LEIF Gives a Bust to the Hebrides

Hebrides
The new bust as installed on the Island of Lewis.

It's not too late to join LEIF on its final project: presenting a 2-foot-high bust of Leif Erikson to the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. Unveiled in August 2018, the bust completes the list of locations where the sagas say Leif visited or lived. (He was born in Iceland, which already has a Leif Erikson statue!)

LEIF has donated this bust of Leif to the community of Uig on the island of Lewis, where a Viking chess set was discovered, possibly from Trondheim. Additionally, Uig is the most likely place Vikings might have inhabited.

The plaque on the bust at Uig reads as follows:
Leif Erikson was the first recorded European to set foot on American shores. According to the Saga of Erik the Red, in the year 1000 “Leif the Lucky” sailed from his home in Greenland to Trondheim, Norway, and along the way he visited the Outer Hebrides. Later he made his historic journey to Vinland in North America.

This bust of Leif Erikson is modeled after a statue designed by Prof. August Werner for Seattle, Washington, USA (1962). Replicas of the statue have been given to the places Leif lived or visited: Trondheim, Norway (1997); Brattahlid, Greenland (2000); and Vinland, at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada (2013). In 2018, Seattle’s Leif Erikson International Foundation gave this bust as a symbol of international friendship to mark the time Leif spent in the Outer Hebrides.
You can become involved by supporting this project through your donations. We have enjoyed the friends we’ve made through this effort, from the work on the Trondheim statue starting in 1994 through this final gift to the Hebrides in 2018. Thank you for your support and interest in these projects. We hope you will remain engaged with LEIF.

 
CONTACT:
Leif Erikson International Foundation
206-778-1081 •
2245 NW 57th, Seattle, WA 98107