Forget Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize on October 9th, It’s Leif Erikson Day, People!

Posted by ralph on October 11, 2009

When I first read this article, didn’t quite understand the “conspiracy” theory at work here until I caught this line on Wikipedia: “It is also unclear why [the Swedish] Nobel wished the Peace Prize to be administered in Norway.” More interesting to me is that Leif Erikson Day occurs around the Columbus Day holiday weekend (no federal holiday for the Viking, sorry Leif):

Robin Abcarian writes in the LA Times:

Far be it from us to advance a completely unfounded conspiracy theory, but is it at all possible that the Swedes have something against the Norse? Otherwise, how to account for the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Obama on Leif Erikson Day.

Erikson, as many will remember from their world history classes, was the first European to set foot on North American soil (well, Canada, actually), beating out Christopher Columbus by nearly 500 years.

The discovery went unnoticed, apparently, because Europe was busy with the Crusades. (At least that is the theory advanced in this delightfully easy-to-read essay about Erikson that we found online.)

Erikson, of Norwegian parentage, was born in Iceland in 960, the son of Eric the Red (hence the last name) and grew up in Greenland. Around 986, while tooling around on his yacht, he happened upon what would later be known as New Foundland.