Dr. Grauer's Column - If The Vikings Had Stayed (American Holidays)

If The Vikings Had Stayed (American Holidays)
By Stuart Grauer

To be an educator today is to wake each morning amid divergent storms and restless horse latitudes, and to re-dream each night of an oceanic age — vaster, encompassing, and destined to connect.

This year, when I read a small notice about Leif Eriksson Day, a faint memory stirred — one I hadn’t thought much of in a few decades. In elementary school in New York, sometime in the 1950s, we celebrated Leif Eriksson: Leif Eriksson Day! Leif Eriksson Day was first proclaimed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to honor the Norse explorer and the arrival of the first Norwegian immigrants to America in 1825. It still falls on October 9, every year.

I can see the cut-out Viking ships on the classroom desks, smell the construction paper and paste, and imagine Miss McCarthy explaining how Leif had reached North America long before Columbus. I of course didn’t grasp the scale of the story then, only that it sounded brave and northern and cold. We learned how he discovered America, sort of. But reading about Leif again this year brought it back. And made me wonder:

What if the Vikings had never sailed home again? What if history class covered this nevering, and taught us to imagine well? Read on, please, and learn about the most valuable cognitive skill schools must deal with now…

Leif Eriksson was of Norwegian heritage, though he was born and raised in Greenland. His father, Erik the Red, was a Norwegian outlaw who had been banished from Norway for manslaughter around 982 CE. Erik then sailed west and founded the first Norse settlements in Greenland, where Leif was born and grew up.

So, while Leif was ethnically Norwegian, his early life and seafaring identity were shaped in Greenland — the farthest western edge of the Viking world at that time, the place our current President wishes to take over. But could they have taken over us?

A thousand years ago, Leif’s longship slid up onto a stony North American shore, the sail billowing with cold north wind. He called it Vinland for the wild grapes. Imagine he’d stayed. What if he built his longhouse where Boston would one day rise, his sons and daughters spreading inland like our searching, wagon-train pioneers? What would that have done to Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day?

When Columbus was still begging kings for ships, Viking children in this alternate America would already be riding mustangs, building turf-roofed meeting halls beside redwood groves, and trading with the Iroquois in runic script. Their maps would reach from “Erik’s Fjord” (Hudson Bay) to “Thor’s Canyon” (You call it: Arizona).

The U.S., in our new version, was never “United States” at all. It was The Vinland Thing, a federation of small clans bound by storytelling, shipcraft, and laws carved into driftwood. Democracy had roots not in Philadelphia but in a smoky longhouse on the shores of Lake Superior. Every October, when the first frost came, citizens gathered for debates held with mead horns instead of microphones in honor of our nation’s “discovery.”

The American flag? A field of deep ocean blue with a white longship in the center — stars replaced by runes for courage, freedom, and kinship. Congress opened each session by swearing oaths on the Edda (epic Norse compilation of sagas), and instead of the Statue of Liberty, a colossal bronze Leif stood in New York Harbor, staring west, axe on his shoulder, ready to meet whatever came next.

Greenland and Canada? So, some people in the U.S. think we should own them, but they would own us. Back in Leif’s day, they would have been provinces of Vinland, Arctic highways of trade. And Washington D.C.? Just another fjord town. But what of education?

School the Vinland Way

So, what of school? In this vision, schools in Vinland would have been as wild and wide open as the land itself. Children learned navigation before arithmetic and could tie ten kinds of knots before they could write their names. Lessons took place under the open sky — not rows of desks, but circles around fire pits. “Class time” meant hunting, sailing, carving, and listening to elders recount sagas that taught courage, ethics, and the wild.

Back then, of course there were no standardized tests. Students proved their learning through quests: charting rivers, crafting tools, or reciting epic tales of their ancestors. Redwood groves and frozen lakes would be classrooms. Every child would be apprenticed to a craft: blacksmith, healer, storyteller, or explorer. Schools were not institutions so much as communities of mastery. The word “education”, which comes from the Latin roots to draw forth, would mean something more like: to become seaworthy. What nobler goal?

The People of the First Light

And, what of the Native Americans — the People of the First Light? In this version of history, they were never conquered by Europeans but converged. The Norse, already accustomed to harsh landscapes and kin-based societies, found kinship in Native nations, not enemies.

