Did Odysseus Travel to Ireland?

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hi everyone. One of the last locations visited by Odysseus in the Odyssey is the island of Calypso, the island of Ogygia. Now, this is a very significant place in the Odyssey because that's where he's held captive for about 7 years, and that's one of the reasons why it takes him so long to eventually get back to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

[00:00:20]Now, there's a fascinating idea that this can actually be identified with Ireland, just next to Britain. So, this might seem like a completely bizarre idea because after all, if he was traveling from Troy, which is in northwest Turkey, trying to get back to Ithaca on the western side of Greece, how could he possibly have ended up outside of the Mediterranean, all the way over in Ireland? Well, the reality is that there is no good answer for that. But nevertheless, lots of theorists try to place Odysseus in all sorts of locations where he simply couldn't possibly have ended up, regardless of the worst possible storms you could invent. But nevertheless, the reason why Odysseus is sometimes placed in Ireland in the context of the island of Calypso is because of the words of Plutarch. Now, Plutarch was an ancient writer. He wrote all sorts about the geography and history of the ancient world. And in one particular passage, he refers to this island of Ogygia, Calypso's island, and he describes it in the following way. He says that Ogygia is a run of 5 days off from Britain as you sail westward.

[00:01:32]And then, just a bit further on, he says, "The great mainland, by which the great ocean is encircled, while not so far from the other islands, is about 5,000 stades from Ogygia." So, let's combine these two pieces of information.

[00:01:46]We've got an island which is to the west of Britain, and it's very distant from some great mainland or some continent which surrounds the great sea. Now, when you read that, you could easily think of the Americas as being the great continent which surrounds the great sea.

[00:02:06]When he says the great sea, he's logically talking about the Atlantic sea, that great sea outside the Mediterranean, which was the world of the Greeks.

[00:02:15]And so, the idea of there being a great continent that surrounds it, well, if you were to uh to associate that with real-world geography and not just dismiss it as some philosophical concept that was sort of worked out through some kind of logic, then you would naturally have to conclude that it's some distorted version of the Americas. Now, obviously, there's a lot of controversy and debate, especially among more fringe circles, about whether or not the Greeks actually did reach America, whether they had any knowledge of it. I'm not going to get into that, but regardless, the point is that if you do associate Plutarch's words with real geography, then you obviously have to conclude that the Americas is what he means when he refers to the great continent that surrounds the great sea.

[00:03:06]So, bearing that in mind, we have this idea of some great continent over to the west.

[00:03:13]And also, you've got Britain, and then between them, you've got this island, the island of Ogygia, where Odysseus went to. Now, the island in question is said to be 5,000 stades or stadia from the great continent, but only 5 days sail from Britain. So, it's much closer to Britain than it is from the continent.

[00:03:35]So, when we look on a map, the obvious candidate is Ireland.

[00:03:40]That is the main reason why Ireland is associated with Ogygia. And some in the modern era, some Irish poets and writers have used this Homeric word or place name as a kind of poetic substitute for the name of Ireland. But, does the evidence actually support the idea that that's what Homer was talking about?

[00:04:03]Well, when we look a bit more closely one at what Homer said and two at what Plutarch said, we see that this isn't actually a sustainable idea. So, as we saw from Plutarch's passage, he places 5,000 stadia between Ogygia and the Great Continent. Now, that would be equivalent to about 900 miles. Whereas in reality, it's more than 1,800 miles away, more than double the figure that Plutarch actually gives.

[00:04:31]So, that doesn't match at all.

[00:04:33]Obviously, you could say that somehow the measurements have just been messed up and it's just Plutarch has just preserved the idea that they were a great distance away, but he's just completely wrong on the exact measurement. Sure, you could do that.

[00:04:48]You could say that the information is just wrong. But, when you get into this thing about saying the information is just wrong, then you could just sort of make up anything to make it work. The point is it doesn't fit what Plutarch says. And then there's the fact that he says that Ogygia was five days sail from Britain.

