Perspective

The Vikings in America

The following is an excerpt from View from the Right, Volume I: Heritage and Foundations by Alain de Benoist, published by Arktos in 2017.

The Vikings in America

Every year, on the 9th of October, America commemorates Leif Erikson Day — three days before Columbus Day. This results from a debate which took place on the 4th of March 1964 at the United States Congress, in the course of which the senator Thor Tollefson launched to the podium and proclaimed:

‘I am Norwegian like Leif Erikson. My father has given to me the name of a brother of Leif, Thorwald Erikson, who was killed by the Indians in Massachusetts. And I am proud of him.’

At the end of the debate, at the suggestion of senator Hubert H. Humphrey, to whom the book by J. Kr. Tornöe, Norsemen Before Columbus (Allen & Unwin, London 1965) is dedicated, President Johnson decided to set the 9th of October as the date for the true discovery of America.

More than four centuries after Christopher Columbus, the Americans thus confirmed that the Genoese navigator had had illustrious predecessors: the Vikings.

It was a summer morning in the year 982. A robust ship sways on the waters of the Breidi Fjord on the northwest coast of Iceland. The vessel is loaded with materials and provisions. Forty men are on board, including fifteen rowers. The sharp-eyed captain stands at the prow.

This is duke Erik the Red.[1] Born in Norway, outlawed in his country, he leaves for the unknown.

Rich in detail, highly colourful, the accounts of the Viking expeditions feature in the collections of Sagas bequeathed to us by the European North: the Landnàmabok or ‘Book of colonisations’, the Flateyarbok (cf. the English Annals), the Hauksbok, etc., all set down in the fourteenth century.

The Landnàmabok, the book containing the national Icelandic epic, relates how, towards the year 900, a Norwegian named Gunbiorn, sailing towards Iceland, was diverted far to the west where he glimpsed a large unknown island.

In 982, Erik the Red, searching for this mysterious land, discovered Greenland, which had not yet been covered by ice (hence ‘green land’). Returning to Iceland, Erik chartered a veritable fleet: twenty-five boats, six hundred men, a sufficient quantity of livestock. Only fourteen vessels will arrive in safe harbours. Thus begins, in 996, the colonisation of Greenland.

During the same period, the Icelander Bjarni Herjulfson gets lost in fog while making his way to Greenland and ends up travelling as far as Labrador. Following the coasts for nine days, he thinks he has found an island. Weary of struggling, he returns to the north where he rejoins the Greenlandic encampments. But he recounts his adventure. And imaginations are enkindled.

Leif Erikson, son of the outlaw, is a friend of Bjarni. Captivated by his accounts, he cannot resist the call of the sea. In 999, he too quits Norway for Greenland.

In 1003, he raises his first expedition. Forty men accompany him. Following the route indicated by Bjarni, Leif successively discovers Helluland (‘land of flat stones’), Markland (‘land of forests’), and Vinland (‘land of wine’, or ‘land of the vine’).

The first two of these lands correspond to Baffin Island and Labrador. The third is situated between Boston and New York, on the site of New England: the remains of an encampment (Leifbudir in the Sagas) have been discovered on the small island of Chappaquiddick, on lake Menemsha.

Having spent more than a year in Vinland, the Scandinavian explorers return to Greenland. Leif takes the place of his father, who had died in the interim. He will not leave again.

In 1006, one of Leif Erikson’s brothers, Thorwald, organises a second expedition. He is killed by Indians the following year. A third brother, Thorstein, consequently decides to search for his body. But he fails to reach Vinland and dies shortly after his return.

His widow, Gudrid, is remarried to an Icelander recently arrived in Greenland, Thorstein Karselfni. He also embarks in turn, in the spring of the year 1011.

The expedition includes 160 people, including two women: Gudrid, and a natural daughter of Erik, Freydis. Arriving in Vinland, the immigrants set up a permanent camp. This time, the colonisation of America genuinely begins. It spreads rapidly.

When Leif Erikson dies in 1025 at the age of forty-six, colonies are already installed on a good part of the continent, from Labrador to Virginia. Some expeditions have been undertaken to the interior of the land, in the direction of the Great Lakes, to current North Dakota and Minnesota. In total, more than four thousand people are scattered across Vinland, living primarily by trading.

The Grœnlendinga Saga even records the nomination of the first ‘bishop of Greenland and Vinland’, Eirik Gnupsson, who would have taken up his duties towards 1115.

From Cartography to Ethnography

  1. W. Ceram writes in Le premier américain (Fayard, 1972):[2] ‘The fact that the Vikings disembarked in North America before Columbus has been acknowledged since as far back as the last century’. This conviction is substantiated by numerous material proofs.

The first and foremost is cartographic. As early as the fourteenth century, the map by the Italian Pizzigano includes the outline of the east coast of North America. The one by Martin Waldseemüller, drawn at Saint-Dié in 1507, reveals a map traced with astonishing precision. We find the same richness of detail in the planisphere of Sebastian Cabot (1544), currently at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and in the map of the Danish geographer Sigurd Stephanson, which dates from 1570.

