The Sinclair Saga

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Memorial
University, reviews editor of The Northern Mariner, and editor of
Northern Seas.

Mark Finnan is the author of a book on the Oak Island legend and another
on the attempt by Sir William Alexander to establish a colony in Nova
Scotia during the 17th century. With this latest book, he sets out to
retell the legend of Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, who allegedly
voyaged to North America and explored its northeastern coast about a
century before Cabot. Though Sinclair did exist, there is little
evidence for his alleged voyage apart from a 16th-century record of a
late-medieval description of Sinclair’s voyage by two Venetian
brothers, a source that most historians today regard as a forgery.
Nevertheless, people will insist on believing what they wish, and this
book testifies to the power of faith over fact.

Sinclair’s story has been told before. The most familiar version,
though not the first, was Frederick Pohl’s Prince Henry Sinclair
(1950). Finnan adds little to that account, apart from an attempt in the
opening and closing chapters to link the Sinclair legend with some ruins
found on a farm in New Ross, Nova Scotia. (The evidence to support the
claim that the ruins in question are old enough to link with the alleged
Sinclair voyage is extremely dubious.) His research is, for the most
part, secondary and, with a few noteworthy exceptions, rarely of a
scholarly nature; John Reid and Magnus Magnusson are both cited, but not
the works of Thomas McGovern, Robert McGhee, Birgitta Wallace, and other
specialists in the medieval North Atlantic. Many historical details
(such as the factors contributing to the Icelandic settlement of
Greenland) are inaccurate or misleading; other statements, such as those
concerning claims by Holy Grail and Masonic Order enthusiasts, are
qualified, yet merely by mentioning such fantasies Finnan adds
legitimacy to them.

Overall, there is so much chaff mixed with the few kernels of wheat
that this book cannot be recommended.