If the statues are all about true history, then we need to replace Christoper Columbus with that of Viking Leif Eriksson. Yeah, he barely got a paragraph in my elementary school text book while Columbus even got poems and pageantry. Nearly 500 years before the birth of Christopher Columbus, a band of European sailors left their homeland behind in search of a new world. After crossing the Atlantic, the Vikings encountered a rocky, barren land in present-day Canada. Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that supports the sagas’ stories of the Norse expeditions to America and settlements.