The map of Vincent de Beauvais and Jean de Plano Carpini, which would have been prepared around 1245, before being recopied around 1435–40, is even more remarkable. Indeed, it mentions the name Vinland (Vinlanda) and includes several annotations on the voyages of Leif and Bjarni.

Its discovery in 1957 in a manuscript on Mongolia (the Tartar Relation), and its publication in 1965 by Thomas E. Marston and R. A. Skelton (The Vinland and Tartar Relation. Yale University Press, New York), aroused vivid emotions and provoked a polemic. In 1966, forty experts gathered in Chicago to discuss it. This was the ‘The Vinland Map Conference’, whose proceedings were published in 1971 by the University of Chicago. But since then, the authenticity of the map has been cast into doubt: we are practically sure today that it is a forgery (cf. Eila Campbell, ‘Verdict on the Vinland Map’, in The Geographical Magazine, April 1974).

The Vinland Map

There are, however, many other confirmations of an ethnological and archaeological order.

In the sixteenth century a Frenchman, Louis Jolliet, reveals the presence of ‘white Eskimos’ in Labrador. Jacques Cartier in 1534, Samuel de Champlain in 1615, some fur-traders[3] and trappers (La Verendye, Coudreau, Crevaux, Homet, Fawcett) speak of ‘white Indians’ living to the west of the Great Lakes. In 1630, the wood-runners,[4] Jean Nicolet, attempted to make contact with them. In 1738, the Governor of Canada identifies them. They are the Mandan Indians, who live in the regions of North Dakota and Montana. Their physical type is strange. Could they be the descendants of the Vinland settlers?

In 1850, Dr. Mitchell, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, declares: ‘The Mandans differ from all the other Indians of North America. They are distinguished by their language and their customs, but also by physical particularities. Many among them have hair tending towards red, and eyes that are light brown or blue’.

These Mandans unfortunately disappeared last century, following a terrible epidemic of smallpox.

As early as 1930, the remains of Viking encampments have been discovered by Canadian archaeologists at Brattahlid. But it is in Quebec that the most spectacular results have been obtained.

5 November 1963, Dr. Helge Instad from Oslo, an expert of the arctic regions, announced the discovery of the vestiges of a Viking village at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the north of Newfoundland. The news hit like a bomb. Guided by the contours and undulations of the terrain, Helge Instad discovered the typical foundations of a Scandinavian house, a blacksmith’s workshop, slag, fragments of worked iron, tools, the remains of boats, and even a distaff — all dating from around the year 1000.

This time, it is necessary to face the facts:

‘If judged according to the full range of available evidence’, notes Dr. Instad, ‘the Normans who stayed around 1000 years ago at l’Anse aux Meadows can be identified as the Vinland explorers of the Icelandic Sagas. It is also likely that Leif Erikson built his “large house” here.’

Some other remains of Viking habitations have been discovered since: notably on the banks of the Charles River, near Cambridge, in the Bay of Brador, in Newfoundland, and near the Payne Lake, northeast of the province of Quebec.

Previously, in Ontario, some pieces of iron had been unearthed, along with some weapons (including a rounded shield[5] and a battle axe) and some tools; in Massachusetts, some wooden spoons and silver objects; and at Fall River, in 1831, the skeleton of a warrior was found, armed from head to toe, unfortunately lost today. (The Indian tumuli of Massachusetts have also furnished some objects of the Scandinavian type, doubtless trophies taken from combat).

At Newport (Rhode Island), a mysterious stone tower has been found which has not been able to be dated. Some have seen in it a replica of the Church of Saint-Olav of Tunsberg (Norway).

In 1898, while clearing one of his fields, a farmer in Kensington (Minnesota) discovered a stone bearing an inscription in runic characters.

Deciphered in 1907, the inscription reads: ‘(We are) eight Goths and twenty-two Norwegians, on an expedition from Vinland towards the west. We have camped on the edge of a lake. We left for a day to fish. When we came back, ten (denos) companions were lying on the ground, bathed in their own blood. AVM (Ave Maria), Save (us) from peril …” On the reverse, a date: 1362.

The Kensington Stone

From 1908, a polemic of rare violence would be established on the issue of this ‘Kensington stone’ (which would be displayed for a long time at the Smithsonian Institute). Some researchers, such as Erik Wahlgren (The Kensington Stone. A Mystery Solved), assert that it is a forgery: the inscription would have been carved in the last century by Swedish immigrants, very numerous at the time in Minnesota.

Other experts, such as Hjalmar R. Holand (Westwards from Vinland) will fight with their last breath to demonstrate its authenticity.

‘In 1948’, asserts René Guichard in his study on the Vikings, ‘Professor Johannes Bronstedt, director of the National Museum of Copenhagen, was invited to Washington to study the inscriptions borne on the stone. He concludes, after a serious study of the runic signs, that the inscription was authentic.’

