Opinion/Stead: Let's celebrate Leif Erickson instead of Christopher Columbus this weekend

It started when he bought a boat from a guy named Barney.

Of course, the guy spelled it Bjarni and it wasn’t an ordinary boat. In 985, Bjarni Herjólfsson had been sailing from Iceland to visit his parents in their new summer place in Greenland when he was blown off course and saw land further to the west. He didn’t pursue it but sailed back to his folks, and nobody paid much attention to his story.

But when Leif Erickson bought the boat, he listened to Barney’s fish story about a vast land to the west and left Iceland in about 996 with a crew of 35 to search for it.

After landing at "Helluland," or Flat-Stone Land, now regarded as having been Labrador, and "Markland," or Wood Land, possibly Newfoundland or Maine, Leif Eriksson sailed south and finally came to Cape Cod, or "Vinland," as the original washashore.

They found wild grapes to make wine, the salmon and cod were plentiful, and the water was fresh. As the saga says, “The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house feeding in winter, for there came no frost in winter, and little did the grass wither there. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland or Iceland.”

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Eriksson and the crew spent the winter here, at a place they named Leifsbud-ir, returning to Greenland the following year, 1001.  Leif never came back, although his brother Thorvald spent time on Cape later — another family spending time on the Cape as a vacation.

The Cape has several Viking sites.  A few years ago, the replica Viking longboat, the Islendingur came to the Cape as part of a four-month reenactment of Erickson’s trip.  The crew, with former Icelandic Ambassador Einar Benediktsson, asked to visit some of these locations.

For instance, there is a rock with Viking carvings and runes in a cellar in Provincetown.  The rock is so big that the cellar hole and foundation were built around it instead of trying to move it, so the carvings were not only saved but preserved from the elements.

At the northern end of Bass River, there are holes carved out to moor a boat. There is no doubt among scholars that Leif Erickson was the first European to arrive in North America, and many believe that he came to Cape Cod as well.

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Today is Leif Erickson Day. Since the Norse traditions are oral instead of written, the date probably has no significance in Erickson’s life. We have no idea when his birthday is. His birth year is only deduced from other events in the Grœnlendinga saga, or the "Saga of the Greenlanders," the idyll that tells of Viking adventures. Oct. 9 was chosen as that was the date a Norwegian ship, the Restauration arrived in New York in 1825, marking the beginning of organized immigration by Norwegians to the United States.

We’ll celebrate a different holiday this weekend, Columbus Day. Every year, there are essays and demonstrations about the European conquerors whom Columbus was the vanguard for.

Native American demonstrators state Columbus began the genocide of indigenous peoples, and exploitation of resources in this hemisphere and also was the first person to initiate the transatlantic slave trade in this hemisphere. They ask why Columbus Day is even a holiday, as the notion of "discovering" a people and culture that had been established for centuries is an insult. And of course, he never actually set foot in North America.

But since Oct. 9 is Leif Erickson Day, why not celebrate that holiday instead?

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Celebrate a European visitor, who was so friendly with the native people, the Skraelings, that when other less enlightened, Europeans came, later on, Native Americans weren’t initially fearful. Stories about the friendly conduct of the blonde-haired men in the long boats had been passed along through time.

The first European visitors to Cape Cod took the land and people as they found them — they didn’t pass ordinances to prevent Skraelings from keeping lobster pots in their front yards, or demand trash pickup at new granite curbs like subsequent washashores. Let’s celebrate a visitor instead of a conqueror after gold and glory, who knew that the best visitors were ones who went home without plundering the place. Happy Leif Erickson Day!

Cynthia Stead is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times and can be contacted at cestead@gmail.com. 

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Leif Erickson Day is celebrated on Oct. 9, he did not come to conquer