabot’s time claim that previous explorers had already
reached Hy-Brasil, leading some researchers to argue that these unnamed
mariners may have inadvertently traveled all the way to the Americas prior to
Christopher Columbus.
4) El Dorado
Beginning
in the 16th century, European explorers and conquistadors were intrigued by
tales of a mythical city of gold located in the unexplored reaches of South
America. The city had its origin in
accounts of El Dorado (The Gilded One),
a native king who powdered his body with gold dust and tossed jewels and gold
into a sacred lake as part of a coronation rite. Stories of the gilded king eventually led to
rumors of a golden city of untold wealth and splendor. Adventurers spent many years—and countless
lives—in a futile search for its riches.
One of
the most famous El Dorado expeditions came in 1617, when the English explorer
Sir Walter Raleigh traveled up the Orinoco River on a quest to find it in what
is now Venezuela. They didn't find any
trace of the gilded city, and King James I later executed Raleigh after he
disobeyed an order to avoid fighting with the Spanish. El Dorado continued to drive exploration and
colonial violence until the early 1800s, when scientists Alexander von Humboldt
and Aimé Bonpland branded the city a myth after undertaking a research
expedition to Latin America.
El
Dorado wasn’t the only gilded city supposedly tucked away in the New
World. European explorers also hunted
for the Seven Cities of Cibola, a mythical group of gold-rich settlements said
to be located somewhere in what are now Mexico and the American Southwest. The most famous search for the Seven Cities
came in the 16th century, when the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
scoured the Great Plains of the U.S. in search of a city of riches called
Quivira.
5) St. Brendan’s Island
St.
Brendan’s Island was a mysterious manifestation of Paradise once thought to be
hidden somewhere in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.
The myth of the phantom island dates back to the Navigation Brendani, or
Voyage of Brendan, a 1,200-year-old
Irish legend about the seafaring monk St. Brendan the Navigator. As the story goes, Brendan led a crew of
pious sailors on a 6th century voyage in search of the famed Promised Land of the Saints. The journey on the open sea describes attacks
by fireball-wielding giants and run-ins with talking birds. According to the tale, Brendan and his men
landed on a mist-covered island filled with delicious fruit and sparkling gems.
The grateful crew are said to have spent 40 days exploring the island before
returning to Ireland.
Although
there is no historical proof of St. Brendan’s voyage, the legend became so
popular during medieval times that St. Brendan’s Island found its way onto many
maps of the Atlantic. Early cartographers placed it near Ireland, but in later
years it migrated to the coasts of North Africa, the Canary Islands and finally
the Azores. Sailors often claimed to have caught fleeting glimpses of the
mystical isle during the Age of Discovery, and it’s likely that even
Christopher Columbus believed in its existence.
Its legend eventually faded after multiple search expeditions failed to
track it down. By the 18th century, the famed Promised Land of the Saints had been removed from most navigational
charts.
6) The Kingdom of Saguenay
The
story of the mirage-like Kingdom of Saguenay dates to the 1530s, when French
explorer Jacques Cartier made his second journey to Canada in search of gold
and a northwest passage to Asia. While
traveling along the St. Lawrence River at what is modern day Quebec, Cartier’s
Iroquois guides began to whisper tales of Saguenay, a vast kingdom that lay to
the north. According to a chief named Donnacona, the mysterious realm was rich
in spices, furs and precious metals and populated by blond, bearded men with
pale skin. The stories eventually
transitioned into the realm of the absurd when the natives claimed the region
was also home to races of one-legged people and whole tribes possessing no anus. Cartier became intrigued by the prospect of
plundering the riches of Saguenay. He
brought Donnacona back to France, where the Iroquois chief continued to spread
tales of a lost kingdom.
Legends
about Saguenay haunted French explorers in North America for years, but treasure
hunters never found any trace of the mythical land. Most historians now dismiss it as a myth, but
some argue the natives may have been referring to copper deposits in the
Canadian northwest. Others have
suggested that the Indian tales could have been inspired by a centuries old
Norse outpost left over from Viking voyages to North America.
Fortunately,
today we have Google Earth to confirm or deny such rumors of mythical
places. :)