In 1969, two Americans, Alf Mongé and Ole G. Landsverk, have released new hypotheses making appeal to runic cryptography. After having submitted the results of their works to a computer, they have also declared in favour of its authenticity. But they are still far from having convinced the scholarly world.

The Arrival of White and Bearded Gods

The decline of Vinland began around 1300.

King Erik VI of Norway restricts trade with the distant colonies and creates a State monopoly. In the Mediterranean, the freeing of the Muslim yoke opens new pathways. After the sinking of a royal vessel, exchanges between Scandinavia and America will soon be interrupted.

During this time, in Greenland, the cooling of the climate, scurvy, and increasingly frequent clashes with the Eskimos, lead to the progressive extinction of the Scandinavian community, formerly some ten-thousand men strong.

In Vinland, the indigenous people (Eskimos or Indians, called Skraelings in the Sagas) become bolder.

Freshly Christianised, Scandinavia now has another subject of concern: the Crusades, the Hundred Years’ War, the Black Death. Little by little it forgets its pioneers.

In 1340, the principal establishment of Vinland is overwhelmed by the Eskimos. Departing in 1354, a salvage expedition commanded by the Norwegian Paul Knudson finds nothing on the site but abandoned houses and roaming cattle. A great number of settlers have been killed. The others have left.

Now in this period, Jacques de Mahieu affirms, the Vikings have already explored and colonised an important part of the South American continent. And this for three centuries.

Jacques de Mahieu, seventy-one-year-old former Dean of the Faculty of Political Science at Bueno Aires, directs the Institute for the Science of Man in Argentina. For years he has been committed to collecting traces of Viking penetration into the American continent upon the fourfold plane of archaeology, historical tradition, mythology, and anthropology. He thinks that the Scandinavians have gone much further than we imagine: as far as Latin America and Polynesia.

‘The white racial element of Pre-Columbian America’, he writes in Le grande voyage du dieu-soleil,[6] plays a fundamental role in the development of the great Nahuatl, Maya, and Quechua cultures’.

Countless chronicles actually speak of the arrival of ‘white gods’ in Latin America and, curiously, situate this arrival between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE.

The Muiscas of Columbia call themselves the descendants of a ‘white god come from the north’. In Peru, this god carries the name of Huiracocha (Viracocha in the Spanish chronicles). In Mexico, he is called Quetzalcoatl. Among the Incas, sons of the Sun, the eighth sovereign of the royal dynasty, represented in the form of a white, bearded man, will take the name Viracocha.

Quatzalcoatl, the ‘white god’

Among the Quiché Mayas (Mexico), the god Itzamna is an old man with a sharp nose, god of the rising sun, who passes for the inventor of writing. The Popol Vuh (People’s Book?) recounts that the ancestors of the Aztec sovereign Montezuma come from the land of Dawn, that is to say, the east. It is in 987 that Kukulkan would have arrived in the peninsula of Yucatan (Mexico), where he would have given new vitality to Mayan civilisation, then in full decline. The Tzendales of Chiapas (the southeastern point of Mexico), themselves also Mayans, knew him under the name of Votan or Uotan (Wotan?). Elsewhere, he carries the name of Ollin Tonatiut (Odhinn, Donar, Tiu?).

‘The Votan (Odon) of Central America and of Peru’, writes Alexander von Humboldt, ‘is identical to the Scandinavian Wotan (Odin)’.

In the same period, Bochica, the ‘white god’ of the Chibchas, would have landed in Venezuela.

Everywhere we discover the same theme of the birth or rebirth of a civilisation under the influence of divinities or of mythic heroes come from elsewhere. And these events are situated more or less at the same time.

One fact is certain: the sudden appearance of the Pre-Columbian cultures has posed a problem to scholars for quite some time. Some support autochthony: the Mexican and Andean world developed itself separate from all exterior influence. But for some time now, this thesis has been considered unsatisfying.

Successively, the Polynesians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Hebrews, and the Phoenicians, indeed the Basques, the Bretons, and the Atlanntes, have all been presented as the ‘founding fathers’ of South-American civilisations. (Without forgetting the ‘extra-terrestrials’, who always have their supporters!).

The Power and Wisdom of Tezcatlipoca

It is likely that the coasts of South America were recognised and then explored very early by seafarers from eastern China and southeast Asia. In his book, C. W. Ceram reveals numerous common cultural traits. Between the pyramids of Tikal at Guatemala, and the edifices of Angkor in ancient Indochina, the analogies are particularly strong.

The ‘Phoenician’ thesis, sustained by Professor Cyrus H. Gordon from the Brandeis Univeristy (L’Amérique avant Christophe Colomb, Laffont, 1973),[7] which Frederik J. Pohlmakes references, seems very much to be the most unrealistic. Professor André Dupond-Sommer, a prominent specialist of the Near East, has formally contradicted it.

The thesis of an ancient association between Egypt and Pre-Columbian America is pure fabrication. 3,500 years separate the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and those of Mexico (the most ancient were constructed in the seventh century CE). Furthermore, the design of the two groups of monuments is completely different.

