Leif Erikson Day 2008

The following video was taken during last years Leif Erikson day celebration and includes one of three excellent speeches given during the days event. Due to it's growing popularity we have decided to reproduce this specific speech in its entirety for you to enjoy. We hope to see many old and new faces at this years event and look forward to another remarkable celebration.




Friends, you have just listened to my colleagues speak about the history of Leif Erikson and Thorfinn Karlsefni and their journey across the sea that resulted in the discovery of the lands where you and your families now make your homes.

This episode of European history and achievement is so vitally important to our heritage and culture that it must be celebrated by us and taught to our children.

We owe a debt of gratitude and respect to Leif Erikson and his crew for their sacrifice and ultimate discovery of this continent for Europeans.

Many of you have just learned today about this important part of our shared European history.

But why even worry about this stuff in the first place some may ask. Because it is our duty.
We learn the history of the great men of our past and retell their tales because we owe it to these heroes that their names and deeds shall not fade into the darkness of the time.

We know that there is an attempt by those in power to diminish and denigrate the European achievements in all fields of endeavor: science, philosophy, the arts and most of all, history.

We know that in many European societies, even here in the North America, our children are being taught that their history and culture are not only no longer relevant and something to be ashamed of.

This is clearly a great threat to our people, because, as some great historical philosophers have pointed out, “A people robbed of their history cannot survive as a people.”

This brings us to the second important reason for studying history. Our duty to the Future.

The history of our people provides us with examples and lessons that we must re-learn ourselves and teach to our children so that we and they may meet the challenges that our own age and future ages may throw before us.

Today, even the most complacent among us are beginning to realize that things are beginning to fall apart.

That the dust clouds and hoof-beats of history are about to descend into our valley and reek havoc, just like the Mongols did in the 1200‘s.

Great challenges will face all peoples in the coming years.

What can we do? What can we do? That will be the great question asked with more and more urgency and panic in the coming years. What can we do?

We can resist! But how? There is a path to follow just as Leif Erikson followed a path pointed by the stars to the New World. The European peoples from everywhere can turn to the past, the ancient past, to relearn from their ancestors, like Leif Erikson, how to face challenges and win.

We have done well in the last 3000 years. Too well some would say.

We have explored and conquered a world and gotten soft and fat and lazy in the process.

We have allowed some among us to turn against their own culture.

We have allowed them to gain power and pilot our ship toward the whirlpool of self-destruction.

Our own elected leaders have other interests in mind when they make their decisions on the economy, war and peace and social issues.

We must relearn how to fight, how to face and overcome these challenges.

Those lessons are in our past, in our blood.

That is where the tales of our heroes, and their adventures, of our Gods and their myths will come and play their part.

They will teach us again how to live, how to fight, how to face fear and uncertainty, how to triumph.

Let me take you back to an afternoon, such as this, over one thousand years ago. To a dock in Iceland.

The long ship was being provisioned and loaded.

The crew were saying farewell to their wives and children, maybe for the last time.

And over in the corner of the dock, a man sat pouring over his primitive, incomplete maps, staring at his lodestone, that strange gift from that fell from the sky that always points back to the North Star from where it came.

That natural compass that will allow him to sail a true course through the fog and uncharted waters.

This man was Leif Erikson and he and his crew were about to set off into the unknown, into history and into legend.

The dangers that he and his men feared, whether they were fanciful, such as falling off the edge of the Earth or sea monsters, or whether they were real dangers such as storms, running out of food and water or just getting lost and never finding land again, were fears that they had to face and overcome.

When that long ship cast off from the dock and unfurled its sail that day, it began its fateful journey into the unknown.

They were successful as now know.

But to them, sailing into uncharted waters, disaster and death were as close as one wrong decision, one miscalculation, one moment of hesitation or weakness.

They are like you now, sailing into the unknown.

The challenges we will face in the near future, the fear and uncertainty you will face in your own lives will equal what Leif Erikson and his men faced a thousand years ago.

How do we win? How do you make sure that tales are told of you and your people in the future.

The answer is simple, be as Leif Erikson.

Just as the sea and nature was a foe to Leif Erikson you too have enemies.

There are those who have different plans for the world than you do. Different plans for your children.

The truth is, the greatest fear in their hearts is that Europeans will begin to re-connect with their true nature.

The nature that is represented by Leif Erikson and other great European heroes.

That would upset all of their plans.

Once you begin to read the tales of your ancestors you will learn what type of person you need to be to rise above the danger that surrounds you.

You will begin to think differently, you will begin to express the spirit of true Europeans.

Once that strength, which has not been seen for over sixty years, is unleashed and allowed to do what it does best, the result will be the rebuilding of what was and the beginning of a new golden age.

Now with the very foundations of this unnatural society the merchant class has created, beginning to crumble, our moment is coming soon. We must be ready. We must prepare.

Will we succeed? Who knows, remember it is a journey into uncharted waters.

It will be a great struggle.

Real Vikings, would not want to be the ones who are born and live after the battle is won.

They want to be the ones present at the start, when things look bleak and dark.

They want to be the ones who help turn the tide, who risk their lives and forge the final victory.

Those are the ones the great sagas are written about.

Remember, no one who dies at home, warm in their beds goes to Valhalla.

Get to it, prepare, the clock is ticking.

The future history of your people, the history yet to be written, will be your judge and your gift to your children.

Gentlemen and Ladies, it was a great privilege to come and speak before you here today. Thank you very much.

Leif Erikson Day Celebration 2009