Backers of Norse Explorer Set Out to Upstage Columbus

At least one group of San Fernando Valley residents--along with many American Indians--held back from paying tribute Monday to Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America in the 499th anniversary year of the Italian explorer’s voyage.

The 450 members of the Sons of Norway lodge in Van Nuys and their families are busily planning their annual celebration Saturday in honor of Leif Ericson--who some historians believe may have been the first of the Norse explorers to have reached North America. According to Norse legends, Ericson reached the New World some 490 years before Columbus.

“No, we don’t celebrate Columbus Day,” lodge President Lars Heske said.

Not only does the group not recognize Columbus as the discoverer, it deliberately plans its annual Leif Ericson night to coincide with the holiday celebrating the Italian explorer, he said.

The $7.50 dinner and auction Saturday raises funds for the Norwegian Heritage Foundation in Minneapolis.

Lodge members have also been keeping track in The Viking, their national magazine, of a five-month voyage by Scandinavian sailors, sponsored by the governments of Norway and Iceland, to prove that Ericson could have sailed to America in a small wooden boat.

In an arrival timed to upstage Columbus Day, three replicas of Viking ships similar to those of Ericson’s era crossed the Atlantic from Norway and sailed up the Potomac to Washington on Wednesday. The ships’ arrival, witnessed by hundreds of spectators, began a daylong celebration of Scandinavian culture attended by Norway’s Queen Sonja and Iceland’s President Vigdis Finnbogadottir.

Heske said Sons of Norway members hope that the ships come to the West Coast.

“I don’t think they’re coming here,” Heske said. “But I’m going to find out. It would take them a year to get around the canals. Those are really slow ships.”

Heske, who said he learned about Ericson “pretty much at home,” said he is not surprised that most Americans don’t know much about the explorer’s exploits.

“You don’t learn much about that in history class,” he said.