AT THE CEREMONY WELCOMING THE VIKING SHIP GAIA TO CUBA
PRESENT AT THE CEREMONY WERE CUBAN PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO, PRESIDENT OF
THE CUBAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ROSA ELENA SIMEON, WHO ALSO HEADS THE
ACADEMY'S COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES, OTHER
GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, DIPLOMATS AND ORGANIZERS OF THE GAIA TRIP
Mr. President, Ms. Ambassador of Sweden, Captain Ragnar Thorseth and
crew members, Ladies and Gentlemen,
As a Norwegian, it is a very special pleasure for me to
welcome the arrival in Cuba of a true copy of a Viking ship.
Although I haven't participated in any part of its voyage, this is
the second time I have the pleasure of being present at the
arrival of this ship in a port of the New World. The first time
was in Washington, and the second time here in Havana. When I saw
you enter Washington Harbor on October 9, you had very
successfully repeated the feat of our ancestors, the Vikings,
traveling from Norway to Iceland, Greenland and New Foundland in
Canada. There you were also able to visit the archaeological
sites at L'Anse aux Meadows with its ruins left by the Viking Leif
Erikson and his crew in the year 1000.
You entered the port of Washington on a very appropriate day,
October 9, which had been proclaimed by the President of the
United States as the day to commemorate Leif Erikson and the
Vikings who crossed the Atlantic Ocean almost 500 years before
Christopher Columbus. I expressed my admiration for your carrying
out the difficult and dangerous journey you made among icebergs in
the arctic part of the Atlantic. Now I give you a warm welcome
after your voyage through a temporary cold front in the Florida
Straits that separate the two charming peoples living on each side
of it.
Your crossing of the North Atlantic is a sporting triumph and
it also has a scientific value, as it shows the modern world how
our ancestors were able to colonize such distant islands as
Iceland and Greenland and explore continental coasts like that of
Canada 1000 years ago. But, personally, I think your friendly
voyage from Washington - where I saw you last - to Havana - where
we meet today - is the most significant leg of your journey, more
important in today's world than sports and science. The Vikings
were known as men who brought swords and violence to all coasts of
Europe, Northern Africa and Minor Asia. You come to the Americas
in the same kind of vessel, but with a message of peace and with
the only wish of helping all those human forces willing to create
a world of tomorrow that is safe for the children of today - the
men and women of the future.
In the five thousand years of human history that we have
knowledge of, families, tribes and nations have tried to improve
their lives weapon in hand. Alliances of increasing size have
been created between men united as soldiers, with increasingly
more effective and ear and the arrow to intercontinental missiles
and nuclear bombs. Five thousand years of experience in the
Middle East and Western Asia, and a little less in Europe and the
Americas. Without exception, the result has been that, one after
the other, civilizations have been destroyed with weapons created
by Man himself, reducing them to ruins which then have fallen into
oblivion.
All great nations of today have suffered losses in the two
world wars of this century. Millions of those of us who survived
the battles of World War II remember with shame and sadness the
great number of friends and other millions of poor souls who lost
their young lives fighting for peace and justice. We know the
great value of safeguarding peace through dialogue and
constructive cooperation between all human beings, with one
single aim - to wage a "world war" against poverty and injustice.
You on board this fragile Viking vessel have fought the
superior forces of the elements. I wish you great success in all
of the planned voyage from Canada and the United States in North
America, to Cuba, Mexico and the other Latin-American republics
still to be visited on your way to Rio de Janeiro, where you plan
to arrive for the world conference on environment in 1992.
We know that the message you bring from port to port -- from
the Old World to the New one, from the arctic world to the
tropics, down to Brazil -- is a non-political, or rather
pan-political call for the protection of the natural environment
and peace for the future generations of the whole world. In a
vessel designed in ancient times with elegant lines that could
harmonize and cooperate with the oceans waves, you symbolically
want to take a leap in time and leave behind a whole millennium of
barbarism and wars, building a bridge to a 21st century of harmony
and cooperation among young people with sound minds in sound
bodies, in a sound environment, as in the era when homo sapiens
started out to conquer the sea.
We know that destruction of nature had already begun five
thousand years ago in the Middle East and spread all over Europe
in the Middle Ages. We moreover know that the indigenous
inhabitants of the Americas -- hunters, fishermen and also
settlers in villages and large cities -- lived in harmony with the
forests, rivers and mountains, and worshiped them. They had lived
off the riches of the land and the waters for thousands and
thousands of years when the first Vikings arrived, until the
arrival of the conquistadors' caravels.
As Norwegians, we feel great respect for the courage and
determination of Christopher Columbus, who was a great organizer,
explorer and scholar of his times. His first voyage, which had as
a result a permanent and close contact between the Americas and
the Old World marked a new epoch in human history and had
influence on the life of nations all over the world, more than the
influence of any other persons since the founding of the great
religions. But we are also aware of the other side of the coin.
The arrival in the Americas of the European conquistadors and
colonizers did not bring fortune and prosperity to the indigenous
inhabitants of the conquered American nations. However, it would
be unjust to condemn Columbus and blame him for all the violence
and brutality of explorers who came after him.
The voyage of this Viking ship, following the route of the old
Vikings from Norway to Canada, which will end in Rio in the year
of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage, has not been
planned to tion of Columbus. He was sufficiently great to be
able to share this homage with the simple Viking sailors who
crossed the Atlantic almost 500 years before he did.
Today, five centuries after that triumphant arrival in Cuba,
it is time to correct an unjust error which, throughout these
centuries has lived on in the public image of what the Europeans
have called the "discovery" of America. How could either Columbus
or the Vikings claim the honor of having discovered America, when
we know that this continent was the home of thousands of tribes
and dozens of real civilizations, millennia before any European
arrived?
