It is just over two hundred miles from Stornoway to the most southerly island in the Faroes group, two hundred miles of open water, exposed to the full sweep of the Atlantic winds. Lying almost midway in the gap between Scotland and Iceland, the cluster of eighteen islands which form the Faroes rise abruptly from the water where the crest of a submarine ridge lifts briefly above the surface. One of the remotest places in Europe, the Faroes are in every way the offspring of the sea. The islanders depend upon the sea for their livelihood; at the age when most children are learning to ride bicycles, they already know how to handle the little boats in which they pass from island to island; and their daily lives are dominated by the huge Atlantic depressions which revolve slowly over their heads, obscuring the islands in thick wet clouds for most of the year, and bringing rain on two days out of every three. Both for Saint Brendan and our latter-day Brendan, the Faroes were a key point in their journeys. If the Navigatio did in fact describe the Stepping Stone Route to America as the Irish monks had used it, then the Faroes were the first logical long-distance staging post in the chain.
Damp and cloud-hidden, they lie far beyond the horizon from the Hebrides, and yet the Navigatio told how Saint Brendan and his monks had sighted a remote island and a favorable wind had brought them to shore. Landing, they set out to explore the place, and found large streams full of fish, and a great number of flocks of splendid white sheep, very large in size. They caught one of the sheep to make their Paschal meal, and on Good Friday while they were preparing their service, an islander appeared, bringing with him a basket of fresh bread. He came up to them, fell three times on his face before Saint Brendan, and asked him—presumably in a language he understood—to accept the gift of bread for their meal. Later, the same islander brought more fresh supplies to revictual their boat, and gave the travelers sailing directions for the next part of their voyage. And, in answer to Saint Brendan’s questions, he explained that the sheep on the island grew so large because they were not milked, but left alone in their pastures, and that the natural environment was so gentle that they could be left to graze day and night.
Several scholars have pointed out how closely this description of the Isle of Sheep fits the Faroes. The influence of the Gulf Stream produces comparatively mild winters in the Faroes, and the climate and pasture are suitable for sheep raising so that the islands have acquired a reputation for their sheep and wool. In fact, the present name of the islands is unchanged: it seems to be taken from the Norse words Faer-Eyjaer, meaning “Sheep Islands.” So the Vikings, too, when they reached the Faroes, gave the islands the same name as the Irish or, as likely, picked up the name from the previous inhabitants. As for the islander who gave Saint Brendan the bread, spoke his language, and understood the Christian calendar, there seems a reasonable possibility that he was another of the wandering clerics of the Irish church. The Navigatio calls him Procurator, a term applied to an administrator in the monastic hierarchy and usually translated as Steward. Also there is strong independent evidence to show that Irish monks had settled themselves in the Faroes at an early date. In 825 a learned Irish chronicler named Dicuil, who was employed at the royal Frankish court, set out to compile a geography book which he called The Book of the Measure of the World, because he intended to put down in it a description of every land known to mankind as described by the ancients. Dicuil had read many classical authors, but he complained that they really knew very little about the islands lying to the west and north of Britain, whereas he, Dicuil, could claim to describe them with some authority, because he had lived in some, visited others, or talked to Irish priests who had sailed even farther afield than himself, and had read their reports of the farthest islands.
“There are many other islands in the ocean to the north of Britain,” Dicuil wrote, “which can be reached from the northern islands of Britain in a direct voyage of two days and nights with sails filled with a continuously favorable wind. A devout priest told me that in two summer days and the intervening night he sailed in a two-benched boat and entered one of them.
“There is another set of small islands, nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water; in these for nearly a hundred years hermits sailing from our country, Ireland, have lived. And just as they were always deserted from the beginning of the world, so now because of the Northmen pirates they are emptied of anchorites, and filled with countless sheep, and very many diverse kinds of seabirds. I have never found these islands mentioned in the authorities.”
Dicuil’s description could be applied to the Faroes in several points: his “narrow stretches” of water between the islands describe very well the fjordlike channels between the Faroes; the distance by sea-voyage from the Orkneys or Shetlands north of Scotland is feasible in a light boat in good following winds; and the Faroes are renowned for their magnificent variety of bird-life, including enormous colonies of seabirds which nest in the sheer cliffs which surround most of the islands. This remarkable bird-life completes the circle which links the Faroes with Dicuil’s northern islands and with the Isle of Sheep in the Navigatio, because the Navigatio goes on to say that the Procurator directed Saint Brendan to stay at a nearby island which he told them was a Paradise of Birds. There, said the Procurator, the travelers would remain until the eve of Pentecost.
The possible identity of the Isle of Sheep and the Paradise of Birds with the Faroes occupied my thoughts in Stornoway as we prepared Brendan for her attempt at the sea passage. The run to the Faroes would be our first long-distance sea crossing, and though two hundred miles on the charts looked easy enough, it could turn out to be at least twice that distance if the winds were against us and Brendan had to follow a zig-zag course. No wonder in the old days the Hebridean fishermen had called the Faroes “the Faraways.” If we had really foul winds, then we were quite likely to miss the Faroes entirely. A single bad gale spewed from the prevailing westerlies could skittle Brendan past the Faroes and on toward Norway. In the days of sail, storm-driven fishermen from Shetland or Orkney had been carried clear across to the Norwegian coast and been forced to spend days in open boats of the same size as Brendan and far handier in sailing to windward than she was. They were the lucky ones: there had been many others who were lost in the fierce storms.
The glum looks of Stornoway’s professional fishermen did not help matters as they peered down at Brendan, lying in their harbor, and muttered dolefully among themselves. The Doubting Thomas of our arrival was a steady source of gloom. He kept reappearing with sea-wise questions which always ended in the same refrain. Once it was: “What do you use for ballast?”
“Water.”
“Aye. Stones would be better. There’s life in the stones. But water…. That’s bad. I wouldna want to sail with you.”
Or, another time: “How does she sail to wind?”
“She doesn’t really,” I called back. “We’re lucky to get across at right angles to the breeze.”
“Not sail to wind. Och, that’s bad.” He sucked in through his teeth. “I wouldna want to sail with you.”
Sotto voce from behind me, Arthur’s Irish accent turned Scots for a moment and uttered a mocking warning—“We’re all doomed! Aye, we’re doomed for sure!”
Edan also banished any despondency. When we were ready to cast off from Stornoway, he suddenly slapped his forehead, cried aloud that he’d forgotten something, and leapt ashore, running off down the jetty with great gangling strides. Puzzled, we waited for nearly an hour. Then he came racing back at full tilt, waving a brown paper parcel.
