Churches in western Europe often served the role of museums, places where oddities came to rest in isolated communities because they were of great interest to parishioners. “Gifts from the Sea” were common -and sometimes valuable- where the currents of the Gulf Stream carried coconuts and other tropical things all the way from the Caribbean. After all, watch towers were scattered up and down the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, wand watchmen assigned to keep an eye out for something valuable that might wash up!
The church we visited in Galway purportedly once had a skin-over-frame kayak hanging from a rafter, a vessel in which a man had arrived by sea from the west. He could not speak any European language and soon perished of illness.
Other sources suggest that efforts to recover tribal or family members may have prompted voyages from the East Coast of North America, and carried by the warmer Gulf Stream. they were able to reach northwestern Europe. This all may seem fanciful. But during the “Little Ice Age” the iced-over lands of Newfoundland and Iceland for example would have been much larger. So it has been argued that a man in a boat might never be entirely our of sight of land while crossing the North Atlantic with the Gulf Stream affording opportunities to rest, fish and recover physically from the ordeal.
The skeptical might be reminded that these conditions, once understood by scientists, was used to explain how Asian peoples migrated to the “New World” across the so-called “Ice Bridge” that they believe connected Asia to the Alaskan Coast during the last Ice Age.
Later scholars have argued that this crossing was probably accomplished by boat rather than on foot across the frozen wastelands of Alaska. It would have been safer and permitted fishing for food. It would also explain why populations spread so quickly from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America.
At any rate, the church was beautiful and the story captivating.