Highlights Archives
Dueling Discoverers: Leif Erikson and Columbus
In this month of dueling discoverers (Columbus Day is October 12), October 9 commemorates the exploration and landfall of Norseman Leif Erikson in North America. Although the exact location of his ca. 1000 CE landing remains unclear, Erikson is widely believed to be the first European to set foot in North America, besting Columbus by almost 500 years.
The second son of Viking Eric the Red, the first European colonizer of Greenland, Erikson was born in Iceland around 960 CE and raised in Greenland. In 1000, Erikson sailed to Norway and was converted to Christianity by King Olaf I. The following year Olaf commissioned Erikson to carry the faith to Greenland. What happened to Erikson next remains unclear.
Some think that Erikson sailed off course on his return trip to Greenland, landing in North America in a place he called Vinland, possibly Nova Scotia. This is the version claimed in "The Saga of Eric the Red." However, according to the "Greenlander's Saga," Erikson learned of Vinland from the Icelander Bjarni Herjulfsson, who had reported seeing the land off to the west though he never landed. Erikson then sailed west in an attempt to prove Herjulfsson's claims and made three landfalls: Hellulland, or Flat-Stone Land, generally thought to have been in Labrador; Markland, or Wood Land, possibly in Newfoundland; and Vinland. The location of Vinland is unknown though it could have been as far north as Newfoundland or as far south as Cape Cod. Erikson spent the winter in Vinland but never returned. Scholars suspect that climate change may have doomed further western settlement by the Vikings.
Though Christopher Columbus gets all of the attention for his 1492 voyage to the New World, Erikson finally received his due in 1964 when President Johnson, backed by a unanimous Congress, proclaimed October 9 as Leif Erikson Day. Erikson's rightful place in history had long been championed in Wisconsin, where Rasmus Anderson, founder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Scandinavian languages program and U.S. minister to Denmark, had been lobbying for an official holiday since the 1890s. Anderson's dream was finally realized in 1929 when Governor Walter Kohler signed the Leif Erikson Day bill into law.
:: Posted October 10, 2005
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