“What’s so important?” George asked him.
“Couldn’t go without it,” blurted Edan breathlessly as he jumped aboard. “Unthinkable. Sorry I’m late, but I asked everywhere and finally got the last one in Stornoway.”
“But what is it?” repeated George.
“A bottle of Pimms!” Edan beamed. “I thought we needed something to mix with our drinks so that we can have cocktails on board.”
Sure enough, our Gannet had located the last bottle of Pimms in Stornoway, and his scheme extended to a pan of watercress seeds, which he secreted near his berth in order to grow a little greenery to decorate our drinks. Alas, on the second day he accidentally kicked over the Pimms bottle and spilled its contents stickily into the bilge, and soon afterward a wave deluged his cress tray, drowning Brendan’s only attempt at home gardening.
Stornoway’s returning trawler fleet gave us a cheerful farewell, tooting their sirens as Brendan sailed out and turned her bow northward. By the morning of June 17 we were well clear of the Butt of Lewis, the outer tip of the Hebrides.
Once again we were only four on board, as Rolf had to return home to Norway from Stornoway for urgent personal reasons. So I asked George to draw up a new watch-keeping rota because he, of all of us, put so much effort into his work that no one could begrudge his choice. Watch-keeping ruled our lives, and was the vital framework of our daily existence. Each man exercised strict self-discipline, and made sure he showed up for his watch at exactly the right time. To do less would have been unfair, and could have become precisely the sort of irritant that finally erupts into a blazing quarrel. Each of us knew that we were all living close together under very raw conditions. We were like men locked in a cell measuring thirty-six feet by eight feet—of which less than a quarter was actually sheltered and livable. Potential scope for argument and animosity was almost limitless, and minor irritations could be blown up into a cause for hatred. All of us knew the risks, and an outsider would have noted how, without prior discussion, we all adopted the traditional attitude of live-and-let-live aboard a small boat. By and large, we kept ourselves to ourselves and behaved accordingly. We might discuss modifications to the boat as a group, or make individual suggestions on technical matters. But personal topics were left strictly alone unless offered by the person concerned; and the final decisions in all matters affecting the voyage were left to the Skipper. It was a form of self-discipline which, at worst, might have left hidden grievances to marinate in secret bile; but as it turned out, we were all experienced enough as small-boat sailors to hold our tongues and keep our tempers, and there was no doubt that when we sailed out into the Atlantic, Brendan was an efficient and well-integrated boat.
Our daily lives were surprisingly easy. Under most conditions the helmsman’s main job was to keep a lookout for changes in the weather, especially for a shift of the wind, and to check that Brendan stayed on her set course. But no great accuracy was required at the helm. As the navigator I simply worked out the general direction in which we should sail, and the helmsman lashed the cross bar of the tiller with a leather thong so that Brendan stayed within twenty degrees of the right direction. She held her course well, and with so much leeway and the rapid wind shifts it was a wasted effort to be any more accurate. An easy-going attitude also meant that the stand-by watchman, whose task was to readjust the set of the sails as necessary, did not have to go clambering around in the waist of the vessel needlessly, picking his way past the clutter of stores and endlessly fiddling with the ropes or struggling to get the leeboard into a new position. Far better, I had decided, to let Brendan sail herself, and to adopt a medieval frame of mind, patient, and unharried. In medieval terms, a week or two added or subtracted to our passage was of no significance, and the benefits of our leisurely outlook were noticeable.
So we lived a relaxed existence. Edan and I divided up the cooking; Arthur and George usually did the dishes in a bucket of sea water. No one bothered to wash himself or to shave, because there was no need, and it would have been a waste of fresh water. Brendan’s leather and our sheepskins smelled far worse than we ever would, and it was too cold to relish the prospect of stripping off for a sea-water wash. Sanitary facilities varied according to the weather. One could either hang outboard at the stern, risking a cold slap from a wave, or in rougher seas use a bucket wedged securely amidships. But it was noticeable how reluctant everyone was to use these facilities when the wind blew strongly and the spray was flying, threatening the hapless victim with a cold shower.
Each person had his own area of responsibility. George made regular inspections of all the sailing gear, especially the ropes and halliards, which were subject to considerable wear. We were always digging out our sewing kits to mend tears or to whip the ends of frayed ropes. Every piece of the cordage needed constant adjustment, as the flax ropes stretched slack when dry and shrank into iron rods when wet. We found the best technique was to set them up as taut as possible when dry, and then keep them doused with water. Arthur was our rope specialist. His job was to keep the coils of rope neatly stowed and ready for action, and with so much rope on board it kept him busy. In between times he spent hours meticulously cleaning and maintaining the cameras which were recording Brendan’s life. Arthur had taken over the photography when Peter retired sick, and our youngest crew member was developing into a first-class cameraman. The delicate cameras seemed desperately fragile in his huge fists, but he had a gentle touch and a born mechanic’s skill in keeping them working despite the salt which constantly threatened to clog their shutters.
Navigation, ciné-photography, and radio communications fell within my province. Once every twenty-four hours I switched on the little radio set, scarcely bigger than a brief case, and tried to establish contact with a shore station. On most days we succeeded and, faint but audible, reported our position, which was relayed in turn to the Intelligence Unit of Lloyds of London, who were kindly keeping our families informed. Occasionally, however, we failed to establish any contact, which was hardly surprising as our transmitter operated with scarcely more power than a light bulb and our signals were radiating from a whip antenna tied by leather thongs to the steering frame. Even in a mild seaway, the swell over-topped the antenna. The sole source of power for the radio were two small car batteries, fed by a pair of Lucas solar panels lashed to the roof of the living shelter. These panels were only designed to give a slight charge of electricity, and so our radio time was strictly limited. If I failed to make contact in less than four minutes, I simply switched off the radio and tried again next day. Much of the credit for our successful communications went to the stout-hearted performance of our little radio, and to the skill and patience of the radio operators of the shore stations who kept a special schedule, listening out for Brendan at a time when the airwaves were uncluttered by other traffic.
Navigation was simplicity itself. After leaving Stornoway I relied on sun-sights taken with a sextant and cross-checked on radio bearings. But once again there was no real need for great accuracy. We were interested only in keeping a general track of our progress, and allowing the currents and winds to do the rest. Brendan was too awkward to allow us to set a fine course or select a precise target. I was content merely if we raised landfalls, roughly where we expected them, along the Stepping Stone Route.
