Happy Leif Erikson Day to all our readers.
Leif Erikson was a Viking explorer, a Christian, and the leader of possibly the first group of Europeans that established a presence in North America.
Even Joe Biden’s White House isn’t trying to cover up this history.
Over 1,000 years ago, Leif Erikson, son of Iceland and grandson of Norway, embarked on a historic journey across the Atlantic, landing on the shores of North America. Widely believed to be the first Europeans to set foot on this continent, he and his crew embodied traits that would come to define a uniquely American spirit — restless and bold, brave and optimistic, and in search of a better future. This same spirit would guide generations of Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes to immigrate and build new lives in the United States. It would lead countless families to plant roots in the Great Lakes States, the northern Great Plains, and enclaves across the Nation. It remains ingrained in the hearts of roughly 11 million Americans who trace their ancestry to Nordic countries today.
[A Proclamation on Leif Erikson Day, 2022, The White House, October 7, 2022]
There are several important points about all this.
First is that though Leif Erikson may have been the first European leader to come to the New World, he didn’t found the proto–United States any more than Spanish settlers in Florida did. If ”American” is to mean anything other than simply a geographical term (and that’s a dubious prospect these days), one must acknowledge that the settlements which became America really began with the English settlers in New England and Virginia. America was a WASP creation, something even non-WASPS (like me) should admit. I’ll salute the Biden Administration for honoring Nordic-Americans (wonders never cease), but the original founding stock should also have its day. (Again, let’s make Boxing Day a federal holiday.)
Second, Leif Erikson’s story gives a different perspective on the debate about colonization and mass immigration. Leif doesn’t quite have the importance that Christopher Columbus does to the historic American nation. ”Leif the Lucky” was a brave explorer but his journeys didn’t lead to mass European settlement of the New World. His father, the notorious Erik the Red, discovered Iceland, which became an important and continuous European nation until the present day. However, Leif’s ”Vinland” was something of a false start.
This had nothing to do with him. Nordic peoples did not come in massive waves to Vinland, partially because hostility from American Indians (the ”Skrælings”) meant that any settlement would be under constant threat of attack. Climate changes (which happened before industrialization, something we aren’t supposed to notice) also made the Greenland settlements untenable, severing a key link in the Nordic trading network [Epic sea level rise drove Vikings out of Greenland, by Mindy Weisberger, LiveScience, December 16, 2021].
One can imagine an alternate timeline where a few more expeditions could lead to a defensible colony and a Nordic North America that would have preceded Dutch, English, and French settlements in New England and eastern Canada. As it stands, the only “New Sweden” that ever developed was a small colony near the Delaware river that was conquered by the Dutch. A story about a strong Nordic colony in the northeast contesting other powers’ attempts to conquer the New World would be fascinating.
Instead, we have the real history, no less interesting. It’s about nativists, the American Indians, driving off foreign immigrants with the help of climate change. It worked; European mass settlement was delayed for about three centuries. Immigration isn’t just some natural phenomenon. Protecting your borders works when you want it to [You Stole America from the Indians, by Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, February 28, 2017].
Third, despite that, Leif is still a hero for Americans because he is a kind of mythic progenitor for the millions of Nordic-Americans who came to this country, especially in the Midwest. (There’s a reason the team is called the Minnesota Vikings.) He’s also at the center of theories that Vikings or other white explorers moved farther into North America than many believe. Though there’s little hard evidence to back the theories, there’s a fascinating debate about supposed ”runestones” in the United States [A Rune With a View, by John Allen, On Wisconsin, Spring 2012]. All this is important for European-Americans who want to learn about their own roots, which go far beyond the Age of Exploration, the Christendom of the Middle Ages, and even beyond the classical era of Greece and Rome. Our roots are far, far deeper.
There does seem to be some popular hunger for these stories. Though the portrayal is highly fictionalized, Leif Erikson is getting a second wind as a cultural figure because of the show Vikings: Valhalla, in which he is one of the main characters.
Finally, he’s a symbol of the heroic Christianity that defined Northern Europe. For Leif and other Vikings after the Conversion, Christianity was not a faith of surrender or world-renunciation. Instead, it was a conglomeration of the pagan past, the achievements of Christendom, Northern European interpretations of primordial Tradition, and the confident, conquering spirit of the Vikings. Stephen McNallen, one of the most important figures in the contemporary revival of indigenous European spirituality, made this case in a letter to VDARE.com all the way back in 2001. James Russell’s The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation is the standard work on this subject.
James Russell was also a Republican nominee in a congressional race before the GOP groveled at the behest of journos, but that’s another story [In Politics, Just How Far Is Too Far?, by Peter Applebome, New York Times, September 26, 2010].
Leif Erickson is a positive symbol for all European-Americans, not just those from Scandinavia. Really, all Americans should honor his legacy because he was the vanguard of Western Culture in the New World. The most magnificent portrayal of this may be the statue of him given to Iceland as a gift from the United States, which now stands proudly in front of the awe-inspiring Hallgrímskirkja church [Ten fascinating facts about the statue of Leifur Eiríksson, by Magnús Sveinn Helgason, Iceland Magazine, November 2, 2015].
That gift was the statue of a proud Republic that honored its history and shared links with European allies. If America is to be saved, that spirit will need to be reawakened again. Remembering “Leif the Lucky” is one small way to do it.