That leaves the Vikings.

Certainly, recourse to ‘civilising heroes’ does not explain the development of Olmec civilisation (Gulf of Mexico); the great periods of classical Mayan culture (Honduras, Guatemala, Yucatan); the first civilisation of Teotihuacan (Mexico); the cultures of Chavin, or those of the Mochica and the Nazca (Peru). However, their influence appears certain, in Mexico, on the Toltec and Aztec civilisation, and upon the culture of the post-classical Mayans (Yucatan); in Peru, on the Tiahuanaco culture and the Inca Empire.

In all these regions, the ‘white god’ has left traces, distorted by time, altered in the course of invasions and mixing, but still identifiable today.

Quetzalcoatl (the ‘feathered serpent’) is the wisest of the seven chiefs from the north who invaded Mexico from the ‘land of seven caverns’, at the head of seven armed detachments. Warrior god, ‘Lord of the Sunrise’, the traditions describe him as having white skin, broad forehead, and a majestic beard. Civiliser of the Anahuac plateau, he brings with him a religion, laws, a calendar, new agricultural and metallurgical techniques. He forbids human sacrifices. Under his reign, the Toltec Empire became prosperous.

But Quetzalcoatl runs into the hostility of the priest caste, reduced to joblessness by the new cult. Quetzalcoatl faces a violent conflict, and as a result he is conquered. Forced into exile, he embarks, with four young nobles following him, on a boat that sets course for the east. They promise to return.

‘When the time has come’, he declares to them, ‘I will return to your midst by the eastern sea, accompanied by white and bearded men.’

Transmitted from generation to generation, this ‘prophecy’ explains the welcome reception that the conquering Spaniards received when they landed in Mexico. Cortès and his conquistadores were honoured as ‘the heroes that we have awaited’. Those among them who were blond, such as Pedro de Alvarado, one of the lieutenants of Cortès, became the object of a cult. Motecozuma II (Montezuma) ordained the provision of all their needs. Later, the Emperor Maximillian was the object of the same veneration.

In Peru, the civilising heroes known under the name of Huiracocha (Viracocha) had arrived at Arica on the north coast of Peru during the ninth century. He had organised the Aymara culture and founded on the High-Plane[8] in proximity to Lake Titicaca, the great solar city of Tiahuanaco.

The etymology of the name Huiracocha has long remained an enigma. Bertrand Flornoy, in L’aventure inca (Perrin, 1963),[9] proposes ‘foam of the sea’. De Mahieu advances the translation ‘white god’ (huitr or witt, ‘white’); koch or gott, ‘deity’).

In the thirteenth century, internal struggles devastated the High-Plane. The heroes of the civilisation of the sun are defeated. They escape via the Pacific, announcing that one day they will return.

Shortly after, still in Peru, appears the legendary founder of the Inca Empire, Manko Cápak, first of twelve kings of the dynasty. The foundation of the city of Cusco is attributed to him.

He was also a ‘foreigner’. ‘According to the myths’, writes Rafaël Karsten (La civilisation de l’empire inca, Payot, 1972),[10] ‘the dynasty of monarchs who later called themselves Incas originated from four brothers and four sisters created by Viracocha, and who came from a large cave situated around seven leagues east of Cusco. The myths designate this cave by the name Paqariq Tampu (…) It is likely that there is a grain of historical truth to this. It could be that the Incas effectively drew their origin from four brothers who, departing from a place called Paqariq Tampu, penetrated via Wanakawri into the valley of Cusco, where they established their law and imposed it upon the indigenous population.’

The Temple of the Sun and the ‘Enclosure of Gold’ of Cusco

‘The term inca’, adds Jacques de Mahieu, ‘is neither Quechua nor Aymara. So where does it come from?’ In the old Germanic languages, the ing declension served to designate the members of a single lineage, and we still find it, with the same meaning, in French words such as mérovingien, carolingien, and lotharingien. It is therefore not by chance, nor by error, that the Spanish chronicles write inga instead of inca, as it is done today: the letter “g” does not exist in Quechua.’

Come from the ‘land of the Rising Sun’, the Incas carried with them the cult of the sun, of which they declared themselves the sons.

‘Wherever they extended their authority’, writes Karsten, ‘they also extended the cult of the sun, prudently however, and without employing violence.’ It is a matter here of an original contribution, for in the mountainous regions of Bolivia and Peru, we find few traces of it before the Inca period. Having arrived with the foreigners, the new cult would also disappear with them. ‘It is in vain that in our days we would seek survivals’, adds Karsten, ‘made all the more remarkable as we encounter many vestiges of a cult of the sea goddess and other kinds of primordial nature cults’.

The centre of the solar cult is installed in Curicancha (‘the enclosure of gold’) of Cusco. After having pillaged all the treasures, the Spanish destroyed it entirely.