Edan, true to character, provided the light entertainment on board. We all knew when he woke up in the morning by the cries of “Food! Breakfast! How about breakfast!” which came echoing down the boat from his cubby-hole near the foremast. A few minutes later Gannet himself would come clambering into view, eagerly poking his nose into the food locker. His clothes were never the same two days running. One day he had his beret on his head; another a knitted cap; once a knotted handkerchief. His oilskin jacket might be replaced by an old sweater, or a furry diver’s undersuit, which made him look like an enormous baby in a pram suit. Once he showed up in a tweed sports jacket and tartan trousers, and was greeted with shouts of delight; another time he arrived in Oriental garb, a flimsy Indian cotton shirt, embroidered, and with its shirt tail flapping in the breeze like a Calcutta clerk. He must have been freezing cold, for—as usual—his feet were bare. Quite where Edan concealed this extraordinary wardrobe in the tiny space of his sleeping berth, no one could fathom. Yet he still managed to dig out packet after packet of cigars which he had laid in, duty free, at Stornoway. Now he offered them to his shipmates, who looked slightly green at the prospect, but Edan smoked them with jaunty aplomb.
And of course Edan always had his schemes. Each one was more unlikely than the last, but advertised with the same boundless enthusiasm. Daily there was some new dish he promised to cook us—only at the last minute he found he lacked the vital ingredient, or, more likely, there was none left after he had finished “tasting” it in the pan. Twice a day he devised an ingenious new sort of bait for his fishing line which trailed forlornly over Brendan’s stern, but the only fish he ever caught was a single limp mackerel, half-drowned by the time he pulled it in, rather to his own surprise. Once he very nearly made his own curtain call, cigar in mouth, when he managed to refill the water jug with cooker kerosene instead of fresh water, and on another occasion he blithely hung up his homemade sleeping bag liner—the product of another scheme—to dry in the riggings only he forgot about it, and saw the liner twitch itself free and go dancing off across the waves like a runaway parachute while the rest of us chortled. Edan, in fact, was our tonic. His bubbling spirits enlivened even the dreariest intervals.
Arthur and Gannet were both avid bird-watchers, and Brendan gave them ample opportunity to indulge their hobby. The farther north we sailed, the more varied became the bird-life. Scarcely a day passed without sighting some uncommon species, and the reference book of birds was in constant demand. Halfway to Faroes we had recorded fifteen different species and we spent hours watching the behavior of the gulls and terns which constantly tended us, shrieking and twittering, or staring at us as they wafted past Brendan ploughing quietly on her way. Our most elegant companions were the fulmars, the premier aero-bats of these waters, who glided in endless loops and circles around us for hour after hour, riding close to the waves on stiff wings, their fat fluffy bodies like huge moths. For some reason we always seemed to attract a pair of Arctic terns which took up their station over us, fluttering nervously and cheeping anxiously to one another as the other seabirds came near them. Occasionally they would break formation to search for fish in our wake, and once we witnessed a terrific air battle when our two small terns drove away a hulking skua which came marauding in our direction. Gallantly the two smaller birds hurled themselves into the attack and drove off the intruder with much shrieking, before they returned to their mast-top station, and we could distinctly hear their chirrups of pride. But their victory was brief. Scarcely ten minutes later, a pair of skuas arrived and this time there was no contest. The two terns fled for their lives, jinking and turning at wave-crest level as the powerful skuas struck at them.
For two days Brendan made steady progress northward. The radio continued to give gale warnings, but the wind held fair and my calculations put us halfway to the Faroes. Daily George or I inspected the condition of the leather skin, poking our fingers through the wooden frame to see whether there was any deterioration. By now the leather was completely saturated with sea water, which seeped gently across the membrane and trickled down to join the inch or two of water constantly swirling along the bilge. But the leather itself seemed to be holding up well, except for two patches which worried us near the H-frame. These two patches were in identical places, one each side of the boat, and by sighting along the gunwale I could detect that Brendan’s curved stern had begun to droop, flattening the profile and wrinkling the skin. This was a pity, for it made the vessel less seaworthy in a storm, and the oxhides in this area were no longer stretched tight over the frame but bagged and corrugated like an elephant’s posterior. Prodding a finger against the skin, one could easily pump it in and out like a soft balloon, but this did not seem to affect the material. Our medieval leather was holding up remarkably well, and I suspected that the increasing cold was a help. Brendan was now in chilly waters, and the lower temperature would be slowing down the rate of any decomposition in the leather, stiffening the oxhides, and hardening the layer of wool grease into a protective coat. Here again, I suspected, we were learning another reason why the Irish could have chosen to sail to their Promised Land by a northern route: the sea conditions might have been cold and stormy, but they suited their skin boats and made them last longer on sea-voyages. In the warmer waters of a southern voyage, the protective grease might have washed away, and the leather begun to rot.
Our daily inspections also revealed that the sea had been taking its toll on the wooden framework. The steering paddle was held in position by a cross rope which fastened to the opposite gunwale. The strain on this rope was so great that the gunwale of seasoned oak, an inch and a half thick, was literally being torn apart. A jagged pattern of splintering cracks had begun to appear. George lost no time in shifting the rope to another strong point, and he doubled the lashings which held the steering frame together. Later, I crawled forward to inspect the mainmast and found that the main thwart had been bent upward in a curve, probably by the same forces which were causing the stern to droop. It was inadvisable to poke and pry too closely with one’s fingers near the mast for the gaps between the thwart and the mast were opening and closing like giant pincers with the motion of the boat, and threatened to crush one’s fingers.
Thoughtfully I crawled back and considered our position. Brendan was changing her shape. I did not believe it was yet dangerous, but it was very evident that we were dependent on the quality of our basic materials: the timber had to be strong enough to withstand the constant whiplash effect of the flexing hull, and the leather thongs which tied the framework together had to continue to hold. Above all, the leather skin needed to be tough enough to survive the increased sagging and wrinkles, and the miles of flax thread were now under greater strain than ever before, and must not snap. In a strange way I was reassured. It occurred to me that what a medieval boat-builder might have lacked in his knowledge of naval architecture, he gained in the quality of the materials he used, materials which he had selected critically and then prepared with the utmost care. Aboard Brendan we were learning this lesson for ourselves in a host of small ways. Item by item, our modern equipment was collapsing under the conditions. Our shiny, new, modern metal tools, for example, had virtually rusted away, despite their protecting layer of oil. After a month aboard Brendan, a tempered saw blade simply snapped like a rotten carrot; a miner’s lamp, which I had hoped to use as a night light, was useless. Tough enough for a lifetime’s use in the mines, its metal gauze had corroded into a solid mass, and its iron rivets dropped streaks of rust. Of our modern materials, only the best stainless steel, the solid plastic, and the synthetic ropes were standing up to the conditions. It was instructive that whenever a modern item broke, we tended to replace it with a homemade substitute devised from the ancient materials of wood, leather, and flax. These we could work and fashion, sew and shape to suit the occasion. The product usually looked cumbersome and rough, but it survived and we could repair it ourselves. Whereas when metal snapped, or plastic ripped, the only choice without a workshop on board was to jettison the broken item.
