John of Kolno

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John of Kolno (also known as Jan z Kolna, Johannes Scolnus, Ioannis Scolvenius or Iohannes Scolvus Polonus) (1435–1484)—a semi-legendary Polish sailor and navigator serving for the court of Denmark. According to various sources he was one of the first Europeans to reach the shores of the Americas prior to Columbus in 1476 as steersman of Didrik Pining.

According to Joachim Lelewel (1786 - 1861) the Polish historian and cartographer, who was the first to gather all the available mentions of Johannes Scolnus, the sailor was a navigator of the fleet of Christian I of Denmark. In 1476 he set sail from Norway and led a fleet of several Danish ships westwards. After several weeks he reached the shores of America. The fleet was commanded by two German sailors and pirate hunters Dietrich Pining and Hans Pothorst and the Portuguese João Vaz Corte-Real, who frequently sailed to the shores of Greenland. It is possible that their discovery was made thanks to a navigational mistake or a storm that pushed their ships further westwards.

It is not certain whether John of Kolno really existed and whether he reached America. Some evidence do suggest that Scolvus visited Labrador as noted on the 1536 globe of cartographer Gemma Frisius which depicts an area within the Arctic circle, north of a strait dividing Terra Corterealis and Baccalearum Regio from the westward projection of Greenland. Within this area is the incription, "Quij, the people to whom John Scolvus, a Dane, penetrated about the year 1476." ^[1] Another reference to the possibility of John Scolnus visiting Labrador is a document prepared in about 1575 for the first voyage of Martin Frobisher which bears a similar inscription: "In the north side of this passge John Scolnus, a pilot of Denmark, was in anno 1476." ^[1]

The first to mention Johannes Scolnus as the discoverer of Labrador (Terra Laboratoris) and the area of present-day Boston was Francisco López de Gómara in his Historia general de las Indias y conquista de Mexico (1552). Other sources to mention Jan z Kolna are:

François de Belleforest 1570
Cornelius Wytfliet, Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum 1597 and 1599
Claude Barthélemy Morisot 1643
George Horn 1671
Coronelli 1691
Charlevoix 1744

There are also mentions of Joannis de Colno who studied at the Kraków Academy in 1455 and the Colno or Cholno family of merchants and sailors living in Danzig (Gdańsk).

Boleslaw Olszewicz, one of the 20th century historians to criticize the work of Lelewel, argues that there is not enough evidence to prove that this sailor was actually Polish. Most of the works to mention Johannes Scolnus were published more than a century after his voyage and no contemporary evidence has been preserved. Also, in the late 19th century various scholars identified John of Kolno as a sailor of Norwegian (Johann Scolv), Portuguese (João Scolvo) or German descent. Some writers have even speculated that Johannes Scolvus was none other than the young Christopher Columbus himself.