Colonial Heroism? The Story of Christian Krohg’s “Leif Erickson Discovering America” (1893)

The St. Olaf community is invited to the 2024 Frederick Gaylord Grose Lecture in Norwegian Studies delivered by Dr. Øystein Sjåstad, Professor of Art History at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Did Krohg’s much-loved painting of the famous Viking explorer represent the colonial ideology of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago? Created specifically for the exposition, Krohg’s painting was meant to challenge Columbus’s status as the “true” discoverer of America.  Sjåstad traces the painting’s journey from Norway to the US and back again and critically examines what Leif Erikson has come to symbolize.