It all added up to the realization that the sailors of Saint Brendan’s day were in fact better equipped materially—as well as mentally—than is usually acknowledged. The early medieval sailors had access to superb materials which lasted well, and, if they failed, could be repaired with simple tools. Even their clothing was admirably suited to the conditions, as all of us on Brendan were finding. As the weather turned colder, we had replaced our clothes of artificial fiber in favor of old-fashioned woollen clothes, reeking of natural wool oil. We may have looked and smelled unlovely, but our oiled wool sweaters, thigh-length wool sea-boot socks, and cowl-like woollen helmets were not materially different from the garments available in Saint Brendan’s day.
A calm day, June 19, provided a good demonstration of the shortcomings of some of our modern equipment. After breakfast George went forward to dig out the day’s food pack.
“Ugh! Look at this!” he called out, holding up the plastic sack with an expression of disgust. It looked like a putrid goldfish bowl, half full of slimy brown water which dripped from one corner. Blobs of food floated by in a soupy mass inside. “How revolting,” muttered Gannet, and then more hopefully, “Let’s open it and see if there’s anything still edible.” George ripped open the bag. Despite its double sealing, a leak had somehow developed in the plastic, and the bag had absorbed a couple of gallons of sea water and rain. Disgustedly, George poured overboard a foul-smelling mess of tea-colored water, which splattered out wet lumps of sugar, sodden tea bags, soggy shortbread biscuits and gluey lumps of porridge, all totally ruined. Gannet hopefully seized on a packet that looked less damaged than most.
“Oatmeal biscuits,” he exulted. Then he took a bite. “Foch!” He spat out the mouthful. “They’re saturated in salt,” he complained.
“Well, if you can’t eat them, nobody can,” remarked Arthur.
“Well, Skip,” said Edan as he suddenly realized what might happen. “We will open another bag, won’t we? I mean there’s nothing at all in that last one.”
I laughed. “Okay, Gannet. We’re not on short rations yet.”
It was another lesson learned. If all our supplies were similarly damaged, we might later run short of food. Indeed we discovered several other bags had also leaked and most of their contents had disintegrated. By far the worst were the dehydrated items which promptly soaked up water, swelled and burst, leaving a putrid mess. Only the tinned items survived, and because we had not had time to varnish them over, labels had been washed off, so we had a guessing game for a hunter’s casserole.
“Well, I’m not worried,” George summed up, as he inspected a macedoine of instant vegetables swimming in half a gallon of the Atlantic. “These dehydrated vegetables are all right once or twice a week, but day after day is too much. My whole throat tastes of preservative.”
The nineteenth and twentieth of June brought us only a moderate advance. The wind headed us for a time, and Brendan actually lost ground, ending up thirty miles farther away from the Faroes. There was nothing to be done, and we accepted the situation with our newly minted medieval philosophy. Eventually the wind died away completely, and we simply waited to see what Providence would bring. George played Edan at backgammon, and was 15p up in the stakes. Arthur had crawled into the shelter and was dozing. I leaned comfortably against the motionless steering oar, and listened contentedly to the sound of the waves rolling under the hull, the occasional creak from the mast against the thwart, or the H-frame shifting in its socket. Every now and then the log line gave a half-hearted twist as we edged forward over the sea.
“Trawler in sight! Coming down from the north.” Anything to break the monotony. The others climbed up to have a look.
“I bet they’ll trade for whiskey.” Edan was scheming already.
“I doubt it,” said Arthur. “They’re probably on automatic compass, going home after a fishing trip off Iceland. They won’t even have seen us. After all, they’re not expecting to meet anything out here.”
The trawler kept ploughing steadily toward us. It would pass about half a mile ahead, and there was no sign of life aboard. It was close enough to read the name: Lord Jellicoe.
“Here, George. You take the helm. I’ll see if I can raise them on the radio.”
I switched on our portable VHF set.
“Lord Jellicoe. Lord Jellicoe. Curragh Brendan calling. Come in please.”
Silence. Only the hiss of the loudspeaker. I tried repeating the call. Again silence. Then suddenly a startled voice crackled back:
“Lord Jellicoe. Who’s that?”
“Curragh Brendan. We’re off your starboard side, about half a mile away. Can you give me a position check, please?”
“Wait a minute.” Lord Jellicoe ploughed on, while presumably her navigator was roused to work out the unexpected request. Just as she was disappearing over the horizon, she signaled the information I wanted, and later that same evening as we listened to the BBC news bulletin, Lord Jellicoe’s radio broke in. She was calling up a coast station, and we could hear the flat Yorkshire accents of her skipper.
“Humber Radio, maybe you can tell us something. We passed a strange vessel some time back this afternoon, and I’m told that it’s carrying a crew of mad Irish monks, is that right?”
We never heard Humber Radio’s reply, because Brendan’s crew were doubled up with laughter.
June 21, the longest day of the year, made us realize that we were now in high latitudes. We were enjoying almost twenty-four hours of daylight, and even at one o’clock in the morning I could still read the log book by reflected light in the sky. From that day on, for the rest of the sailing season, we had no need for navigation lights, which was just as well, for I was a miser with our precious battery power. That evening we made the final contact with our friendly coast operator at Malin-head radio station who wished us luck for Faroes in his Irish brogue. As if in response, the winds changed to the south, and Brendan began to advance again in the right direction.
At six in the morning, a whale-catcher boat, about fifty feet long, came roaring up, its harpoon looming sinister on the forepeak.
“Hope she doesn’t think we’re a leather whale, and take a shot at us,” Arthur muttered as the whale-catcher circled us, its crew waving and cheering, and shouting if they could give us any help. We waved back our thanks, and they went tearing off, quartering the sea in search of their prey. Their lookout would not have welcomed the sea fret which quietly closed around us a couple of hours later, and locked us in a white cloud. Brendan ghosted along, the mist clinging in thousands of glistening droplets to the fibers of our woollen hats and to our beards like dew on blades of grass in a dawn meadow.
All that day the wind continued light, with just one heavy shower of rain, from which we managed to collect several inches of fresh water as an experiment. Catching the water in a tarpaulin, we drained it into our cooking pots. In an emergency, I calculated, we could just about survive on rainwater in that damp climate.