Their meeting was symbiotic, not destructive. The Norse brought metallurgy, shipbuilding, and written lore; the Native peoples offered deep ecological knowledge, astronomy, and medicine. The two worlds braided together — longhouses beside wigwams, sagas woven into creation stories.

In this dream, Lakota and Viking alike would teach their children that every person carries a spirit of the sea and the soil, and that leadership means listening: to wind, to water, to elders. Totems and runestones could stand side by side. Canoes and longships could share harbors.

In this America, there were no first “discoverers” and “discovered” — only partners exploring what it means to be human on a vast, breathing continent.

Of course, in the spell of dreaming, something is left out. History does not really move like melting in a pot. If Vikings and Native peoples had blended their worlds, what would have been preserved, and what might have vanished? Would the Norse use of iron have changed the balance of nature and power?

Today

What oral traditions and spiritual ways have survived our written law? Any? These are questions history classes could explore, and just the act of asking them is part of what makes us …educated — to never stop wondering how our stories might have turned out. The educated know how to pick up the debate and they spend their time considering all factors…not passing judgement.

Today, even if we toy with imagining a Vinland America, Americans are still fighting over who gets to write the origin stories of this land. In October 2025, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation declaring October 13, 2025 (the second Monday in October), Columbus Day, restoring it as the sole federal observance and omitting mention of Indigenous Peoples’ Day (also observed the second Monday in October) — reversing the prior practice under President Biden of recognizing both.

Trump’s proclamation frames Columbus as a “true American hero” and accuses “left-wing radicals” of trying to erase his legacy. It is also a welcome homage to Italian Americans. Both at the same time. Meanwhile, at the same time, many states and cities continue to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day or to replace Columbus with a celebration of Native resilience.

In our alternate Vinland, maybe October also belongs to Leif’s voyage, to the first meetings between Norse and Native peoples, to a tradition of non-conquest rather than conquest. That’s the dream. In our real world, we wake up still debating which names, which myths, and which holidays we will allow to stand. And not only in the month of October.

The issue and question is this:

Can we or can we not live with competing viewpoints?

Can we get over the fact that people we disagree with are smart, and that they for the most part are doing their best with their limited information? Can we just listen?

An amazing, ironic finding I have made is how people seem to understand my point of view better when I just listen to them than when I righteously press the certainty of my opinion in their face. And yet, when I seem to win an argument by virtue of my superior facts, I often wake up feeling no gain, or at a loss.

The original American metaphor was “melting pot”: we were all supposed to form a country where we blended together. But this has long been replaced in the American psyche and schoolhouse as the “salad bowl.” We all live together and the different ingredients make us more interesting and stronger.

I don’t need you to practice my opinions or folkways. We are diverse, and that is our strength.

To me, for our October holidays, I’m happy to have:

• Leif Eriksson Day (October 9),
• Columbus Day (the second Monday in October), and
• Indigenous Peoples’ Day (the second Monday in October).

None of these worlds were entirely peaceable. But none subscribed to intimidation, either. It’s easy to take sides, but the best role of educators and of great parents is not to win or dominate. The great teachers find ways to elicit diverse viewpoints regardless of their own findings. Their students speak their dissent fearlessly because they are in a democracy. They feel free to speak their mind.

Is this happening? When this is not happening, we know democracy is at risk, while in our high seasons as a nation and in our schools, we co-exist in this way.

Naturally, the Vikings did not stay. They left some sagas and a few turf ruins. Columbus’s voyages, on the other hand, did not leave. His men built fortified settlements, sent subsequent ships, enslaved Indigenous people (in Hispaniola, Caribbean), and initiated what would be centuries of European colonization. Also, they built walls, wrote laws, and created nations.

As we recall or study Leif Eriksson, our students have the opportunity to form the faint schoolroom memories of earlier, simpler days— construction paper longships, the smell of paste, and a story of another world. History students will find it a fascinating thought experiment to imagine an America forged by Vikings and Europeans and guided by the wisdom of the land’s first peoples — bold, sea-hearted, endlessly curious.

If Leif had stayed, The Grauer School motto might be, “Row hard, listen to the wind, and fear no horizon.” Or maybe, “Live the dream.”  But here’s the motto I like: “Listen.”