I wonder what those who were living in America for 15,000 years when Erikson arrived would have to say about this?
News flash, there were already people here. Giving credit to either the vikings or Columbus would be like me letting myself into your house while you’re at work and discovering your television set. It was the age of conquest and the stone age Native Americans were no match for my ancestors. The vikings may have been the first Europeans in the New World, but they didn’t have the means to take it, and in the end, that’s all that matters.
Columbus changed the world. Leif not so much...
Ericson was far from the first person to discover the Americas. There’s a whole genre of literature devoted to the possibility that some other ancient culture may have landed here before the Europeans in the Age of Discovery. From the Chinese, to Arabs, to ancient Egypt, to Phoenicia; but so what? Columbus’s discovery of the New World was only the vanguard of the European expansion, whereby the various nations of the continent explored and colonized the whole world, in the process creating the modern era. Ericson discovered some new lands, and the world went on as before, nothing changed. That’s why Columbus get’s the credit, while Lief unfortunately (for him) gets the historical footnote.
With my 100% Scandinavian bloodline, perhaps Leif is a distant relative. :^)
How else can you explain red haired “tall” pale skinned “Indians” in Nevada that used weapons that no local Indian had ever seen before. (Like Axes?) - Shields. - Helmets. - Leg protectors. - Wooden chest plates.
And if the Columbus had not discovered America, the Arabs with their superior seafaring technology (they had the astrolobe, afterall) could have claimed America as their own. A horrific thought that is only coming true in our present times: Obama, Arab American liar
His blue eyes and size scared the living crap out of the natives!
Scandanavia and especially Iceland (where Leif sailed from) was so far removed from the European mainstream in AD 1000 that Leif Ericson’s discovery remained a secret...and a “secret discovery” is a contradiction in terms. Certainly Leif’s discovery is fact, and was an amazing act of courage, but, none-the-less, it wasn’t known to the rest of Europe until 800+ years later.
Saint Brendan (may) have “discovered” America too—100 years before Leif, or even the Egyptians.... so what? All of these, IF they happened, were again of the “secret discovery” variety.
Columbus though, having been sent by a wealthy mainstream European kingdom, got America KNOWN. His was anything BUT a “secret” discovery (though there were educated people, even in Northern Europe, like Dr. Martin Luther, who didn’t believe another two continents were discovered.)
Even after Columbus, it took Northern Europeans another 100 years before they started exploring and settling the newly uncovered lands...(while the Spanish and Portuguese explored, conquered and settled the Caribbean, and Latin America by that time... )
So a “discovery” which remains covered up, for whatever the reasons...cannot really count as a discovery—as in the meaning of the word, things must get known.
Don’t forget, the Natives were almost stone age, 15,000 years behind Europe. They didn’t even have the wheel or the knowledge to forge metals!
Certainly Ericson “discovered” America, as did many before him. But once Columbus “discovered” America, it stayed discovered.
The diocese of Vinland, established by Leif Ericson’s colonists, was only lost a few mere decades before Columbus.
Then, only a few thousand years later, my great grandfather, Gus Swanson arrived in time to help lay the cobblestones for his adopted homestown’s main street.
Bjarni Hurjulfson. No kidding. The sagas of King Olaf, older than the other Norsement sagas, give credit to Bjarni Hurjulfson as early as 985. Ericson’s sagas may have caught the Norse imagination more, because he went as a Christian evangelist in the year 1000 AD.
Did he bring Smallpox and slaves? No. Then %$#@ him.
Columbus had better documentation.