and his students travel the seas and come across various locations while searching for the Promised Land. One of the first islands that Brendan and his companions come across is an unnamed uninhabited island. It is on this island that the first of the three extra monks who accompanied Brendan on his travels dies. After the death of their companion, Brendan and his men leave and continue their journey to the Island of Sheep. After a short stay on the Island of Sheep, Brendan and his crew land on the back of a giant fish named Jasconius, which they believe to be an island. But once they light a fire, the island starts to move revealing its true nature. Other places that Brendan and his companions arrive at include the Island of Birds, the Island of Ailbe inhabited by a community of silent monks, and the Island of Strong Men. In some accounts, it is on the Island of Strong Men where the second of the 3 extra people remains instead of continuing his journey with Brendan and his men. The third is dragged away by demons. After travelling for seven years, visiting some of the same places over and over again, they finally arrive in the Promised Land for Saints. They are welcomed and allowed to enter briefly. Awed by what they have seen, they return to Ireland rejoicing. Context The Navigatio fits in with a then-popular literary genre, peculiar to Ireland, denominated an immram. Irish immrama flourished during the seventh and eighth centuries. Typically, an immram is a tale that describes the hero's series of seafaring adventures. Some of these immrams involved the search for, and visits to, Tír na nÓg, an island far to the west, beyond the edges of the world map. There appear to be similarities with The Voyage of Bran written much earlier. In the Navigatio, this style of storytelling meshed with a religious ascetic tradition in which Irish monks travel alone in boats, the same way their desert brothers isolated themselves in caves. Brendan's voyages were one of the most remarkable and enduring of European legends. With many of the facts of Brendan's journeys coming from the Navigatio, it has been difficult for scholars to distinguish fact and folklore. The narrative of Brendan's voyage, developed during this time, shares some characteristics with immram. Like an immram, the Navigatio tells the story of Brendan,