Friends and fellow citizens:- It was a happy thaught to build the Viking ship and send it on its mission on education this Columbian year. As a citizen of Wisconsin I am proud to be invited to be here today and to take a modest part in this hearty welcome extended by the metropolis of our state to these Vikings of the nineteenth century. It is also most fitting that this welcome should be given in the shadow of the Leif Ericson monument.
We are assembled here to celebrate the successful accomplishment of a bold voyage across the Atlantic in a perfect replica of an old Viking ship exhumed on the coast of Norway, the voyage undertaken by the feariess Captain Magnus Anderson and his resolute companions partly to illustrate the degree of civilization and knowledge of men during the viking age, but more particulary to emphazise the discovery of America by the Norseman, Leif Erikson, in the year 1,000, nearly 500 years before Columbus. Captain Anderson and his companions desired to that a voyage to Vinland the Good in such a ship was entirely feasable and the
demonstration has been most successful from every point of view.
By our marvellous courage and brilliand success, you my dear Captain Anderson have not only brought Leif Erikson and the Norse discoverers of America into prominent recognition, but you have also conquered for yourself a place in history among the sturdiest representatives of your race and people.
This picturesque ship as she lies rocking in our port, brings visibly to our minds the Long Serpent built for King Olaf Trygvason by the celebrated ship carpenter , Thorberg, who is famous in the old sagas for his skill as ship-builder. The keel of the Long Serpent was 140 feet long. None but the choicest material was used in its construction. It contained thirty-four rowing benches and its stem and stern were overlaid with gold. The Long Serpent inspired Longfellow`s poem The Building of the Ship, one of the most charming productions of that gifted American poet.
"Comparisons are odiour" says Shakespeare, and I no not desire on this occasion to utter a wordy derogatory to the great fame that jusly belongs to the great and immortal Christopher Columbus. I shall only call attention to the fact that this Viking ship made the pasage from Scotland to Now Foundland in 11 days, which was about as good time as was made by any ocean craft forty years ago. The Norse Viking ships compare favorably with the ships of other nations, which have been used in later times in circumnavigating the earth and were in every way adapted for an ocean voyage. They certainly were as good seagoing vessels as the grotesque caravels of
Columbus. The old sagas tell us that the old Norsemen fully understood the importance of cultivating the study of navigation. They knew how to calculate the course of the sun and moon and how to measure time by the stars: and here, in the presence of this grand monument, in the presence of these modern Vikings it is proper to say that the old Norse Vikings were the men who taught the world to navigate the ocean. I am sustained by the highest historical authority when I say that the other peoples of Europe were limited in their nautical knowledge to coast navigation. The Norsemen and foremost among them Leif Erikson himself, taught the world pelagic navigation.
They demonstrated the possibility of venturing out of sight of land and in this sense, at last we may say with perfect propriety, that the Norsemen prepared the way for the great Columbus.
But I fadey that some one among my hearers may be objecting that O a, bestewomg tpp much praise on those Vikings of old, and insisting that they are not worthy of being glorified in this manner. I fancy that you may have been taught that those necessaut waves of old Norse Vikings that broke and dashed with endless fury on the coast of England and the continent, that those vast boards, wich the populous north poured from her frozen loins and which fell like locusts on the south and west shaking the Roman empire to its very foundation and remodeling all Europe were nothing but warlike, bloody, cruel, heathen pirates I reply
that the facts are wholly-
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against such as view of them. When the Anglo-Saxon and French chroniclers depict the Norsemen as devils and wild barbarians without faith, without laws, and without a spark of human sensibility, when they paint them as wasps covered with stings and as revenous wolves driven by an insatiable thirst for blood, and reveling in murder and destruction, then we casinot of course, be obliged to take the words of those conquered by them for it; the less so, since they frequentlu are forced to contradict themselves and praise those same ravenous wolves and stingful wasps not only fro their courage and fine exterior to their words
and promises.
If you will read the works of the learned Norwegian historian, Sars, and the old Norse sagas you will get a much more favorable impression of the Vikings. You will discover that it was not only a low greed of booty that drove the Norsemen to foreign landsk but also nobler motives. They went abroad not only to gather wealth and and property, but also in quest of honor. Viking expeditions were regarded as a school for young men of high birth, in which they might win fame by heroic achievements and in which they might become educated and polished by intercourse with people in foreign lands. The viking was frequently a merchant, and when he returned to his home,
having won fee and fame, he lived n his farm, a peaceful and lawabiding citizen differing from his neighbor only in this, that he possessed more culture and enjoyed more luxuries, but there is no evidence that his sense of right and justice had become demoralized. Even the Anglo-Saxon and French chroniclers admit, that the viking very unwillingly pledge hsiword, but that he also very unwillingly broke it, when once it was pledged. To each other the vikings showed unflinching fidelity and they would even sacrifice life if need be for their comrades. In their whole conduct they showed a discipline, a unity, a fidelity which were the secret of their success. When
Rolf came to found Normandy in France, one of his men was asked who was their master, he replied "We have no master, we are all equal." They consisted of warriors who had chosen their leader and the leader could depend on their obedience. In time of need they would present an unbroken front. Such a disipline voluntarily submitted to and united with liverty is evidence of a moral strenght which no barbarians could possess. Such were the germs of liberty that were scattered in the soil of Normandy, where the Normans were first to produce a French liberature.