In Mexico the Aztec and Maya empires had been preceded by the
Toltec, Mixtec and Olmec civilizations, which had a highly
developed culture with hieroglyphics in use long before any
knowledge of writing had reached Europe from the ancient
civilizations in the Middle East. And in South America, the
pre-Incan civilizations which we have called Mochica, Chavin and
Tiahuanaco, had attained cultural and political dominance over
empires which in pre-Columbian times included today's sovereign
nations of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and great part of Brazil,
Argentina and Chile.
No European discovered America. Leif Erikson and his comrades
on board the Viking ship arrived as the first European visitors.
According to Norse chronicles preserved in Iceland dating from two
or three centuries before Columbus' journeys, the Vikings that had
settled in Greenland crossed the Davis Strait to the coast of what
is known today as Canada with their families and also cattle. But
these emigrants without guns were repelled by the much superior
forces of the North American Indians and had to retreat to their
settlements in Greenland. Five centuries later, Columbus and his
followers from Medieval Spain arrived with the first firearms and
-- although not discoverers -- they were the first European
conquistadors to successfully settle on the mainland among the
peoples they mistakenly called Indians.
We must correct another erroneous idea about the first
European visitors to what they called the New World, or America in
honor of the person who realized that Columbus was wrong when he
thought he had found a shortcut to India. Most people think the
Vikings came to North America as savage barbarians with swords and
horns on their helmets, that they worshiped pagan gods, whereas
Columbus was a devoted Christian who came with the Cross to save
the souls of the indigenous peoples. This is wrong. When the
Viking ships crossed the North Atlantic in the first decade of the
11th century, Norway was a rigidly Catholic nation, while Spain
was under the influence of the Moslem faith imposed by Arab rule.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Norwegian Viking ships fought
for the Roman Catholic and Constantinople Church to restore
Christianity in Spain and Portugal. Leif Erikson was actually no
fierce Viking but a modest young man from the countryside who
accidentally observed the coast of Canada when deviating from his
route on a return voyage from Norway to Greenland. King Olav of
Norway had sent a Catholic priest with him on his Viking ship and
some religious teachers, to introduce Christianity in the pagan
colony of Greenland. Erikson's father, Erik the Red, refused to
be baptized, but his mother embraced the Catholic faith and built
the first Christian church in Greenland, whose ruins are still
there.
When Columbus crossed the Atlantic five centuries later, both
nations but Columbus did not bring any priest on his first voyage.
That he didn't do until on the second trip, when returning with
armed soldiers to take slaves.
It is a historic fact that the Norwegian King in the 11th
century, Olav the Saint, was canonized by the Vatican -- an honor
which neither King Ferdinand nor Queen Isabella were given.
The Viking ship that arrived in Cuba today did not bring any
priest on board, nor religious or political doctrines. It only
brings the message that, as the 20th century draws to an end, it
is high time that all nations understand that we are all members
of one sole human family, a great family that travels together
through the universe on board the same small planet. We all
depend on each other to coexist in peace, on islands and
continents that are not separated but united by the oceans. No
group of people has priority over any other, and none of us has
the right to destroy the forests, the seas and the atmosphere,
which are our joint heritage.
Let us celebrate the year 1992 as the year of human unity.
But when remembering Columbus and the Vikings, let's not forget
those who arrived in America long before they did, and who lived
on every inhabitable piece of land, from Alaska down to Tierra del
Fuego, thousands of years before any European even set sails.
Cuba will be a center of world attention this year when we are
celebrating the European discoveries. It was in Cuba that
Christopher Columbus found the first human settlements in the New
World after his first crossing in 1492. In his own log book he
used the most emphatic words he could find to describe the beauty
of the Cuban landscape and the kindness, hospitality and high
moral standards of the Taino people that received him on this
island.
But who was in Cuba to receive Columbus? Who had discovered
this island in the ocean before Columbus? It is time we realize
that human beings set sail from other ports outside Europe before
the era of the Vikings and Columbus.
Today, researchers in Cuba are exploring and excavating the
land to give us the answer to the questions the first Europeans
never asked themselves. The Tainos could have given them at least
part of the answer. Their forefathers had arrived in Cuba from
the American continent at a time when Europe was still in the
Stone Age. And the Cuban pre-Columbian inhabitants never totally
cut off their contacts with the main land. Personally, I'm here
in Cuba today to cooperate with the Cuban archaeologists in the
preparation of an abundantly illustrated book on pre-Columbian art
in Cuba and the history of the first European influence. The
ample material on art, pottery and beautiful sculptures, mostly in
conches and stone but in some cases also in gold, show that in
pre-Columbian times Cuba had maritime contact with what is today
the United States, Mexico, Central America, Colombia and
Venezuela. This means that the ancient Cubans navigated on the
open ocean with their families, bringing along objects of art, two
kinds of dogs, and several kinds of cultivated plants, such as
sweet potatoes, pumpkins and cotton.
It is especially interesting that archaeology reveals that
there was a particularly close contact over the Florida Straits in
the centuries immediately before and after the arrival of the
first Europeans. Straits in a Viking ship, must know that it takes
courage and navigational skills to cross that space of water in an
open vessel. Let's all hope that the peaceful traffic that
started in this channel before the arrival of the Europeans, and
was continued today by this Viking vessel carrying a clear message
of peace, will soon be re- established for the benefit of all.
Thor Heyerdahl Havana, August 23, 1991
Return to Indigenous Peoples' Literature
Compiled by: Glenn Welker
This site has been accessed 10,000,000 times since February 8, 1996.
ghwelker@gmx.com
Need professional speech writing help?
Just check a custom speech from SmartWritingService.com right now.