Journey in Columba’s Day
We think of going long distances in terms of the transport we now have – cars, planes - and assume that earlier folk were less mobile. But evidence shows that even in prehistoric times, people travelled far and wide.
Isotope analysis of teeth in skeletons found in British sites reveals people who had travelled from southern Europe and even beyond, to visit ritual sites such as Stonehenge. And in historic times, in the two centuries before Columba’s time, many thousands of so-called barbarians walked their way from the far north-east beyond Europe, the Franks to settle in central Europe, the Visigoths in Spain and the Vandals in North Africa. And there were always the traders and the explorers – the Phoenicians ringing the Mediterranean, moving up the Atlantic coast, carrying goods, language and culture. In 320 B.C. Pytheas set out from Marseilles, writing a handbook with the technical details sailors needed – even with precise sun-sightings – as he worked his way north, up the Atlantic coast, round the British Isles, visiting the Northern Isles, and even Iceland.
Bound for Iona with Colmcille's Blessing - sculpture by James G Miles in Iona Abbey Photo: Barbara Davey
Indeed, people originally worked their way northwards by sea from Brittany and further south to populate the west coast of Scotland and Ireland in the first place. The sea was not a barrier, it was a highway, a connective tissue – easier and less dangerous in some ways than travel by land. People would travel between Ireland and the Scottish west coast for family and ritual reasons, for trade, for warfare – the sea was the link.
In 563 Columba and a small group of friends sailed across from Ireland to the west coast of Scotland, establishing a monastic settlement on Iona, land given to Columba by Conall, son of Comgall, ruler of Dál Riata. Iona was in the centre of a sea linked world, Gaelic speaking on both sides, the crucial details of winds and tides well familiar. A little later, in the eighth century, monks are recorded as sailing to Iceland in a hide boat; and monastery records give sad lists of monks drowned at sea as they went about monastic business.
Reenactment of Columba's crossing, 2012 Photo: Graham Whyte
But you needed a safe haven. The custom of hospitality was the glue which held this travelling world together. Pytheas marked the safe havens for sailors. Columba and his companions set sail probably in the knowledge they would have a welcome from the king in whose territory Iona lay. And in turn hospitality to all strangers was a cornerstone of their way of life.
Detail from the Book of Kells (Courtesy of The Board of Trinity College Dublin)
Exploring Further
On Columba:
Adomnán of Iona, Life of St. Columba, trs. R. Sharpe (Penguin Classics 1995)
I. Findlay, Columba (Victor Gollanz 1995)
B. Lacey, Saint Columba: his life and legacy (The Columba Press 2013)
On ancient travel and population links:
B. Cunliffe, On the Ocean: the Mediterranean and the Atlantic from prehistory to AD1500 (Oxford University Press 2017)
B. Cunliffe, The Extraordinary voyage of Pytheas the Greek: the Man who Discovered Britain (Penguin Press 2001)
B. Cunliffe, Bretons and Britons: The Fight for Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021)