June 23 answered the question of how the early Irish monks would have located the Faroes in the vastness of the Atlantic. It was an ordinary summer’s day for those regions, occasional sunshine and a great deal of cloud. Brendan was still more than fifty miles from the Faroes, yet we picked out the islands with ease from the tall columns of cloud building up over them, thousands of feet into the air. The moist southwest wind sweeping across the ocean was deflected upward by the islands, condensed, and built up cloud banks as distinctive as marker flags on a hidden golf green. Picking up the binoculars, I looked more closely at the clouds and saw something which alerted me: the clouds were rolling and changing shape every few minutes in powerful up-draughts, and some of the clouds seemed to be pouring over the hill crests toward Brendan. They were the signs of an abrupt change of the weather, and I didn’t like the look of the turbulence.
That evening my concern deepened. We had a lowering sunset—a red sky with the purple shadows of the islands in the distance, beautiful but ominous. We were now close enough to be able to identify the individual islands in the group, and I carefully consulted the charts and the pilot book. Our best course was to aim straight for the center of the Faroes, run through one of the narrow channels between them, and then try to duck into shelter on the lee side. But there was one snag—the tidal stream around the Faroes. On every tide the Atlantic sluices through the Faroes in an immense rush of water. The tide gushes through the narrow sounds between the islands with a myriad currents and countercurrents, sometimes so strong that even large ships must take care. The pilot book was a doleful mixture of caution and ignorance. “Little information is available regarding the rate of the tidal streams,” it said; “… in the channels between the islands, the stream may be very rapid and from eight to nine knots is not exceptional.” It also warned the mariner not to sail too close to land for fear of the off-lying rocks called Drangar which lie close off the cliffs on the north and western sides of the group. A medieval sailing boat, I thought to myself, caught in these tide rips would be helpless.
I checked the compass bearings and marked Brendan’s position on the chart, just before the storm line hit us. It swept down on Brendan from the south, a bank of rain which cut visibility abruptly from twenty miles to three miles in a matter of minutes. The wind force jumped upward. The rain hissed and rattled down, and we pulled on full foul-weather gear.
“Everybody in safety harnesses, please,” I ordered, and we buckled on the belts and clipped lifelines to the boat. “Gannet, you handle the headsail sheets; Boots, take the mainsail, and look after the leeboards. George, you’re the best helmsman on board, you take over the steering. I’ll handle the pilotage. This is likely to be tricky.”
Brendan groped her way in the general direction of the Faroes, heading on the last compass bearing I had been able to take before the rain blotted out the horizon. After an hour, we had a brief glimpse of the islands as the sea-level cloud lifted. At once I saw that I would have to abandon my original plan. The main tide was running in a circular motion around the islands, and had picked up Brendan and was carrying her clockwise around the group. There was no hope of getting to the center of the group. We would be lucky to get into land at all, without being gale-swept past the west of the Faroes. Mykines, the most westerly island and closest to us, was out of the question as a landfall. Its only regular inhabitants were the lighthouse-keepers and a handful of crofters, and its landing place could only be approached in calm weather. But Vagar Island, just inside Mykines and separated by the narrow channel of Mykines Sound, had a fjord that offered good shelter and it was worth a try.
By now the wind had risen to a half a gale, and Brendan was driving blindly through the rain, closing the gap at a terrific pace with the tide under her.
“Keep as close to the wind as you can,” I asked George. All of us were squinting through the downpour for a sight of land. The sea had now turned a nasty grey and was broken into a confusing cross-pattern of pyramids and crenellations. I guessed we must have entered the area of eddies and tidal backcurrents. Brendan was going at full stretch. We needed every inch of headway if we were to get up into Vagar, and not be slammed sideways into the sheer cliffs of Mykines. The wind was blowing so hard that although Brendan was pointing east she was going almost north, sliding sideways across the top of the water.
“Cliffs!” bellowed Edan. There, half a mile away, was a leaping band of white water where waves were breaking against a sheer wall of rock. It had to be Mykines.
“My God! Look at that lot,” Arthur breathed. It was indeed a remarkable sight. The cloud was so low that we saw only down a narrow tunnel, about six feet high, between the cloud base and the grey ocean. Thus the height of the cliffs was reduced to a mere looming black shadow inside the cloud, and our view was confined to the tortured line of water bursting into spray against the rock. At that same moment, Brendan entered a back eddy, running against her, so that her forward movement suddenly slowed to a crawl. Yet the gale kept her sliding sideways, ever sideways toward the cliffs. It was like slipping down a tunnel in a nightmare. There was no escape. The cloud base pressed down on us, squeezing us as inevitably as the tide. All of us fell silent. We knew it was a race between our snail’space advance and a sideways lurch toward the cliffs. Hardly breathing, we watched the grey cliffs inch past, yet coming closer and closer.
“I think we’ll do it,” I said hopefully to George. “I can see the end of the island. Another quarter of a mile and we’ll be clear, and Vagar is ahead.”
George had climbed up on to the gunwale for a better view and was coaxing Brendan forward yard by yard. Edan and Arthur sat calmly in the waist of the boat, huddled in their oilskins and trying to calculate our progress.
“Christ! I hope the mast doesn’t go,” George muttered. “That really would be curtains.”
I glanced up. The mainmast was curved more than we had ever seen it, drawn down by the intense pressure of the gale on the mainsail, which still carried its bottom bonnet and one side bonnet.
“We’ll have to leave the bonnets up,” George said. “We need all the driving power we can get to pull free of the tide.”
“Keep an eye on the mainmast where it passes the thwart,” I shouted forward to Boots. “If it begins to splinter, cut the bonnets free with your knife.”
A few moments later, it happened: our world suddenly seemed to stand still. The normal motion of the boat and the waves stopped. It was as though we had gone into suspension. Through some quirk of the tide race in the gale the waves, instead of moving horizontally, simply rose up and down as if marking time. One such wave rose up beside Brendan, seemed to jump sideways, and dropped apparently vertically into the bilge. The wave was harmlessly small, but Brendan appeared to be hanging motionless to receive it. The boat herself no longer pitched nor rolled, in her normal style. At the same moment, the cloud base rose another thirty or forty feet, and we saw them: thousands upon thousands of seabirds, pouring out from the cliffs of Mykines: gulls, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, gannets, puffins, skuas, and terns. They came in droves, in squadron after squadron, wheeling and turning, and swooping and dipping down toward the queer, lumpy, contorted sea. Driven by primeval experience, they had emerged to fish in the waters at a time when they knew the combination of wind and tide would bring the shoals of fish close to the surface.