In 1523, the last Inca, Huayna Capak, warned his people of the future return of the ‘white gods’. He asked them to serve them. In 1527, Pizarre landed at Tumbes. The same scenes witnessed at Mexico were reproduced. Seeing the face of Huiracocha sculpted on the Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco, some conquistadores believed to recognise the effigy of Saint Bartolemeo. To all those who have blond or red hair, the indigenous give the same name of Huiracocha.

In the final analysis, Pizarre conquered the Andean Empire with only 177 men!

‘The Incan aristocracy’, writes his brother Pedro in his Relacion del Descumbrimiente y Conquista de los reinos del Peru,[11] ‘has whiter skin than that of the Spanish, and hair the colour of ripe wheat’.

Jacques de Mahieu has brought to light other astonishing facts.

‘In Peru’, he reveals, ‘the year was divided into four seasons by the solstices and equinoxes, with corresponding festivals. Now the festival of the new Fire is celebrated in June, as in Europe, while the inversion of the seasons would have required it to be performed in December. It is this which demonstrates the northern origin of the rite’.

Among the peoples of Anahuac (Aztecs, Toltecs), the presence of two calendars, one religious, of 260 days, and the other civil, of 365 days, gives rise to the idea that the second calendar had been brought from outside, at a later date.

A stele from the island of Apara, on Lake Titicaca; the bearded head from Rio Balsas (in Mexico); the frescoes of the temple of the warriors of Chichen Itza, in Yucatan, portray figures with distinctly European traits.

Conversely, the Scandinavian tapestry of Ovrehodgal (end of the eleventh century) includes a certain number of animals strongly representing llamas.

The codices from Mexico are even more revealing. Among those conserved in Paris in the Mexican collections of the Bibliothèque nationale (Aubin Collection), the Tonalamatl represents several individuals with blond hair: the navigator Thor Heyerdahl has personally counted more than a hundred. ‘The fresco of the Temple of the warriors’, summarises Paul Rivet in his study on Les origins de l’homme américain (Gallimard, 1957),[12] ‘represents a struggle between the indigenous people and assailants from the sea who have pale skin and blond hair’.

In Peru and Chile, ancient sepulchres, notably those from the caves of Paracas discovered in 1925 by Tello and Lothrop, have delivered mummified bodies, in perfect state of conservation, of young women with long blonde, light chestnut, and red hair. These mummies have been studied by Reiss and Stübel, Busk, Dawson and Trotter. De Mahieu publishes some photos in the German edition of his book (Des Sonnengottes grosse Reise. Grabert, Tübingen, 1971),[13] which is more rich than the French edition in regards to illustrations.

The Mystery of the ‘White Indians’

Anthropology also provides its testimony. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French naturalist Alcide d’Orbigny studied the ‘white Indians’ of Bolivinan Beni, as well as the Antis and the Yuracaré, tribes which lived in the same region but which have now vanished. Two missions (1969–70 and 1971–72) by the Argentinian Institute for the Science of Man, directed by de Mahieu, have permitted the identification of another: the Guayaki of Paraguay.

These Indians live in the subtropical forest of west Paraguay. There are scarcely more than four hundred of them: the race is in danger of extinction. Their physical type is distinguished from all other tribes: tall stature, pale skin, oval cross-section of the hair, strong pilosity, elongated face, etc. De Mahieu sees in them the descendants, very degenerated, of the Scandinavian settlers that were chased from the Andean High-Plane, who, after being displaced in the forests, would have mixed with the Guarani Indians.

In the course of their missions, the members of the Institute for the Science of Man have also brought to light a large number of designs and inscriptions on walls and pottery fragments (rock from Cerro Polilla in the sierra of Yvytyruzu, an encampment of Cerro Moroti near San Joaqui, to the west of Paraguay). According to de Mahieu, who has attempted to decipher them, some of the signs could be runic in nature (Les inscriptions runique précolombiennes au Paraguay, Bienos Aires, 1972).[14]

The conclusion of de Mahieu: ‘In Pre-Columbian South America, in the midst of a mostly Amerindian population of Mongol origin, there are some groups of whites who, from the anthropological point of view, possess a Nordic European type’.

Foreign Migrations in Polynesia

In L’agonie du dieu-soleil,[15] de Mahieu asks: where have the white gods, Huiracocha and his companions, gone?

In 1947, the celebrated ‘Kon Tiki’ expedition carried out by Thor Heyerdahl, proved that the sea-journey from Peru to Polynesia was possible. At the same time, he had also provided a basis for the hypothesis of ancient contacts between South America and the Pacific Islands.

For his part, the ethnologist Jean Poirier, former Professor at L’École nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer, in a communication published in 1953 by the Society of Oceanologists of the Museum of Man (L’élément blond en Polynésie et les migrations nordiques en Océanie),[16] have gathered and presented a multitude of historical and ethnological testimonies concerning the presence of a ‘blond’ human type in the population of Polynesia.

For the anthropologists, Polynesian ethnicity arises from a stock belonging to Mongolia (perhaps an ancient specialisation of the Proto-Indo-European stock), upon which an important Caucasian branch would have been grafted, as well as a weaker negro element.

