The island of Avalon is first mentioned in the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) by Galfrid of Monmouth. The essay was written in 1136, and in it, along with very real historical figures, we see completely legendary rulers of Britain, starting with Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, the hero of the Trojan War. There is also a story about the legendary King Arthur.
Avalon is the second name of Atlantis
When King Arthur received a mortal wound, he asked the knight Bedivere to transfer him to the seashore. And suddenly - without noise and splashes - a black rook appeared. And there were women in black clothes. When they saw Arthur, they burst into tears. And Arthur's sister, Morgana, stretched out her hands to him and said: “My brother, your wounds are heavy, I cannot heal them. But trust me, and I will take you to Avalon, an island where there is no disease or death itself. " Arthur hugged the faithful Bedivere goodbye and asked: "Tell everyone that I will definitely come back if you need to stand up for the defense of Britain …". So the legends say.
Location to be confirmed
King Arthur has a place of honor in this "Story". Galfried of Monmouth writes that it was on Avalon that King Arthur's sword was forged. And it was to Avalon that he went to heal his wounds after the battle with Mordred at Camlann. Galfrid has no description of the island itself.
But 14 years later, in another work, Vita Merlini, some information about the island appears. You can only get to Avalon by sea. Avalon, it turns out, has another name - Insula Pomorum, that is, the Island of Fruit Trees, or the Island of Fruit. In Welsh, Cornish and Breton - specifically apples (from aball or avallen - apple tree). “The Island of Fruits,” says Galfrid, “is also called the Happy Island because the land there gives birth to everything by itself. The plowman does not need to drag behind the plow, exploding furrows, nature itself produces all the fruits. By themselves, all the grains and bunches of grapes and forest fruits grow there on the branches that are heavy from them, like grass they rise from the earth in abundance. Everything is produced by the earth itself. And people live on it for 100 years or more."
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The island is owned and managed by nine sisters, one of whom, the sorceress Morgana, was considered the sister of King Arthur. The other eight - Morona, Mazoya, Glithen, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoya, Titen, Titan - were also sorceresses or witches, and the legend of the nine priestesses came from Celtic mythology, where they were known as the "nine witches of Istavingun." So whether you can believe the description of Avalon as presented by Galfried of Monmouth, decide for yourself.
He was by no means the first to mention the Island (or Islands) of the Blessed. Galfrid took the description of Avalon from the works of Isidore of Seville, although they had nothing to do with British Avalon. Isidore spoke of the Isles of the Blessed in exactly the same words. He also has nature gives people all the grains and fruits, and they live there for more than 100 years, and nine sisters rule the islands. Only we are talking about … the Canary Islands. And Isidore, in turn, took information from the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela … Such is the cycle of ideas in nature.
Celtic legends
It is no coincidence that the first appearance of Avalon in a historical work is timed to the 12th century. This is exactly the time when the so-called Arthurian cycle is being created, that is, medieval literary works about King Arthur.
Starting with Chrétien de Troyes, Avalon is firmly associated with the name of the legendary king, who, according to legend, ruled Britain in the 5th-6th centuries. The poet Liamon Arthur is supposed to heal the magic water of the island, and an anonymous author of the same time has Italian doctors from Salerno. But neither water nor doctors heal. Arthur dies.
Avalon is present in all writings about Arthur and becomes firmly connected with his name. However, before he occupied an important place in the Celtic legends of the other world. The Celts placed their afterlife on islands in the ocean.
In the famous Irish saga "Bran's Voyage" it is written that these islands are located in the west, and there are a huge number of them - "three times fifty". There is no more time for them, all the inhabitants are young and cheerful, and the land provides everything that is needed for life. After death, all the heroes go to the Islands of the Blessed.
Of course, in knightly novels and poems, Arthur goes straight to Avalon. Moreover, his fate remains uncertain until the end. Some authors believe that while Arthur remains on Avalon, he remains alive; others are sure that he was completely healed on Avalon, but did not want to return; third, that he actually died and was brought from Avalon and buried in Glastonbury.
Or maybe … Glastonbury?
Since the Middle Ages, many have placed Avalon not in the middle of the ocean in the west, but in the middle of … Somerset County, in Glastonbury. This is due to the medieval archaeological find mentioned in the writings of Gerald of Wells. In 1190, when the monks from Glastonbury Abbey accidentally opened the grave of "King Arthur and his wife Ginivera," he immediately informed his contemporaries that Glastonbury in the old days was called … Avalon.
And Gerald of Wales was not at all embarrassed that Glastonbury was on a hill and that it was not surrounded by the sea, but by swamps. No, it was the abundance of swamps that made this hill an island! And Glastonbury was famous for its abundance of apples throughout the district! And in general, once the hill had another name - Inis Vitrin, or Ynys Witrin, which is translated from Welsh as "Island of glass", and could be before "Istawingun". The name of Glastonbury, which existed in his time, came about as a result of the translation of "Islands of Glass" into the language of the conquerors of the Saxons. And the discovery of the ashes of the king and his wife is just evidence that Avalon has been found.
What did the monks find at Glastonbury? And they found either two or three graves. Some of the remains belonged to a woman and rested next to the bones of a man. Moreover, the bones of the man were very large, almost gigantic. The burial was at a depth of five meters. The massive coffin was decorated with a large leaden cross with the inscription: "Here, on the island of Avalon, rests the remains of the famous King Arthur and his second wife Ginivera."
Gerald swore that he saw both the cross and the inscription with his own eyes and reproduced it verbatim. But four other “eyewitnesses” reproduce it in a different way. And the Cistercian monks from the abbey in Margama indicate that there were three graves and that the bones from the third grave were hurried to throw away, because they were the bones of Mordred, the traitor and murderer of the king.
For the monks themselves, finding Arthur's ashes turned out to be a profitable business. If before they could not find funds to repair the abbey, now they were able, thanks to pilgrims and gifts from those in power, to even expand the territory and erect new buildings. Even a century later, the king's bones brought glory and cash infusions to the abbey. With great fanfare, Arthur and Guiniere were reburied in 1278 under King Edward I. And this was done intentionally: the Welsh constantly raised uprisings against the British, Edward waged constant wars with them, and the Welsh believed that one day King Arthur would wake up and rise from the grave to lead the battle against the conquerors.
Edward ordered to open the coffin sealed by the monks and put the bones of the king and his wife on public display - so that the rebellious were convinced that their king had decayed long ago and would never rise from the coffin. It was after this that the ceremonial reburial took place. In 1368, the royal bones had to be disturbed again - this time for construction needs. The abbey became a kind of medieval tourist attraction - pilgrims went to bow to Arthur's bones until the middle of the 16th century, when King Henry VIII dispersed the Catholic monks. By that time, almost no one doubted that Glastonbury was the very Avalon.
Almost no one means everything. Despite the discovery of "the bones of Arthur and his wife", there were those who did not believe that these were the very bones, even called their acquisition "the tricks of the monks." The real Arthur, they said, slept with his loyal army in a cave inside the hill, not in Glastonbury, but on the real Avalon, the location of which was classified.
It was suggested that Arthur was literally taken away across the sea and over a very long distance - for example, to Sicily. Or - across the strait - to the Burgundy town of Avallon. Or they could have transported the dying person to the Isle of Arran, located in the Firth of Clyde. Already today, some researchers place Avalon in Iceland, Wales, the North Sea and even at the bottom of the sea, since they believe that Avalon is the second name for Atlantis.
Mikhail ROMASHKO