I was awed. If there was any place which fitted the idea of a Paradise of Birds, this was it. “It’s fantastic!” I shouted to George above the roar of the wind.
He gave a shout and pointed. “Look! Over there. On the starboard bow. Something big, jumping in the water.” I followed the line of his arm. About a hundred yards ahead was a large swirl of water where something had just disappeared. A vast shape heaved beneath the surface. Then it came up again, and this time it was visible, throwing itself clear of the waves—the lurching massive shape of a whale, hurtling out of the depths and leaping into the air again and again as if it were a salmon, only its grey body flopped loosely as it fell back with a burst of white water.
Brendan was at last clawing past the trap where Mykines reached out its heel of cliff toward us. In the space of ten yards we suddenly broke free from the counter eddy, and plunged into the main tidal stream running into Mykines Sound, two miles wide separating Mykines from Vagar Island. Brendan shot forward into the gap like a log into the mill race. On each side of us the fjordlike cliffs of the Sound rose up seven or eight hundred feet, funneling the wind into a full gale. Luckily the wind and tide were together, or Brendan would have been swamped in the tide rip.
I wrenched out the Admiralty Pilot and glanced at the lines I had underlined while considering Brendan’s approach—“The depths in Mykines Fjord are small compared with those northward and south of it,” gloomily announced the Pilot, “causing tremendous tide races, especially during gales, in which the waves rise to a great height…. There are sudden changes in depth in the fairway; the streams are consequently very strong, and there is violent turbulence, especially during gales, in which undecked vessels will probably founder.” There we were in the midst of it, but Brendan merely fled into the Sound with scarcely a drop of spray coming aboard. The needle of the log swung smoothly up to six knots, to eight, to ten, to the end stop at twelve knots, and stayed there. The mass of water sluicing through the narrow channel was being accelerated by the gale to six or seven knots, so that Brendan was covering the ground at close to twenty knots. I could scarcely believe it. Brendan was breaking all speed records for skin boats!
With every gust she leaned over, gunwale almost in the water. The sea swirled by. Heaving on the tiller, George struggled to keep her running straight. If Brendan broached, we would be rolled over.
“Ease the sheets. Spill wind,” he called to Arthur and Edan. “We have to slow her down.” But the moment we slackened the ropes, they began to snap and crack like bullwhips, and I was afraid that someone would crush a hand or finger if they were caught. Abruptly there came a loud report like a rifle shot, quite distinct above the shriek of the wind.
“What was that?” I yelled at George.
“Masthead stay. It’s snapped,” he yelled back.
“There’s no time to fix it,” I replied. “Just keep going. We’ll have to risk the mast and keep running on. We daren’t lose speed in this Sound.”
The mainmast gave a groan and dipped forward as its foot slipped on the keel plate. Nervously Edan and Boots glanced up and wisely moved over to the gunwales in case the mast came crashing down.
Brendan careered forward. There was no way we could enter harbor on Vagar. We were right in the grip of the tide race now and fairly flying through the gap. George weaved her slightly from side to side, trying to spill the wind from the bulging sails. But it was not enough. A fierce gust struck, and there was an abrupt ripping noise as the lower bonnet tore free, breaking away from the mainsail. It ripped in an instant, with one continuous crackle of its breaking lashings, a dozen lengths of a hundred-pound codline bursting one after another as if they were threads of cotton. Edan dived for the flailing piece of canvas before it flew overboard.
“Drop the mainsail,” I yelled and scrabbled at the halliard. The main yard came sliding down. Arthur pounced on it and wrestled the flapping canvas, spreadeagled across it.
The sail had done its work. Before bursting, it had driven us almost the length of the Sound, and we could see the open sea once again at the far end, the full Atlantic once more.
“I’m glad the sail went then,” I commented to George. “It was nicely timed. A little earlier and we would have been in real trouble.”
Scarcely had the words left my mouth when a williwaw, a mountain gust, came shrieking across the water. It literally flattened the waves, tearing the surface off the sea into a blinding white sheet. Brendan shuddered as if a giant fist had punched her. Under the tiny remaining scrap of our headsail, she plunged away downwind like a frightened colt, while her crew grabbed for handholds.
“If we hadn’t got the mainsail down already,” I shouted to George, “that gust would have ripped the mast clean out of her.”
Even when the tide spat us out of the Sound, Brendan was still at the mercy of a full southerly gale, and so I decided to try to lie in the lee of the Faroes, riding to a sea anchor. As soon as we were clear of the tide race, George jury-rigged an oar as a mizzen-mast; Edan lashed on the headsail bonnet as a scrap of riding sail; and Arthur heaved over the drogue. There, in comparative peace, we hung for an hour, brewed up a cup of tea, and relaxed from the excitement.
“Sorry about that, lads,” I said. “It looks as though we’ve lost our chance to land in Faroes. If this gale keeps up, we’ll finish up in Norway or Iceland.” My companions didn’t even flicker an eyelid.
“Great!” said Edan. “We’ll just get even further ahead of schedule, and that will give us more time to go to a few parties in Reykjavik.”
George put down his tea mug and peered toward the horizon.
“The rain’s lifting. And the wind seems to have come round a bit. I think if we go now, we might just have a chance of getting into one of the other islands. But we’ll have to act quickly.”
We lost no time. Hand over hand, Arthur and Edan pulled in the drogue; up went the sail; and Brendan slanted off toward the high cliffs of the main island Streymoy. These cliffs were an awe-inspiring sight, a series of magnificent vertical rock faces with elevations of 1,300 feet and more, half-hidden in scudding clouds. As we closed them, we found once again the myriads of seabirds, swooping and soaring in the air currents. Mile upon mile of the cliff face was streaked white with their droppings, and the birds came, unafraid, hovering around Brendan.
We failed by half a mile to gain the entrance to Sakshovn, the only shelter facing us on Streymoy, and Brendan was swept inexorably round the north tip of Streymoy, its huge wedge of cliffs towering above our heads, riddled with sea caves against whose gaping mouths the tiny white shapes of the gulls tossed like flecks of spume. We ourselves tried to imitate the seabirds, taking advantage of the broken air currents around the foot of the cliffs. George steered Brendan until she was no more than fifty feet from the cliff wall, sliding past in hair-raising style, but out of the main blast of the wind. Then we came to the tip of the island, and put the helm hard over to make a ninety-degree turn to starboard, and astonishingly plunged into the grip of another tide eddy running directly against us. Once more, it was an uncanny sensation. Brendan was carrying full sail, main and headsail, and they were billowing out, straining on the masts. The rigging was taut with effort; a bow wave curled back impressively; the log gave us a speed through the water of six knots. Yet we were not moving an inch! Fifty feet away, the cliff face was absolutely motionless. The tide race was running against us at exactly the same speed, canceling out our progress. There was nothing we could do. For fully an hour, Brendan poised there, as if suspended in the air by a magician. Then the tide changed. The rip slackened, and Brendan sailed serenely forward as if released from a spell.