‘But there is another element’, writes Poirier, ‘numerically much more important, which has also contributed to the formation of Polynesian ethnicity: it is a blond element, so qualified according to its most apparent characteristic, and which could also be called “Nordic”, without raising a dangerous extrapolation.’

Polynesia, moreover, also has its ‘white gods’: Kane and Wakea in Hawaii; Tangaroa and Tu in Niue (an isolated island between the Tonga and Cook archipelagos); Tama-ehu in Tahiti, etc.

When the navigator Cook would arrive at Mangaia in the eighteenth century, the indigenous people believed that he was a reincarnation of Tangaroa.

In Hawaii, local traditions make allusion to a ‘land very far away’, where the trees have fragile leaves and the rivers can freeze during winter. They report also that some ‘white men’ had come to Hawaii on three occasions: ‘the arrival of Paao, the arrival of many men in canoes in the time of Opiri (son of Paao), the arrival of foreigners under the reign of Kahukapu’. The descendants of the foreigners, says the explorer Ellis, are distinguished ‘by the colour of their skin’. He adds that to the Sandwich Islands (formerly of Hawaii), they are called ‘ehu’.

At the same time, the problem of the mythic origins of the fabulous Easter Island resurfaces.

Situated in the middle of the Pacific 800 kilometres from the coasts of Peru, Easter Island had been discovered in 1722 by the Dutchman Rogeveen. Some local accounts mention ‘white foreigners’ who had come by sea. It is in their honour that the celebrated statues had been erected. In the seventeenth century, the foreigners and their adherents would have been exterminated during violent events whose trace has been preserved at various sites: scattered tools, burnt areas, incomplete statues at all stages.

At Paraguay, de Mahieu also discovered ideographic signs of the ‘rongorongo’ type, characteristic of Easter Island.

Bouganville (1729–1811), describing Tahiti, writes: ‘The people of Tahiti are composed of two races of very different men, who nevertheless have the same language, the same morals, and who appear to circulate without distinction. The first produce the tallest men … Nothing distinguishes their traits from those of the Europeans, and if they were clothed, if they lived less in the air and in the great sun, they would also be white like us … The second race is of a medium size, has frizzy, hair, coarse like a horse; their colour and their traits differ little from those of the mulatto’.

Called to the side of the wife of a Tahitian chief, Dr. Maximo Rodgriguez noted that she had ‘very fair complexion, blonde and curly hair, and blue eyes’.

In a memoir by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who was the pilot of Alvaro Mendana de Neira during the time when he discovered the Solomon Islands, we are able to read: ‘The natives of Madalena Island are almost white; they have regular and agreeable traits, beautiful eyes, gentle features, white and well-formed teeth. Most have blond hair; they wear it long and flowing like the women; but some roll them up and twist them upon their heads’ (cited by Claret-Fleurieu: Voyage de Marchand, 1809).[17]

Concerning the Sandwich Islands, the Maluku, the Marquesas, dozens of testimonies exist of this kind, from those of Jacob le Maire and William Schouten (1615) to those of Carl Frederick Behrens, Wallis, Bougainville, and Crozet, Cook, Parkison, Forester, etc.

Paul Huguenon reported as late as 1902: ‘The families of the great chiefs of Nuka Hiva (one of the Marquesas Islands) call themselves Arri. Their complexion is more fair, their eyes are blueish, their hair has red in it.’

In his conclusions, Jean Poirier distinguishes ‘two layers in the Polynesian blond element’. ‘The first layer’, he writes, ‘goes back to an indeterminate past. It is contemporary with the formation of the Polynesian race: Neolithic, numerically the most important, came from the west; it has penetrated into Polynesia by sea, and into America by the Behring Straight, before descending the length of the western coastline. As to the second, the preferential presence of fair types (hair and, unusually, eyes) in the eastern archipelagos can only be explained by a recent contact with elements of the same type, that is to say of Nordic elements. Now, we know today that the Scandinavian migrants have penetrated deeply into North America. Henceforth, it is only logical to suppose an arrival of these elements in Polynesia.’

12 October 1492, Christopher Colombus arrives before a continent which he believes to be the Indies; he calls the inhabitants Indios.

24 June 1497, Jean Cabot from England, landed on Newfoundland. 24 April 1500, the Portuguese Pedro Alvarez Cabral arrived in Brazil. Around 1500, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci explored Patagonia. In 1513, the conquistador Vasco Nunez of Balboa discovered the Pacific. In 1521, the Spaniard Sebastien del Cano, survivor of the Portuguese Magellan, brings the last ship back to the port. He was the first European to have made the tour of the world.

Finally, in 1532, François Pizarre undertook the conquest of Peru on behalf of the King of Spain.

Europe discovered America. Once again.

The Vikings founded the city of Kiev, the Norman kingdom of Two-Sicilies, the sovereign duchy of Normandy. Their drakkar go by north Africa to Faroe, from Labrador to the Caspian. They appear as the greatest navigators of history.

