ABSTRACT
The historical narrative of Leif Erikson as the first white discoverer of America in the year 1000 was a usable past for and a central element in the homemaking mythology of Norwegian and Scandinavian Americans. It made it possible to create a linkage between the Norse, freedom-loving and law-abiding society in the Viking age and the contemporary American democracy. This chapter examines how America’s Norse heritage was reinterpreted, disseminated and culturally recreated through a range of means by Norwegian Americans and the broader Scandinavian immigrant community, mainly from the 1870s to the 1930s. The Viking legacy could also serve as a usable past for the Protestant New England elite, seeing it as a counter-narrative to the southern European Catholic promotion of Columbus. The narrated and commemorated Norse past of America is an interesting example of boreal medievalism and provides an opportunity to position the Scandinavian diaspora in a hierarchical ethnoracial landscape of emerging importance in contemporary North America. It could also serve to strengthen transatlantic ties and identities. In this chapter, the Leif Erikson narrative is discussed in a transnational and transatlantic perspective, focusing on historical writings, the erection of monuments, Norwegian representation at the World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and the celebration of Leif Erikson Day until its initial breakthrough with the first, although singular, official national celebration in 1935 (annually marked since 1964).