“I don’t know how you feel,” I said to the others, “but I don’t think I expected ever to experience such things in my life—storm and seabirds, leaping whales and such a tide race—and all in the space of twelve hours.”
Soon afterwards we spotted a small trawler putting out from one of the channels between the islands. “This should fetch them,” cried Edan, and he leapt up on the shelter roof, waving a tow rope in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. The Faroese fishermen altered course, and towed Brendan into the nearby bay of Tjornuvik, where a cluster of gaily painted houses set into the back of an embayment in the cliffs looked like a child’s set of building toys. Arthur and Edan paddled ashore in the rubber dinghy to stretch their legs on land, and to the astonishment of the villagers raced one another, cheering up the steep hillside. Meanwhile a Faroese asked me about our landfall.
“We came through Mykines Sound,” I told him, and he looked startled.
“In this gale?” he asked.
“Yes, the wind was behind us, and it was a thrilling ride.” He was astounded.
“It’s some of the most dangerous waters of our islands,” he said. “You were lucky. If the wind had turned against you on the tide, then I think your boat would have been destroyed.”
The Faroese were fascinated by Brendan. At Tjornuvik the village children put out in their little boats to row around Brendan and gaze at her; and when the next day Brendan was towed up the narrow Sundini Channel to the capital at Torshavn, entire families came out of their houses to watch her progress. On the green slope, high above the side of the Sound, a line of cars snaked along keeping pace with us, following the road that was etched into the hill, where stream after stream came gushing down from this breathtakingly beautiful land. Each turnof the channel brought more and more hills into view, one rising behind the other, and every slope clothed only in moorland and rock, for native trees do not grow in the windswept islands, and the Faroese hills stand bold and stark to view.
Torshavn’s quayside was thronged with onlookers, and when Brendan came sailing up toward the pier, out from the harbor dashed the elegant, slim shape of a large rowing boat, manned by a crew of eight oarsmen, all of them rowing in perfect rhythm to a short, quick sea stroke. This superb craft fairly flew across the water, approached us, turned, and then escorted Brendan toward harbor. Every line of the classic hull shape indicated her ancestry: she was the traditional sea boat of the Faroese, the direct descendant of the boats which the Vikings had sailed to the Faroes and replaced the Irish occupation. Now lovingly restored and manned by a crew from one of Torshavn’s rowing clubs, she led Brendan, her predecessor, into port.
Immediately we were deluged with questions, not about the Voyage itself, but about Brendan. Every question revealed how strong was the seafaring tradition of the islanders. How was the hull fastened together? What were the dimensions of the frame? What was Brendan’s draught and her displacement? Did the side rudder work well in a following sea? It was more like being cross-examined by a board of shipwrights than by ordinary townsfolk. Old men wearing traditional red stocking hats with the top turned smartly over one ear hopped nimbly aboard and prodded the leather, clucking with appreciation. Someone thrust a tidal chart of the Faroes into my hand and pointed out the best channels to follow if we were sailing around the islands. Even the local radio station asked me to give an item-by-item account of how Brendan was constructed and how she behaved at sea. More than any other people I had ever met, the Faroese understood the sea and showed their appreciation of the endeavor, and once again it was easy to detect the common bond which linked all seafarers in those hostile, northern waters.
And, of course, the Faroese were marvelously hospitable. Brendan’s matelots-ashore, Boots and Gannet, were swept into an embrace of comfortable hospitality. When they began to show a strange enthusiasm for doing the breakfast dishes, George and I were suspicious. So we followed our two heroes one morning when they went ashore with the bucket of dirty pannikins, and tracked them down to the seamen’s hotel. Sure enough, we found the pair of them sitting at the kitchen table to consume a second—and free—breakfast while an admiring squad of Faroese girls was doing all the work for them.
Saint Brendan’s name is familiar to every Faroese who learns in school that the Irish priests were the first people to settle in their remote islands. But no tangible remains of the Irish occupation have yet been found, presumably because the Papars, as the Irish priests were called, left too faint a mark on the islands before the Norsemen overprinted their massive stamp. Recently, however, Faroese archaeologists working at Tjornuvik have dug up cereal grains which indicate that there was agriculture in the Faroes before any record of Viking settlement. And of course there is the enduring literary and traditional evidence of the Papars in the islands. Nowhere is this tradition stronger than on the main island of Streymoy where, it is asserted, the Irish priests established themselves on a small, well-favored creek on the southwestern corner of the island. To this day the creek still bears a significant name; it is called Brandarsvik—Brendan’s Creek.
I had made up my mind to visit Brendan’s Creek as soon as possible, when I came back from a shopping trip one morning to find a striking couple on board Brendan waiting for me. The girl was most attractive. She had beautiful features, large brown eyes, and—for the Faroese, who are very blond—a sallow skin that gave her a gipsy look which was enhanced by her long black hair and a voluminous skirt. But it was her companion who really held my attention. He could have stepped straight from an illustration in Grimm’s fairy tales. He was a powerful, thickset figure, sitting motionless on the gunwale. He was wearing very strong boots, rough corduroy trousers, a homemade brown sweater, and had the large, powerful hands of an artisan. But what was really impressive was his head—it was encased in the most splendid growth of hair, so luxuriant that it formed a solid mass extending from his chest to an arc a good three inches out from his scalp. It was a hairstyle worthy of Neptune himself, and from the serious face framed in the midst of this wild tangle, a pair of calm brown eyes gazed steadily at me.
“Hello,” I said, as I climbed aboard. “Can I help you?”
The Neptune said nothing, but gazed at me for a full five seconds before calmly looking away at the girl. She spoke for him: “On the radio interview yesterday you said that you had room for one more person on your crew, and you would like someone from the Faroe Islands. This man would like to join you.”
Good Lord, I thought to myself, even a Viking raiding party would have thought twice before taking on this fellow.
“Yes, that’s right, but I’m looking for someone who’s very experienced in a boat, if possible a person who can help take photographs.”