A Nordic proverb says: ‘Cattle die. Kinsmen die. And you, too, will die. But a noble name never dies’. The name of Leif Erikson has remained alive. Since 1887, the discoverer of America has had his statue at Boston. He looks out over the Ocean.

*

Le grand voyage du dieu-soleil, a study by Jacques Mahieu. Special edition, 205 pages. 25 Francs.[18]

L’agonie du dieu-soleil, a study by Jacques de Mahieu. Laffront, 228 pages.[19]

Les Vikings, créateurs d’États et découvreurs de nouveaux mondes, a study by René Guichard. Picard, 196 pages.[20]

*

Further vestiges of the Vikings’ presence in America have been found over the course of the last several years. The most important discovery has been that of the ruins of three ancient Scandinavian ‘longhouses’ on Pamiok Island, in Ungava Bay (northern Quebec). The last of these buildings, brought to light in 1972, is absolutely identical to the Viking constructions of Iceland and Greenland. On the same site, a Thor’s hammer and an iron axe identified as Nordic by metallographic analysis were unearthed in 1970. The excavations have been undertaken by Professor Thomas E. Lee from the Université Laval of Quebec, who has published the results in Archaeological Investigations of a Longhouse Ruin, Pamiok Island, Ungava Bay (Centre d’études Nordiques, Québec, 1974). Cf. also Dietrich Lüth, Further Evidence of Early Norse Settlements in the Americas (in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, vol. II, no. 1, spring 1974).

Like those of Helge Instad, these discoveries confirm the reality of the historical accounts contained in the Sagas, in particular the Graenlendiga Saga and Erik’s Saga. In this regard we will refer to The Vinland Sagas. The Norse Discovery of America (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1965) and to Vinland the Good, a work prefaced by Helge Instad (Johan Grundt Tanum, Oslo, 1966).

In England, the Viking Society for Northern Research (University of London, University College, Gower Street, London WC1), animated by Professors Peter G. Foote (The Viking Achievement. Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1970) and G. Turville-Petre (Myth and Religion of the North. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1964) have published many works on the Viking expansion.

In his book on La civilisation des Incas (Famot, 1976),[21] Jean-Claude Valla provides his own take on the numerous hypotheses emitted by Professor Jacques de Mahieu, and brings new precision to the identity of the ‘white and bearded’ civilising heroes who, between 1050 and 1100, founded the ‘kingdom of Tiahuanaco’ on the banks of Lake Titicaca. ‘These men who, from Mexico to Peru, altered from top to bottom previous cultures of manifestly Asiatic origin, established themselves as the ruling class and gave birth to kingdoms with a level of civilisation comparable to those of Europe, and who introduced a solar cult unknown before their arrival, who are they if not the Viking navigators come from the North’ (Michael Marmin, ‘Les Vikings en Amérique du Sud ?’, in Eléments Nr. 21–22, April–July 1977).[22]

Professor Mahieu has himself followed these studies. He has documented the results in three new works: ‘Drakkars sur l’Amazone’ (Copernic, 1977), ‘Le tombeau du dieu-soleil’ (forthcoming), and ‘La géographique secrete de l’Amérique avant Colomb’ (unpublished).[23]

In the United States, O. G. Landsverk, who situates Vinland at the top of New England, has published (in collaboration with Alf Mongé) three books dedicated in large part to ‘runic cryptography’: Norse Medieval Cryptography in Runic Carvings (1967), Ancient Norse Messages on American Stones (1969), and Runic Records of the Norsemen in America (1974). These three titles are distributed by the Landsverk Foundation (Box 652, Rushford, Minnesota 55971).

[1]      Benoist describes him as a duc. — Tr.

[2]      The First American. — Tr.

[3]      French voyageurs, literally ‘travellers’ (voyagers), indicates in this context French Canadians involved in the fur trade who would transport animal furs by canoe over long distances. — Tr.

[4]      French coureur de bois, ‘wood-runners’, indicate those engaged in the fur trade generally, rather than those focused on transportation. — Tr.

[5]      Fr. coupelle de bouclier — Tr.

[6]      The Sun God’s Great Journey. — Tr.

[7]      America Before Christopher Columbus. — Tr.

[8]      Altiplano in Spanish (Haute-Plateau). — Tr.

[9]      The Inca Adventure. — Tr.

[10]     The Civilisation of the Inca Empire. — Tr.

[11]     Account of the Discovery and Conquest of the Kingdoms of Peru. — Tr.

[12]     The Origins of American Humanity. — Tr.

[13]     The Sun God’s Great Journey. — Tr.

[14]     The Pre-Columbian Runic Inscriptions of Paraguay. — Tr.

[15]     The Death-throes of the Sun God. — Tr.

[16]     The Blond Element in Polynesia and the Nordic Migrations in Oceania. — Tr.

[17]     Voyage of Marchand. — Tr.

[18]     The Sun God’s Great Journey. — Tr.

[19]     The Death-throes of the Sun God. — Tr.