[00:05:07]Ireland is not five days away from Britain. It's about two days at the most. Two days if you go from the furthest part of Western Britain. So, both in terms of the distance from Britain and the distance from America, it doesn't match uh Ireland doesn't match what Plutarch says about the island of of uh Ogygia.

[00:05:29]However, there is an island that matches kind of, which is Iceland. You see Iceland is about Well, it's a bit less than 600 miles. It's between 5 and 600 miles from the northernmost part of Britain and that is about five days sail in a relatively fast ship from ancient Greece.

[00:05:51]And then when you compare the distance between Iceland and the closest part of North America, it's about 1,300 miles away, which isn't exactly the same as 900 miles, but it's also not that different. It's certainly a lot closer.

[00:06:05]So, the candidate which fits best what Plutarch actually said is Iceland. Of course, Iceland is very much north. It's very much to the northwest. So, whether or not that actually fits this this concept of an island that you reach by going west from Britain, that's debatable. I mean, it is west, but it's very much northwest. So, that's debatable. But, it's definitely a kind of vague match for what Plutarch said.

[00:06:36]It's about five days sail from Britain, and it's not too far off 900 miles from North America. So, if you were to try to associate Plutarch's account with real geography, then Iceland would be the best match. Except, of course, he also refers to this other thing with three other islands that were equidistant from each other. And yet, he mentions that the the great continent was closer to them than it was to Ogigia. Since that doesn't really match anything in the real world, it's very unlikely that he was actually talking about Iceland. I mean, you can't just take some large detailed description and find one thing that fits the real world and say therefore he was talking about this real place.

[00:07:23]There's a lot in in Plutarch's description here which doesn't fit anything, so we can't just pick on the one thing that fits that that kind of fits Iceland. But, as well as that, as well as the issues with Plutarch's description, there's also the fact that there's no way of making this work with Homer's account in the Odyssey. You see, to escape from Calypso, from Calypso's island, Odysseus builds a raft and he travels in a straight line to Ithaca, or at least he tries to get to Ithaca, but he misses and he ends up on the island of the Phaeacians.

[00:07:59]But the point is he attempts to go to Ithaca in a straight line. Just following the stars, he just goes for it and he travels for about 19 days and then he gets to not Ithaca, but the island of the Phaeacians, which is evidently close cuz they get him to Ithaca in a single night or a single day. So, let's think about what that means. That means that it must be possible to travel in a straight line from the island of Ogygia to the island of Ithaca. In other words, there has to be just open sea between them.

[00:08:29]This idea that Ogygia was Iceland or Island, either one, it would require Odysseus to make this extremely complex and arduous journey down through the Atlantic, around the Iberian Peninsula, into the Mediterranean, uh past the island of Sicily and Italy, and then eventually he would reach Ithaca.

[00:08:54]And that's an extremely complex journey which isn't represented whatsoever by what Homer actually said.

[00:09:02]It's not possible to maintain this idea that uh that Ogygia was outside the Mediterranean. Certainly not all the way around the Iberian Peninsula, up north of uh of mainland Europe as far as Ireland or Iceland. It's just completely and utterly incompatible with what Homer said. Ogygia must be an island within the Mediterranean with nothing in the way between it and Ithaca. That is simply required by what uh by what Homer actually writes. So, regardless of how much Island or Iceland might match the words of Plutarch, it doesn't match.

[00:09:41]Neither of them match the words of Homer. So, it's not sustainable to identify either of them with the island of Ogygia or Calypso's island in the Odyssey. But as we've seen, even just working from Plutarch's account, Ireland is out of the question. Iceland is kind of workable, but you'd have to also ignore a bunch of other stuff that Plutarch says as non-real-world geography. So, it is almost certainly just a coincidence that one of the islands that he mentions in this passage happens to match the location more or less with with a real island. To me, I would say that's just a coincidence. But in any case, it cannot be the island of Ogygia.