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The legend of the sunken land of Lyonesse

The legend of the sunken land of Lyonesse could be confirmed by the discovery of Doggerland, the ancient heart of Europe submerged by water.

The legend of the sunken land of Lyonesse
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Legends of lost lands off the coasts of France and Great Britain are quite common in local tradition. The most famous of these, Lyonesse, was believed to connect Land's End and St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall to the Scilly Islands.

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In the Bay of Douarnenez, in the Sea of Brittany, there are tales of the submerged city of Kerls, which perhaps had connections with Mont Saint Michel.

The legend of the sunken land of Lyonesse
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Legends also speak of a land called Cantre'r Gwaelod, off the coast of Wales. Cantre'r Gwaelod, which was said to have sixteen large cities between Bardsey Island and the mouth of the River Teifi, was protected from the sea by dikes that are said to still be clearly visible beneath the waters of Cardigan Bay.

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Could these legends have a solid historical basis? These myths might be rooted in historical events, particularly following the discovery of Doggerland, the ancient heart of Europe—a vast expanse of land that once connected the northern coast of France with the southern coast of Britain. According to researchers, this area was submerged by a catastrophic tsunami.

Historical References to Lyonesse

Anyone who, on a clear day, gazes from Land’s End, the southwestern tip of England, toward the Isles of Scilly will find it easy to imagine that, in a distant past, a thriving land existed between them and the mainland. This was, to quote the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, the “lost land of Lyonesse, where, apart from the Isles of Scilly, only the stormy sea now stretches.”

Did this place really exist, or was it merely the dream of a poet? The legend of a great flood appears in the traditions of many peoples across the world—Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and the Americas. The most famous in the Western world is the biblical Noah's Flood, found in the Book of Genesis, which has its roots in an ancient Mesopotamian tale (The Epic of Gilgamesh). Interestingly, Africa has no similar myth.

As for Western Europe, folklorists believe this myth was derived from Mesopotamia, passed down through the Greek legend of Deucalion and Pyrrha and the biblical story of Noah. In Europe, however, it’s more likely that the tradition of a local flood emerged, caused not by rain, but by the invasion of the sea—possibly due to the collapse of the land, an event reminiscent of the legend of Atlantis.

Since the Middle Ages, and throughout later periods, many such stories have been handed down, especially regarding the coasts of England and, in France, Brittany. The most celebrated of these "sunken lands" is undoubtedly Lyonesse. The first written reference to a vanished land off the coast of Cornwall is found in the Itinerary of William of Worcester, from the 15th century. He speaks of “forests, fields, and 140 parish churches, all now submerged, between the Mount and the Isles of Scilly.” However, he does not assign any name to this lost land.

The antiquarian Richard Carew, a native of Cornwall, was perhaps the first to identify the vanished kingdom beneath the sea with the Lyonesse of the Arthurian legend. This view is echoed in William Camden's Britannia and Carew’s Study of Cornwall (1602). He wrote:

“And the sea, flooding everywhere, completely devastated the land of Lyonesse, along with many other vast regions.”

Evidence for the existence of Lyonesse includes the area between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly, which spans around thirty miles and still bears the name Lethosow in the Cornish language. The depth of this stretch of water remains unusually consistent at 40-60 fathoms, a rarity in open sea. Moreover, halfway between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly, there was a group of rocks known as the “Seven Stones,” which marked an area locally referred to as Tregva—meaning “a dwelling.” Some fishermen even reported recovering remains of doors and windows in this area.

In Carew’s time, a legend circulated about Lethosow—that when the sea flooded and submerged the land, a man named Trevilian managed to escape on a white horse, galloping ahead of the advancing waves. This tale was thought to explain the origin of the Trevelyan family crest: a steed rising from the sea.

In the Arthurian cycle, Lyonesse is the homeland of the hero Tristan, nephew of King Mark and lover of his wife Isolde. Since Mark was the ruler of Cornwall, Carew and another author believed that the “lost land” of the local legend was one and the same as Lyonesse. Medieval scholars, however, dismiss this theory, arguing that “Lyonesse” is a corrupted form of an older name for Tristan's land, Loenois, now known as Lothian in Scotland. This location matches the fact that the name Tristan was borne by a prince of the Picts in the 8th century.

Since Cornwall’s lost land has been identified with Lyonesse, it has become shrouded in the luminous allure of the Arthurian legend. Further connections have been made: Alfred Lord Tennyson placed Camelot’s court there, and mystics have since hoped to see Lyonesse rise from the waves or catch a glimpse of it during a vision off the coast of Land’s End. Like Atlantis, Lyonesse has become a potent symbol of longing for a lost Golden Age—and, in the case of Cornwall, for a past more glorious than the present.

Is There Any Proof to Support the Tradition?

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In 1753, the Cornish historian William Borlase referred to rows of stones, possibly marking the location of a lost land, stretching from the shores of Samson Flats in the Isles of Scilly. Resembling field boundary walls, these stones were believed to be man-made, and in the 1920s, it was hypothesized that they were ancient Bronze Age boundary lines.

This might not be the only evidence that the Isles of Scilly have lost land to the sea. In fact, off the coasts of the islands of St. Martin, Little Arthur, and Tean, there are prehistoric hut circles and tombs that are thought to have been covered by water during the Roman period. In any case, it is a historical fact that classical authors referred to the Isles of Scilly as a single, or essentially single, island up until the 4th century AD. However, during the Iron Age, the sinking of land around the English coasts was very slow. The submergence must have been gradual and intermittent, not concentrated in a single, traumatic event that could have been recorded, remembered, and passed down by humans.

The story of Lyonesse has an equivalent in Brittany, where, deep in the Bay of Douarnenez, lies the submerged city of Kerls. Only King Gradlon managed to escape the disaster, riding, like Trevilian, a white steed that outran the waves.

It is possible that when the monks of Mont Saint-Michel Abbey in Brittany founded the daughter house of St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, they brought with them the story of the flood. Whatever the origin of the legend, it is not hard to believe in a flood that, like all disasters, was later magnified by popular imagination: perhaps the lost village became a city, and the city, in time, became a kingdom. Descendants eventually forgot the exact location of the catastrophe and placed it where “evidence” of submerged “buildings” still existed.

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