[20]     The Vikings, Creators of States and Discoverers of New Worlds. — Tr.

[21]     The Civilisation of the Incas. — Tr.

[22]     ‘Vikings in South America?’ — Tr.

[23]     Drakkar on the Amazon. The Grave of the Sun God. The Secret Geography of America Before Columbus. — Tr.

Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist is the leading thinker of the European ‘New Right’ movement, a school of political thought founded in France in 1968 with the establishment of GRECE (Research and Study Group for European Civilisation). To this day he remains its primary representative, even while rejecting the label ‘New Right’ for himself. An ethnopluralist defender of cultural uniqueness and integrity, he has argued for the right of Europeans to retain their identity in the face of multiculturalism, and he has opposed immigration, while still preferring the preservation of native cultures over the forced assimilation of immigrant groups. He has authored dozens of books and essays on topics such as immigration, religion, philosophy and political theory. In 1978, he received the Grand Prix de l’Essai from the Académie Française for his book Vu de droite [View from the Right]. Editor of the journals Nouvelle Ecole and Krisis, his works have also been published in a variety of journals such as Mankind Quarterly, Telos, The Scorpion, The Occidental Quarterly and Tyr. Over the past forty years he has had a tremendous impact on the philosophical and ideological understanding of the European political situation. Arktos has published his books The Problem of Democracy, Beyond Human Rights, and Carl Schmitt Today, which are part of an ongoing series of his works that will be published by Arktos in English translation. Alain de Benoist continues to write and give lectures and interviews. He lives in Paris.

38 Comments

  • I know this isn’t the place for this, but if anyone reading this has an ear with Richard himself, then please let him know that he really needs to address the patently false, ‘fake news’-generated rumor that he’s worth $185 million. That figure of $158 million (and I’ve seen $58million) is catching on like wildfire, especially with the younger crowds (primarily on YouTube, Twitter, etc.), and it’s doing a lot of damage to his reputation (not to mention destroying his ability to raise funds for his new legal defense fundraiser). As far as I can tell, the rumor was originally put forth by “Media Mass,” a site that bills itself as “a (not obvious) parody news site best known for debunking celebrity rumors that never actually circulated.”

  • Excellent article. Reminds me of the Kurtagic-Hackard-Greg Hood era on the original Alternative Right.

    More of this please, less news skimming.

  • Think of this article as essentially Afrocentrism for white people. I suggest that all readers who view “black Egypt” and its subsequent theories as bogus use the same skepticism while reading this article. As far as my understanding goes, the only definitive proof of Viking contact in America is in New Newfoundland and further northern parts of Canada. It is likely that the vikings made it as far down as Cape cod due to the chronicles mentioning grapes. Anything further than this seems fanciful, and South American and Polynesia are completely absurd. For those who think that prophecies and stories talking about “pale gods from foreign lands” are enough to justify such a theory, take a look at European Pagan gods which share many similar origins.

  • Amazing Read……

    All I have to say is I hope White Americans don’t end up like the Mandan Indians in 1000yrs…….

    Discovered by an Alien Mars Race evolved from White Scandinavian Earthling Space Explorers…….

    And then subsequently wiped out by Alien Germs………

    On a Side Note:

    Better not talk too much about that Leif Erickson Statue in Boston……..

    Antifa will try to Destroy it or have it Removed………

    On a Side Side Note:

    Gothic Joe might find some Peace of Mind in reading and absorbing this……..

    • Joe reads Benoist. He is about to become a fan of the Nouvelle Droit, then, of the AltRight.
      He is going to be more in touch with his roots (Spanish, Aztec, Toltec, Olmec, Maya) and probably he will go to live to Mexico. He is going to start reading Castaneda, Fuentes, Paz, etc. and voting PAN party in Mexico.
      Previously I wrote something about being mestizo means you have both worlds which are your roots and, at the same time, you have an struggle within. Not necessarily.
      A lot of pretty white girls in Mexico, too, who like their mestizo countrymen.
      In the quest of your roots, you have to come over to Spain, as well, Joe, but I tell you: I didn´t see anything more Spaniard and majestic than Zócalo quarter in the DF.

  • Alan De Benoist has some things to say about you all:
    De Benoist, BuzzFeed’s feature notes, possesses some troubling contradictions.

    “He’s denounced racism but opposes integration,” the report reads. “He rejects demands that immigrants assimilate or ‘remigrate’ but laments ‘sometimes-brutal’ changes they bring to European communities.”

    And perhaps most tellingly, de Benoist “disavows the alt-right but collaborates with some of the most prominent people associated with the movement” — including Richard Spencer…..When asked by BuzzFeed if he’d withdraw his books from presses run by people whose ideologies he claims to reject, de Benoist deadpanned: “Sure I could, but who will publish me?” ——- Rawstory

    • You really threw a Wrench in the Alt-Right Spokes there, Joe……..

      Honestly, I don’t know how we’re going to Recover…….

      Ha!!

      Just read the Piece……..

      It’s Interesting……..

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