“This man is better than that,” she said proudly. “He’s an artist and a very good one. Also he has sailed his own boat to the Mediterranean, and has been a fisherman on Faroe boats off Greenland. He is a serious man.”
I can see that, I thought to myself, as I stole a surreptitious glance at the heavily bearded figure who had still not moved a muscle.
“Perhaps he could show me some of his work?” I inquired tactfully.
Neptune muttered something to his girlfriend.
“His name is Trondur, and he is shy to speak English,” she said. “But he invites you to his home tomorrow.”
“We’ll be delighted to come.”
“Good. We will come to collect you in the morning.”
Next day they reappeared in a small, battered car. Brendan’s crew squeezed in, and we rattled off across the spine of Streymoy. Neptune still had not said a word, but scowled solemnly through the windshield, occasionally hauling massively on the handbrake as the decrepit vehicle dived down the hairpins.
“The brakes are no good. This car is too old,” said his girlfriend needlessly. Eventually we came to a narrow road which snaked down to sea level. It brought us out into a tiny hamlet on the water’s edge. The place was dominated, of all things, by a Viking house. It sat there massively, an overgrown log cabin built of huge and ancient timbers, stained dark brown. Its windows and wooden doors were picked out in red, and on the roof was a carpet of turf like a slab of mountain pasture. A modern wing had been grafted cleverly to one end, but from where we parked the car, the log house was unquestionably Norse and completely authentic.
“This is Trondur’s family home,” the girl said.
I looked at the house, then past it to a neatly whitewashed church on the edge of the little harbor. In a field to one side, the roofless carcass of an even grander church rose out of the meadow, and its architecture looked late medieval. A strange coincidence occurred to me.
“What is the name of the village?” I asked.
“Kirkjubo,” she replied.
“Does it have any other name?”
“Yes, sometimes this place is called Brandarsvik.”
So there we were—my silent volunteer was from Saint Brendan’s Creek, Faroes.
Bit by bit the details came out, partly obscured by Trondur’s natural shyness, partly because no one thought it strange that he should want to join Brendan’s crew. It turned out that his family, the Paturssons, were among the longest-established families in the Faroes. Their log house was almost a national monument by Faroese standards, as the oldest continually occupied house in the islands. The Paturssons had lived there, father to son, for eighteen generations; before that it had been owned by the bishop of the islands. No less than three churches stood around the holy site of Saint Brendan’s Creek: the roofless cathedral, the white church with its wooden steeple by the harbor, and the stump of an even older church eaten away by landslides into the sea until only its eastern wall remained.
The Paturssons themselves were as traditional and interesting as their own log house. Squads of Patursson children rushed in and out; Grandmother presided as an elegant and stately lady, deferring only to Potl, Trondur’s twin brother, and older by quarter of an hour, who was now the head of the family. It was Potl who greeted us cheerfully, dressed in his farming clothes, and half an hour later reappeared in full, traditional Faroese regalia of silver-buckled black pumps, dark blue knee socks with scarlet tabs, blue broadcloth knee breeches, and an embroidered waistcoat and short jacket embellished with a triple row of silver buttons. Totally unself-conscious in this splendid eighteenth-century attire, he stalked ahead of us to the little church, rang the bell to summon the congregation from the hamlet, and led the prayer responses to the austere, white-ruffed Lutheran pastor, while the ribbed wooden roof of the church creaked above us in the gale, like a ship working in a sea.
Afterward we took tea and coffee and cakes with the pastor in the main house, in a drawing room filled with furniture brought back from exotic lands by generations of seafaring Paturssons, and with some of Trondur’s pictures on the walls. Then, after a decent interval when the pastor had left, Brendan’s crew was entertained to a memorable meal in the old Faroese style. The Paturssons maintained the Faroese traditions, and they kept a table which would have done credit to every generation of Paturssons before them. The food put before us was the product of their own labors, from the milk and cream and the homemade rhubarb jam to the potatoes. But most of all they served us the traditional Faroese dishes. There was leg of mutton, killed and then dried slowly in the wind so that it had the consistency and color of Parma ham and a distinctly rank flavour. There were boiled fulmar’s eggs, which Trondur and Potl collected from the cliff faces in a perilous exercise which involved dangling from a rope’s end over a two-hundred-foot drop. There was even dried whale meat, and a rubbery slab of pure whale blubber with its black rind that reminded one exactly of high-grade tyre rubber. Everything was Patursson-prepared—even the whale, which the Paturssons had helped drive ashore and harpooned to death.
“My word, look at all that,” breathed Edan in awe as he looked at this enormous spread. The table itself was a huge lump of timber which had been washed ashore in Brandarsvik some generations earlier with a half-drowned sailor clinging to it. The Paturssons had rescued and revived the castaway, and kept the timber as their great table.
I saw Trondur’s eyes twinkle as he pulled out a ferocious knife, and without a word he carved a sliver off the slab of whale blubber. He offered it to Edan, who heedlessly took the blubber in one bite.
“Ugh!” his jaws abruptly froze, and his eyes widened in horror. “Ugh! It’s like rubber soaked in cold oil,” he blurted out, looking distressed.
“Go on, Gannet, it’s rude to spit it out,” said George. Edan screwed up his face, took a mighty swallow, and for the first time on the voyage declined a second helping.
After the meal we went up to the small converted farm building where Trondur lived, and saw some of his sketches. Borgne, his beautiful interpreter, was his fiancée and wholeheartedly in favor of the idea that Trondur should go with us. It would give him new material for his drawing and sculpture, she said. And like a true seaman, all Trondur had to do was pack his kit bag, and he would be ready.
Of course Trondur had to join the crew of Brendan, and it was one of the best decisions of the entire voyage. From the moment he came aboard, his command of English improved daily. He helped us to prepare Brendan for the next challenge—the long crossing to Iceland in the face of the westerly winds. There were several minor adjustments to be made: we smothered the flax ropes in whale fat to make them more supple and waterproof; Trondur and Edan improved the forward tent to make it more watertight; and, farther aft, George and Arthur replaced the ash legs of the steering frame. These had been bending and swaying so alarmingly on the run from Stornoway that I thought they might snap. So we replaced them with heavy baulks of oak, three inches thick, and lashed these new legs into position with leather thongs. Then Potl Patursson towed us round to Brandarsvik where, despite Edan’s protests, we loaded Trondur’s favorite sailing diet of dried fish, dried whale meat, and yet more chunks of whale blubber. Most of it hung from the rigging, and it gave off a truly medieval smell, strong enough to be noticed above all Brendan’s other odors. And so, draped with our new larder, we were ready for the next phase in our adventure.