LEIF ERICSON.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19764, 15 April 1926, Page 14

LEIF ERICSON.

NORSE DISCOVERER OF AAIERICA. A NORWEGIAN BELIEF, No true Norwegian doubts that the first white man to set foot bn the soil of America was not Christopher Columbus, but Leif Ericson, the hardy Norseman, whose ship, the sagas relate, was in the ninth century driven by storms to an unknown country, on which he and his companions landed, and which, it is claimed by Norwegian historians, was somewhere in the region of Alassachnsetts. A young Norwegian, Captain Folgoro (says tho Newcastle Weekly Chronicle) now intends to emulate the feat of Ericson by sailing from Bergen to America with three companions in a proper Viking ship, built on the model of the famous Gokstad Viking ship, which is preserved in an Oslo museum. The ship will be 40ft long and 12ft broad, and it is proposed to begin the venturesome trip across tho Atlantic from gßrccn on Alay 17 next. The course will be to Dover, and thence to Cape Finistorro, Aladcira, and Cape Hattcrns, eight miles from Philadelphia. From the last place Captain Folgero will sail to New York, Boston, and Chicago, and next year he intends to continue through the Panama Canal to San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, where he hopes to be able to sell his ship and return to Norway on a modern steamer, having shown the world that it was quite possible for Leif Ericson to have crossed the Atlantic 500 years before Columbus did.