Welsh prince Madoc wasn't the only British royal to sail the Atlantic. Mythical King Arthur also sailed across it and conquered Iceland.
Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1095 – c.1155 AD) in his work History of the Kings of England (see chapter 10, page 158) states that English King Arthur sailed to Iceland. He wrote the following:
"The next summer he fitted out a fleet, and made an expedition into Ireland, which he was desirous to reduce. Upon landing there, he was met by King Guillamurius before mentioned, with a vast number of men, who came with a design to fight him; but at the very beginning of the battle, those naked and unarmed people were miserably routed, and fled to such places as lay open to them for shelter. Guillamurius also in a short time was taken prisoner, and forced to submit; as were also all the other princes of the country after the king's example, being under great consternation at what had happened. After an entire conquest of Ireland, he made a voyage with his fleet to Iceland, which he also subdued. and now a rumor spreading over the rest of the islands, that no country was able to whithstand him, Doldavius, King of Gothland, and Gunfasius, King of the Orkneys, came voluntariliy, and made their submission, on a promise of paying tribute. Then, as soon as Winter was over, he returned back to Britain, where having established the kingdom, he resided in it for twelve years together in peace."
See the same book and quote but translated slightly differently from Latin here.
King Arthur is a mythical figure, probably based on a minor British warlord who fought against the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the late fifth, early sixth centuries AD. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about Merlin, the legendary Excalibur sword, and his wife, Gwinevere. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he conquered Norway, Iceland, and some regions of France, and created a vast empire. He went to Insula Avalonis (Avalon) to heal a mortal wound, it was also the place where Excalibur was forged. Later additions included Camelot, Lancelot, and the round table.
Arthur is supposed to have lived around 450–550 AD.
If Arthur was a chieftain of the post-Roman Britons who had to defend their territory from the onsalught of Anglo-Saxons, and Jutes from the coasts of what is now Denmark and Northwestern Germany. These Britons were Latinized, Christian Celts who had to fend for themselves after Rome withdrew its last legions in AD 410. They were more civilized than the barbarians that attacked them, but they fared badly as the Germanic tribes settled in eastern England and pushed the locals westwards into Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and the western Lancashire.
pre-Viking Celts in Iceland c.500 AD?
It is interesting to point out that according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Iceland was inhabited at that time ~450-550 AD.
The official records state that a Viking named Naddodd discovered it by chance ~861 AD (300 to 400 years after the dates given by Geoffrey of Monmouth!) and it was not settled until 874 AD when Arnarson arrived from Norway and established himself in Reykjavik.
There is of course an ancient account about Thule (Iceland) by the Greek explorer and navibator Pytheas of Massalia (~350 BC) who recorded in a book (now lost), On the Ocean his voyages. Scraps of this work were quoted by later writers. So we know from Strabo, about "Thule (which Pytheas says is a six days' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea)" (source, also see footnote). He added that " Now Pytheas of Massilia tells us that Thule, the most northerly of the Britannic Islands, is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the arctic circle.163 But from the other writers I learn nothing on the subject — neither that there exists a certain island by the name of Thule, nor whether the northern regions are inhabitable" (Source).
But what has survived of Pytheas' account does not mention inhabitants in Thule.
Later, Roman scholar Tacitus wrote about General Agricola's conquest of the Orkney Islands, and that his fleet almost reached Thule: "Under Agricola a Roman fleet first navigated the shore of the furthest sea [84 AD], and confirmed Britain as an island, in the same voyage reaching the unexplored islands known as the Orcades and claiming them. Thule was merely sighted, as their orders took them only thus far, and winter was approaching. But they declared the waves sluggish, resistant to the oar, and likewise unresponsive to the wind, presumably because mountainous land, the cause and origin of storms, is scarcer, and the unbroken mass of deeper water is harder to set in motion." (Source)
Pliny the Elder also mentions Thule in his Natural History (source), as well as the the Orkney Islands (see § 4.103), and notes that the British Celts sailed to another island called Mictisis, he also mentions other islands from where people embark for Thule. It surely had inhabitants then (Source) - I have not found any other reference about Mictisis by any other author, ancient or modern. Try searching it in Google!
"The most remote of all that we find mentioned is Thule, in which, as we have previously stated, there is no night at the summer solstice, when the sun is passing through the sign of Cancer, while on the other hand at the winter solstice there is no day. Some writers are of opinion that this state of things lasts for six whole months together. Timaeus the historian says that an island called Mictisis within six days' sail of Britannia, in which white load is found; and that the Britons sail over to it in boats of osier, covered with sewed hides. There are writers also who make mention of some other islands: Scandia, Dumna, Bergos, and, greater than all, Nerigos, from which persons embark for Thule. At one day's sail from Thule is the frozen ocean, which by some is called the Cronian Sea. "
What was "white load"? Did they use hide-hulled osier boats? Pliny had mentioned them before; they are baskets made with flexible willow shoots (osier) covered with hides, or coracles. Rather flimsy to navigate the North Atlantic. White load is tin: "§ 34.156 [47] The next topic is the nature of lead, of which there are two kinds, black and white. White lead (tin) is the most valuable; the Greeks applied to it the name cassheros, and there was a legendary story of their going to islands of the Atlantic ocean to fetch it and importing it in platted vessels made of osiers and covered with stitched hides. It is now known that it is a product of Lusitania and Gallaecia found in the surface-strata of the ground which is sandy and of a black colour." (source)
There is no tin in Iceland or the Shetlands, Faroe, or Orkneys. The only source of tin other than Cornwall in the Sothwest of Britain, was in Nova Scotia (East Kemptville), it was the largest mine in the world until it closed. (Source).
