Page 19 - ModernParadiseFLIPBOOKcomplete

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He tells them that sitting there is a brief “respite”, “like being in the Garden of

Delights compared to the torments to which I can look forward this evening. My
punishment is to burn like a lump of molten lead in a crucible, day and night, in the
middle of that yonder mountain. I was there when that brother of yours was
swallowed up. The mountain shot out great flames, as though leaping for joy – that is
the usual welcome for a damned soul.’ “

Apart from respite on holy days, “ ‘the rest of the year I am torn in hell with Herod
and Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas.’ ” Twilight arrived and “a vast cloud of demons

wheeled about” yelling and demanding they leave. As they sailed away, “an endless
press of demons covered the face of the deep, yelling hideously”; Brendan tries, urges
them not to pile further punishments onto Judas.

What are we to make of all this?
Most historians are disappointed that the book contains only limited historical detail
about Brendan or the 6th century. We can certainly find a bit of seafaring

information and also pick out some geographical details; the midnight sun, whales
and Icelandic volcanoes. And archaeology confirms that many of these islands were
th
inhabited by monks. One was Iceland; the 12 century Book of the Icelanders says
the first Norse settlers to reach Iceland around 870 found Irish priests there; but they
fled from the viking pagans, leaving behind their bells, books and croziers.

But what obviously stands out in the Voyage are the fantastical, magical elements.
These helped make it a very popular book in the later middle ages, though modern

historians often dismiss them as childish fairy-tale nonsense. But a modern editor of
the Voyages says, “Its basic theme, the quest for a paradise on earth, can be traced
back through early Christian writings to Greek, Roman and Egyptian literature. But
the closest resemblances are to the literature of visions, some of which originated in
Ireland and probably made use of pre-Christian elements.”

From this perspective, what the Voyage potentially reveals to us is how ancient
offshore islanders thought and felt about the seas around them, or at least the ones
to the north and west. Whereas the Narrow Channel, as we’ll see later, has always
been a highway to the continent, the Northern Seas were a gateway to the dream-
world, to paradise, as well as to doom and chaos. As Michael Pye describes in a
recent book (The Edge of the World: How the North Sea made us who we are, 2014),
the Northern Seas were regarded as the edge of the world, and as such, a place of
mystery, the edge of reason, suspended between heaven and earth.