Who discovered the New World? The canonical answer is, of course, Christopher Columbus, but many among you probably already know that there are other interesting theories: some historians believe that the Vikings had already reached the northern part of the American continent in the early Middle Ages, while some more recent archaeological discoveries hinted at the possibility that the Ancient Romans had been, in fact, the first to sail through the Atlantic, more than one thousand years before good old Christopher.
Lesser known is, perhaps, the theory according to which it was two Venetian brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zen who, moved by a thirst for knowledge and discovery only comparable to that of Ulysses, reached America a century before Columbus, in the 1390s.
The adventures of the Zen brothers are not as known as those of the elegant and courageous Homeric hero, but they are well worth being told, or so was the thought – with which I fully agree – of Andrea di Robilant, author of the 2012 book Irresistible North, published by Vintage. In it, the author narrates the – almost – incredible voyages of the two Venetians through Scandinavia and the Northern Atlantic, which eventually led them to the coast of North America.
Di Robilant’s book is partly based on the research of Giorgio Padoan, Italianist and philologist at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University, who had been interested in the Venetian brothers’ explorations since adolescence.
We are at the end of the 14th century, straight after Venice had won the war against Genoa for the domination of trade routes in the Mediterranean, a victory that had cost the Serenissima money, time and men, and that had brought it on its knees. So much so, in fact, that commerce was very slow to pick up. This is why wealthy merchant Nicolò Zen decided to go solo and, to say in a very modern way, explore other markets: he was interested in the North, he wanted to trade with Scandinavia, an area of Europe with which commercial relations had been growing steadily.
During one of his early trips, the stormy winds and waters of the Northern Sea and the Atlantic led him all the way to the Faer Oer Islands, today part of Denmark, where he met the Earl of Orkney, Henry Sinclair. Apparently, the two communicated in Latin with one another, as it was the only language they both knew. Despite the bad weather and the stormy seas, Nicolò continued his commercial exploration of the North of the Atlantic and was also reached by his brother Antonio. Both of them worked for Sinclair as tax collectors and traveled across the northern Atlantic all the way to Greenland, before eventually returning to Venice.
It was during these years of voyages between Greenland and Norway that the brothers met an adventurous fisherman who said he had traveled to a new land, further west than Greenland itself. And if it’s true that the Zens did eventually return to Venice, at least one of them, Antonio, wasn’t ready to settle quite yet. In the late 1390s, he returned to Scandinavia and, along with his friend Henry Sinclair, sailed to Greenland and then all the way to Terranova, in North America. Here, they were not particularly welcome, if it’s true they were eventually chased away by “locals” strangely similar to northern Europeans because they had ships and made beer. They also apparently had “books in Latin” which they, however, could not understand. According to Padoan, this encounter shows that the settlers were likely descendants of an old Viking settlement, as their knowledge of ship- and beer-making would testify. The books mentioned in the accounts could have been religious texts in Latin, which people could no longer understand but had kept.
Antonio never made it back to Venice because, after more years navigating the northern seas, he died while on his way back home. However, we know his and Nicolò’s story thanks to a great-grandnephew of theirs, Nicolò Zen the Young who had an interesting booklet published in Venice in 1558, that was to become the go-to manual for sailors and traders of the northern seas. In it, he also narrated the trips to the New Continent of his ancestors who, back in the late 14th century, weren’t quite aware they were on undiscovered land – not surprising: neither did Columbus.
Truth is: we don’t know the truth. But there is one last curiosity to reveal. Apparently, there are plenty of people in Connecticut who know the story of how America was discovered by two Venetian brothers a century before Columbus arrived, a story – they say – that’s been passed down generation after generation in their area. You can make of that what you like…
Some 300 years later, a Danish admiral called Zarthmann debunked, or so he said, the younger Zen’s account, stating his ancestors’ explorations were totally made up and this is why the Zen Brothers’ story remained under the radar for such a long time, until Padoan first and di Robilant later brought it back to light. The point is, though: is it all true, or is it all fake? Well, we know already what Padoan thought, but there are also others, notably the renowned early 20th-century archivist of Venice’s Biblioteca Marciana Andrea da Mosto, who sided with Zarthmann.
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