He would have found
America ten years sooner, and it would have been the Portuguese, and not
the Spanish, flag that he would have carried westward to the New World.
Our young Genoese is supposed to have sailed to Iceland and even farther
into the Polar regions, probably after continuing that trip to Bristol
which the pirates interrupted off Cape St. Vincent. Many writers
consider that it was in Iceland where he heard rumors of "land in the
west." If the Iceland trip really was made, Christopher may indeed have
heard the story; for long before, Icelanders, and Norsemen also, had
discovered America.
These discoveries, as we now believe, took place in the far-away
eleventh century; but they made no impression on Europeans of that time,
because Iceland and Scandinavia were not in touch with other European
countries. Civilization then had the Mediterranean for its center, and
no one in Southern Europe ever heard of what the Icelanders or the
Norsemen were doing. But these northern peoples did not entirely lose
sight of their discoveries, for they sang about them from century to
century in quaint and beautiful ballads called sagas. It was not until
after Columbus revealed the west to European eyes that these sagas were
published; nevertheless, it is not improbable that, if Columbus landed
in Iceland, some inhabitant who knew the story of the far western
country told it to him.
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