But, the question is was Iceland inhabited in 450-550 AD, during Arthur's time?
There are written accounts by the Vikings that tell of Irish monks in Iceland when they arrived. For instance (Source): "Islendinga Bok c. 1. «Anciently there lived here Christian folk whom the Norsemen ealled Papar they afterwards went away as they could not endure the society of heathens and they left behind them Irish books bells and pastoral staves so that one could ascertain therefrom that they were Irish». Landnamabok «But before Iceland was peopled by the Norsemen there were folk here who were called by the Norsemen Papar they were Christians and it is thought that they came from the West over the sea for they left behind them Irish books bells and staves and many other articles from which one might conjecture they were West-men.»."
The Irish gaelic monks had established themselves in heathen Ireland starting in 431 with Bishop Palladius and Saint Patrick in 432 AD. Monasteries were built in the sixth-century ~500 AD, by St. Finian, St. Brendan, St. Comgall, St. Kieran, and St. Enda. They probably went north into the Faroe Islands and onwards to Icealand with an escort of Christian Celts ~500 AD (Source).
John Dee and English claims over America
This information was used by John Dee (1527-1608), a well known mathematician, astronomer, cartographer, and scholar of magic and the occult, to promote the English claims over America. He was a favorite of English Queen, Elizabeth I, acting as her adviser and astrologer. He coined the term "British Empire", championed the cause of exploring and claiming North America for England, and was an activist in favor of the Gregorian calendar (which was finally adopted by Britain in 1752).
Spain and Portugal had split the globe between themselves using the meridian that passed through a point 300 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (Tordesillas Treaty, signed in 1494). Pope Julius II ratified this treaty in 1506. However, other nations like the Dutch and the English ignored it, especially after the break with Rome during the Protestant reformation.
Dee came up with the voyages of Welsh Prince Madoc, and the domination of Iceland and the Norsemen's territory by King Arthur, to set a precedent and legal priority for England's claim to North America, and the territories later occupied by the Vikings (Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, Markland), and the land mentioned by the Zeno brothers (Frisland and Estoitland).
He also used information from an account known as Inventio Fortunata which tells about an English Franciscan friar who was a mathematician at Oxford, who sailed to the North Pole on his own, in 1360 during the reign of Edward III of England. More details on this voyage in a future post.
Since Elizabeth I was a Tudor, and had Welsh roots (The House of Tudor came from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a noble family from Wales), Dee outlined her family tree showing that she was related to Arthur and Madoc!
Dee prepared maps for the English privateers and navigators like John Davis, Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, Walter Raleigh, and Humphrey Gilbert, below is one of them, a North Pole view of the world, notice the ice-free Arctic Ocean, the magnetic mountain on the pole, and the many channels cutting across North America. Dee was convinced that a northern passage existed between Europe and the Far East. The map below was given by Dee to Gilbert in 1582-83. It can be enlarged by clicking on the source link.
For those interested in Dee and his British Empire project, I suggest reading the following paper published in 2024: The Artic Arthur and the American Avalon: John Dee’s Brytanici imperii limites (1578) and the North Atlantic island imaginary, by Stewart, B.; Buskes, G.; Cobben, F.; Geerts, W.; Nolten, M.; Verkoren, J. Leidschrift, 39(Februari (1) Er was eens… Sprookjes, folklore en mythes door de eeuwen heen Sprookjes, folklore en mythes door de eeuwen heen), 33-55. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4198826.
Avalon in America
It is interesting to note that the southwestern tip of Newfoundland was named Avalon peninsula. Which is no other than the mythical island of King Arthur! This spot was the earliest site of English voyages (by Sebastian Cabot), temporary and later, permanent settlement. By chance it was named with an Arthurian placename.
It was named Avalon by Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, (1580-1632), who received a grant from the Crown to settle there in 1621 (many years after Dee's death), by chance, he chose the name Avalon because it was the land where St. Joseph of Arimathea was said to have landed in his mission to christianize Britain ~63 AD.
Back in 2014 I posted about mtDNA C1e haplogroup found only in Iceland. Amerindians have mtDNA C1b, C1c, and C1d but those who may have met the Vikings in Greenland (Innuit - Eskimo) don't carry it. They are unrelated to the Icleandic variant. mtDNA C1a is found in East Asia, and C1f found at extremely low frequencies in the eastern Baltic area. But neither are associated with the Iceland haplogroup. The options are: C1e has an Eurasian root and reached Iceland with its Viking peopling wave, or it is a Native American variant not yet detected in America. Considering its tree (see Fig. 3 in this paper), with C1e equidistant from C1f and C1d, I opt for an Amerindian variant, one that was thriving ~500 AD when Irish, English, or Scottish people navigated to and from America and Ireland and mixed with the natives, bringing it back to Iceland with them. It survived there and ended up in modern Icelandic people. The original Amerindian clade died out in America during the "Great Dying" after the discovery and conquest starting in 1492. However, C1d is particularly prevalent in South America, and at lower frequencies in Central and North America! (see heatmap here).
My next post will look into another Medieval English Polar explorer who sailed in 1360 to the North Pole.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
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