Friar ‘knew about America 150 years before Columbus’

Sailors in Christopher Columbus’s home town knew about North America over a century before the explorer reached the continent, Italian researchers have claimed.

An account by Genoan sailors of a verdant land beyond Greenland ‘‘where giants live’’ has been found in a history of the world written in about 1340 by an Italian friar – 152 years before Columbus set foot in the Americas in 1492.

‘‘This astonishing find is the first known report to circulate in the Mediterranean of the American continent, and if Columbus was aware of what these sailors knew, it might have helped convince him to make his voyage,’’ said Paolo Chiesa, who led the research at the University of Milan and has published his findings in Terrae Incognitae, the journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries.

Columbus was beaten to North America by Vikings sailing from Greenland, who made it to Labrador and Newfoundland about 1000 and dubbed their discovery Markland, meaning Forestland.

In the 13th-century Icelandic saga of Erik the Red, which depicts a visit to North America, the hero lands in a heavily wooded country ‘‘abounding with animals’’ including bears, while natives captured reveal that the land is ruled by two kings.

‘‘Nordic legends describe the trips, but until now there has been no evidence that word of this land spread to the Mediterranean,’’ Chiesa said.

This changed when researchers got their first look at Cronica Universalis by 14thcentury Milanese friar Galvaneus Flamma, which is owned by an American collector and had never been studied before.

Quoting ‘‘sailors who frequent the seas of Denmark and Norway’’, the friar describes Greenland as a place where people ‘‘dwell in subterranean houses and do not venture to speak loudly or to make any noise, for fear

that wild animals hear and devour them’’.

He adds: ‘‘In this land, there is neither wheat nor wine nor fruit; people live on milk, meat and fish. There live huge white bears, which swim in the sea and bring shipwrecked sailors to the shore.’’

He then writes: ‘‘Further westwards there is another land, named Marckalada, where giants live; in this land, there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build with them, except huge giants. There are also green trees, animals and a great quantity of birds.’’

Chiesa said Galvaneus knew the port of Genoa well and was probably quoting local sailors who would have heard tales of North America on trips to northern Europe to buy falcons and animal skins that came from Iceland and Greenland.

‘‘The Marckalada they refer to must be the Vikings’ Markland, and the idea that giants live there comes from old Norse legends.’’

Thought to be a native of Genoa, Columbus had read up on earlier travellers, including Marco Polo. Chiesa said he might have heard the same stories about Markland that Galvaneus recorded in the previous century.