Such were the germs of liberty that afterwards budded in England`s Magna Charta and that finally developed fullbloom flowers in our American declaration of independence, and thus it is that the apparently insighificant event, that Rolf and his men became masters of the half devestated borders of the Seine river has come to be one of the most epoch-making events in medieval and modern history.
I think it wold be a pity if no refrence were made to Iceland on this occasion. Iceland became the hinge upon which the door swings which opened America to Europe. It was the settlement of Iceland by the Norsemen and the frequent voyages that led to the discovery and settlement first of Greenland and then of Vinland or America and it is due to the intellectual culture and fine historical taste of the Icelanders that carefully prepared records of the Norse voyages were kept first to teach pelagic navigation to Columbus, and afterwards to solve for us the mysteries concerning the first discovery of this continent.
Not intimidated by any foreign power, guided solely by their own natural genius, and influenced by no other principles than the love of liberty, seemixty, and independence, those Icelandic republicans combined their interests and their energies in support of a political system at once calculated to protect the rights of the individual and to inspire the community at large with sentiments of exalted partiotism. And this is not all. Those Icelandic republicans living amid gravel deserts and fields of ice, surrounded by roaring geysers and the glare of volcanic flames, now witnessing the plain belch forth mud, now feeling the earth beneath them tremble in the
throes of earthquake, living between frost and fire, living in a land where during the summers twilight and dawn go hand in hand and kiss each other on the mountain tops, but living, too, in a land where most of the year is winter when the sun nearly or entirely disappears and none but northern lights flicker and paint the colors of the rainbow on the lurid sky above them; tremes meat, they produced a literature, they produced skalds and saga- men, who command the adminnistration of all lands and ages. Iceland had its gold period in literature while a well nigh impenetrable darknes overspread the European continent. Iceland had its noon-day sun in
literature while continental Europe groped in midnight.
Iceland was at its zenith while the the rest of Europe was at its nadirti. By this interesting historical fact Iceland gave evidence to the world that it is liberty, freedom, that had the power to unfold the blossoms of song and story. Did not Greek literature and art blossom most luxuriantly during the republic? Did not Rome, too, unfold her fairest flowers before the empire was founded by her Ceasars?
Nay, to use the language of the great Norse poet Wergeland, "where thrives aught good and beautiful and great in thralldom?" Smother the pasture and the grass will not grow green, getter the eagle and he will die on his lofty pinnacle; damn the stream that hastens in its musical meandering on its way to the sea and it will turn into a putrid pool. Nature, strong and beautiful, hates all bondage. Can then, the fountains of the human spirit, the flights of thaught endure tralldom? Shall thaught merely shine within its own prison like lamenting Aladdin`s lamp in his narrow cave?
No, press; lift thy valiant arm and free the world in all thy wrath from bondage.
Because the Norsemen in Iceland preserved the freedom inherited from their forefathers their island became a sacred sanctuary in which our, old Teutonic literature, mythology, laws and history were preserved.
It became the Patmos where the apocalypse of our Teutonic past was recorded, and as such it is to be respected and blessed by thinking, libertyloving men and women so long as the Teutonic race endureth.
Let us remember Leif Erikson, who in the year 1,000 was the first white man known to have turned the prow of his ship to the west for the purpose of finding Thorwals, the first European and the first Christian buried beneath American sod. Let us not forget Thorfin and Gudrid, who established the first European colony in New England! nor their little son Snorre, the first man of European blood whose birthplace was in the new world. And considering how long the Norse discoverers had to wait for proper recognition let us take this lesson that truth crushed to earth will raise again. Truth may often lie darkened and hid in unstudied records, bit it is like unto the
beam of light from a stan in some far distant region of the universe. After thousands of years it reaches some heavenly body and gives light.
We should not underrate the importance of the Norse discovery of America because their settlements on our New England shores did not become permanent. It was no fault of the Norsemen that they did not have firearms of defense against the natives. Their higher culture alone could not protect them against the swarms of savages that attacked them; besides Europe was not ready to colonize a new continent. Had the Vinland settlement become permanent I suppose I would today have addressed you in Icelandic instead of English.
Last but not least let us forever remember these hardy Norsemen who have crossed the Atlantic in a genuine Viking ship in old viking fashion in the year 1993. Welcome, thrice welcome to Wisconsin, where so many of your kinsmen have found happy homes in this century.
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