WI: St Brendan Voyage results in Irish/Columban Church colonisation of Newfoundland.

[cadwallon1969]

There is some evidence - more myth - that Brendan the Voyager made landfall in Northern North America (prior to Leif Erikson). What if, following increased depredations from Vikings that a successful colony was begun? Questions:

1. Would the Irish have enough of a technological edge to fight off the Indians?
2. Would they need to? If the Irish became friendly with the natives, and held to allocated lands - perhaps the cycle of violence that happened later on may not have eventuated.
3. Would the curragh, which was the height of Irish boating technology, been able to create stable trade/colonisation lanes between Ireland and N America?
4. Was there enough impetus from Viking raids/colonisation to prompt Irish immigration? Or is that only in response to the vile Sassenach?
5. What would a Columban Church/isolated Irish culture look like? The Derry novels look at what the celts might have looked like if they avoided Roman conquest - whatabout a true gaelic culture?

[MerryPrankster]

Fun as it might be to have High Kings of the Cheseapeake, I wonder if Irish shipbuilding tech is advanced enough to have a sustained colonization effort.

Of course, if the Vikings get involved, that might be doable.

[oudi14]

Some believe that the same area of south Ari Marsson,who was supposedly shipwrecked on the Greenland coast about the year 970, was rescued, and lived in a christian community there for a time, and even received baptism. This community was European, not Skraeling. No archaelogical evidence of this community exists, however.
I know this digresses a bit from your question about St. Brendan, but if the Irish did in fact make it to Greenland [albeit across the narrow Denmark Strait] then I suppose it means they could have landed, even if accidentally, further south. It would be hard, though, to maintain any sort of trade with the mother country 2000 miles east across the turbulent North Atlantic.

[Paladin]

The way I pictured this happening would be as an extension of Irish hermetic monasticism. Irish monks loved to find ridiculously remote and unpleasant places so they could better contemplate God (don't ask me how it worked). And what place is more remote and inhospitable then the New World? Of course, if it's only monks, the communities will die out from lack of re population, but if it were some of the very early "double monastaries", with both monks and nuns, then they might have a chance. I could see small monasteries popping up on the coast, then being driven further south once the Vikings arrive. I cannot, however, see a transatlantic Irish Empire at this point, as ship building and communication is too primitive. Later on, however, things could be different. Assuming you had some sort of central government in Ireland (yet another POD).

[Bobindelaware]

Paladin, I seem to recall that the Irish Hermits (and Monastics) did have contact with supporting communities around them. Might such communities have resulted in Newfoundland as Native American converts? Other Irish following the hermits? Both?

And how might the theology have developed without the Roman (and particularly Augustinian - an axe I personally have to grind, sorry!) influence? A form of Christianity more in line with the attitudes of the Old Religion? (not that Christianity in OTL hasn't borrowed from it & others)

Bobindelaware

[Dan1988]

Problem - if it's before 1000, then it depends on the period. In some cases, it will be before the displacement of some Aboriginal cultures. And I can tell you that the Aboriginals will not be pleased.

[Umbral]

I don't honestly think Irish ship tech was anywhere near being up to it. In OTL.

Maybe have a PoD where the monks in Iceland find something of commercial value there? Increased sea-traffic between Iceland and Ireland lead to an advance in tech, with off-course ships visiting Newfoundland?

Then later the vikings push the nascent Iceland colony off, and they go west in desperation?

[JohnJacques]

There are the Irish Papas in Iceland. So I think Irish ship tech might barely be able to do it.

[Cromm Crúaich]

Even if the monks got there, in the long run, i don't think it'd do much more than immunise the east coast (and eventually Mesoamerica and the west) and give a few tribes strange, syncretic beliefs.