in Greenland. Erik the Red and his followers were not Christian when they settled in Greenland, but worshippers of Odin and Thor, though they relied chiefly on their own might and strength. Christianity was introduced among them about the year 1000, though Erik the Red continued to adhere to the religion of his fathers to his dying day.
The first white man whose eyes beheld any part of the American continent was the Norseman, Bjarne Herjulfson, who saw this land in the year 986. The first white man who, to our knowledge, planted his feet on the soil of the American continent was Leif Erikson, the son of Erik the Red, in the year 1000; and Leif’s brother Thorvald, who died in 1002, was the first white man and the first Christian who was buried beneath American sod. Thorfin Karlsefne, who landed in 1007, was the first white man to found a settlement within the limits of the present United States, and his wife, Gudrid, was the first white woman who came to Vinland. In the year 1008 she gave birth to a son in Vinland. The boy, who received in baptism the name Snorre, was the first person of European descent born in the new world. In 1112 Erik Upsi settled as bishop in Greenland and in 1121 this same bishop went on a missionary journey from Greenland to Vinland, the first visit of a Christian minister to the American continent. The last of these interesting voyages before the rediscovery of America by Columbus was in the year 1347 when a Greenland ship with a crew of eighteen men came from Nova Scotia (Markland) to Straumfjord in Iceland. Thus it appears that the Vinland voyages extended over a period of about 350 years and to within 145 years of the rediscovery of America by Columbus in 1492. From the accounts of these voyages and settlements we get our first knowledge and descriptions of the aborigines of America.
While Leif Erikson was the first white man to plant his feet on the eastern shores of the American continent, it was left to another plucky Scandinavian to become the discoverer
of the narrow body of water which separates America from Asia. Vitus Bering was a Dane born in Jutland, in Denmark, in 1680. He entered the service of Russia and in 1725 was made commander-in-chief of one of the greatest geographical expeditions ever undertaken. He explored the Sea of Kamchatka and during this voyage in 1728 he discovered Bering Strait and ascertained that Asia was not joined to America, thus becoming the discoverer of the extreme western boundary line of the continent.
The first visit of Scandinavians to America proper in post-Columbian times occurred in the year 1619, just a year before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. In the spring of that year King Christian IV fitted out two ships, the Eenhjorningen and the Lamprenen, for the purpose of finding a northwest passage to Asia. The commander of this expedition was the Norwegian, Jens Munk, born at Barby in southern Norway in 1579. Sailing from Copenhagen with his two ships and sixty-six men May 9, 1619, he explored Hudson Bay and took possession of the surrounding country in the name of his sovereign and gave it the name of Nova Dania. All the members of this expedition perished except Jens Munk and two of his crew, who returned to Norway September 25, 1620, the undertaking having proved a complete failure. The ship chaplain on this expedition was a Danish Lutheran minister, Rasmus Jensen Aarhus, the first minister to preach Lutheranism in the new world. He died February 20, 1620, on the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay at the mouth of the Churchill River. His last sermon was a funeral sermon preached from his own death bed.
Norwegians and Danes came to New Amsterdam (New York) at a very early period. Traces of Scandinavians in New York can be found as early as 1617. In 1704 these Norwegians and Danes built a stone church on the corner of Broadway and Rector streets, where regular services were held in the Danish language until the property was sold to
Trinity Church, the present churchyard occupying the site of the early building. The first directory published in New York shows many names of unquestionable Norwegian or Danish origin.
It is well known that the Swedes founded a settlement on the Delaware in 1638, and the Swedish language was used in a Philadelphia church as late as 1823. John Morton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and an active member of the Continental Congress, was a descendant of the Swedes of Delaware. Robert Anderson, the gallant defender of Fort Sumter, against which the first gun of the Civil War was fired, was also a scion of the Swedes on the Delaware, and so it appears that love of freedom and patriotism and statecraft and valor came to America not only in the Mayflower but also in the Kalmarnyckel and Vogelgrip, which brought the first Swedish settlers to America in 1638.
How many Norwegians landed in America between the years 1492 and 1821 it is impossible to determine. There are no government statistics to guide us and we know there was no regular or systematic emigration from any of the Scandinavian countries. It is certain that no Norwegians came in collective bodies to form settlements, and we can trace them only through their descendants who have kept family records or through public documents or published works where they happen to be mentioned. In this way some of the Scandinavians who settled in New Amsterdam have been found.
In a similar manner we find the names of Norwegians and Swedes who took part in the war of the Revolution. There is the case of Thomas Johnson. In Volume 28 (1874) of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register we find a full account of Thomas Johnson who served under Paul Jones, first in the crew of the Ranger and afterwards in the crew of the Bonhomme Richard. Johnson was the son of a