The growing racist, white supremacist, altright movement (not to mention a plethora of recent television documentaries about ancient America) has taken on an inconaspect. They have embraced ancient Nordic, Viking culture. As strange as this sounds, it is nothing new. The fondness for Vikings has a long pedigree. In the early nineteenth century, some in the United States began to believe that rather than Christopher Columbus, Vikings—Leif Eriksen in particular—had discovered America. There was little evidence to support this notion, and what supporters held up as such was dubious at best.
The belief that Eriksen discovered America was largely confined to the realms of America’s wealthy, Protestant, “Native Born,” big-city Caucasian elites. Theorists such as Harvard chemist-turned-amateur-historian Eben Norton Horsford published books and articles, lobbied politicians, surveyed sites, and put up statues declaring Leif Eriksen the “true” discoverer of America. Underneath the insistence upon the Viking theory of American Discovery was a deep-seated fear and hatred of immigrants—especially the Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants then pouring in—who were seen by the Viking fans as degenerate outsiders ruining the country. That underlying bigotry is also behind the current resurgence in Viking infatuation by those who believe that everything means something in Viking.
There are two Viking stories here. Genuine archaeological evidence of Norse explorers who reached North America centuries before Columbus was discovered in the 1960s. The Norse reached L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland and established settlements there. There is no evidence, however, that they traveled much farther south than that. The other Viking theory, established long before L’Anse aux Meadows was discovered, is problematic. The original idea of the Norse discovery of America had specific individuals, most famously Leif Eriksen, having come to the new world and exploring and setting up encampments and even cities throughout New England and as far south as Florida. These claims have no evidence for them aside from a few Old Norse texts that are more literary and romantic than factual and a few supposed artifacts with even less veracity. These are the Vikings some have used to inspire dark, racist, anti-immigrant feelings.