- On this episode of "Minnesota Historia", we're gonna tell you about a Viking who fought Nazis.

And then we're gonna interview a woman born during World War I.

Are we using a time machine for this episode?

No.

No time machine necessary.

Welcome to "Minnesota Historia".

I'm Haley, your time traveling guide to the Leif Erikson viking ship.

Here's the Leif Erikson in its previous longtime home in Duluth, Minnesota.

- This boat is the culmination of a dream by Captain Gerhard Folgero.

- This is Randy Ellestad, way back in the year 2012, but he is actually, been working to restore and find a permanent home for the ship since the mid 1980s.

I warned you about all the time travel in this episode, right?

Randy is a super fan of Captain Gerhard Folgero.

- He's a real forgotten folk hero and on a lot of different levels.

- [Haley] And this is Neill Atkins, same year, same project.

- This was built in, about 1924 when they started it ,Randy?

- [Randy] Five.

- 1925, up in Korgen, Norway.

- It was his dream to realize the life of a Viking, mostly, by sailing the route of Leif Erikson.

- At that point in time, everybody thought the Norwegians were crazy, that no Vikings never came to North America.

That's all pipe dreams and legends and all that jazz.

(clapperboard thudding) - Oh, it was real.

Of course, this footage is fake.

But Leif Erikson really sailed to North America, around 1000 AD where he established L'anse Aux Meadows, a charming little village on the coast of Newfoundland.

- And then of course, in 1960, they discovered the excavations in digs in Newfoundland that the Vikings actually, had a settlement here for quite some time.

- But back in 1926, the only way to prove that Leif Erikson made it across the Atlantic to North America was to retrace his route in a Viking ship.

No cheating.

- Then this guy here at Captain Folgero he did it without the support of GPS satellite navigation and the thought of a rescue from a helicopter.

He had a compass, a sextant, and a lot of moxie, because he had such extreme skill.

- He also had his ship, the Leif Erikson and his crew of three men and one dog.

- A 42-foot ship had never sailed the Atlantic successfully.

There were other people that attempted that never made it, never found him.

- And then Folgero when he brought this boat and got trapped up in ice off the coast of Greenland, they made it through some of the worst ice conditions and heavy sea conditions that the North Atlantic had to offer.

- After reaching Newfoundland, the Leif Erikson made its way down to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and eventually, across the Great Lakes to Duluth, Minnesota on June 23rd, 1927.

Can you imagine if we traveled back in time to interview an eyewitness to that event?

Meet Lilly Haldorsen.

She's 107 years old and we love her so much.

- I live in Duluth, Minnesota.

I've been here since I came from Norway in 1923.

This is one of the first things I ever painted.

I don't know who she is.

Sometimes I paint.

I used to do a lot of painting for years.

This is the boat and this is the way it looked exactly.

Oh, here's the snapshot of Leif Erikson, the famous Viking ship from Norway that I was lucky enough to see on my tenth's birthday.

It was a big event for me.

My little brother and I were there, waved at the man on that Viking boat and they waved.

- [Haley] In a scene familiar to Duluth tourists, The crew greeted their adoring fans all along the Duluth ship canal.

- It came right from the lake and right through between the piers, and we tried to crawl in around the people.

One of the Norwegian men big, tall ones picked us up and had us on their shoulders so we could see real well.

- [Haley] All three of the canal's historic lighthouses were on hand to greet the Leif Erikson, along with the aerial ferry bridge, which was still using that weird ferry gondola business from before they upgraded it in 1929 to become the aerial lift bridge.

- It must have been 500 people out the pier down there.

They knew there were a lot of Norwegians here that were interested in seeing the boat.

- Lilly moved from Norway when she was six years old.

- If I could see, I'd show you where we lived.

It was up in here somewhere.

- And like a lot of Norwegian Duluthians, she was pretty jazzed to see Norway in the house.

- I would say most of the Norwegians that were living in Duluth found a way to get down to see that boat.

This is the way it was gonna came in.

I believe this is down by the harbor.

People were going down every day to look at it.

- It was clear to Captain Gerhard Folgero Duluth loved the Leif Erikson, maybe even more than he did.

- Several times along the way he offered it to other cities.

He offered it to people in Rhode Island, and he offered it to people in New Jersey, and no one came up with the ante until he came to this large followings of Scandinavians here in Duluth.

- Bert Enger of the Enger & Olson furniture company, which Enger Tower is named after, purchased it from them.

- Bert and his partner, Emile Olson, offered the ship to the city of Duluth with the stipulation that it would always be maintained and available for public display.

That happened, for a while.

Here's where our story takes a wild turn for Captain Gerhard Folgero.

- So, he went back to Norway and built a larger scaled Viking ship, and he named that after Roald Amundsen who had just lost his life in the polar area.

And then he started using the Viking ship, the Roald Amundsen as a traveling school going up and down the coast of Norway giving lectures.

And about that time, German Nazi occupation was happening.

So, he used the boat to smuggle some delegates and counsel people from Norway, and he was caught, imprisoned.

And from the treatment he received in the concentration camps, he ultimately, lost his life from the harsh treatment so.

- I am sad that he died, but he died fighting Nazis.

That is the coolest thing I have ever heard, a Viking fighting Nazis.

- And when they asked him about him, "Do you consider yourself a Viking?"

He says, "No," but he said, "I'm very fortunate to have been able to do this," but I would really label him the last of the modern Vikings.

- [Haley] Meanwhile, back in Duluth, Lake Shore Park became Leif Erikson Park and the ship became a tourist attraction.

- When it became a landmark here in the park over the course of years, of course, it was seen by literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

- So, my parents and their friends often had their picnics down there, and they go down and see the ship.

- I'm just gonna time travel to the end of the story now and tell you that ship's not in Duluth anymore.

- I mean, back in the sixties and stuff I talked to a lot of people that said they used to go up there and smoke in that boat.

- Nobody was taking care of that boat, and people were sleeping on it and cooking in it.

- It's so strange to have such a valuable artifact and just kind of forgotten about and tossed aside.

- In 1985, Neill and Randy and others started a group Save Our Ship, SOS, to raise money for repairs.

- But what's this about restoring an 11th-century boat?

- It is a labor of love for the volunteers that are working on it.

- Oh, yeah.

We just time traveled to 1994, same studio I'm in right now, different walls.

- [Reporter] Craftsmen in Duluth are rebuilding a historic replica of Erikson's 11th century ship.

- Now, we'll see how well this fits.

Historically, it's a great project, because it is bringing back to the city of Duluth a nice landmark.

- [Haley] In the eighties and nineties and two thousands, the city of Duluth kept promising a permanent roof over the Leif Erikson.

It's what Bert Enger would've wanted when he donated the ship way back in 1927.

- Duluth didn't really seem to wanna have anything to do with it.

- It really deserves its own building with a whole interpretive center.

- That never happened.

In 2001, they finally moved the ship to the other side of the park where it sat again, neglected and occasionally shrink wrapped.

- So, we've been trying to screw around and get this outta here.

Yeah, that shrink wrap really came off, didn't it, Randy?

- [Randy] No.

- [Neill] You know, we gotta get this outta here then.

- In 2013, SOS pulled the ship out of Leif Erikson Park and warehoused it in West Duluth.

Bert Enger must be rolling in his grave, which I just learned is Enger Tower.

His ashes are in there.

Find a Grave is amazing.

In 2021, the Duluth City Council gave up on the Leif Erikson and just gave it to SOS.

And so, the Leif Erikson was moved to its final resting place at the Knife River Heritage and Cultural Center in Knife River, Minnesota, where they're going to build a permanent roof over it.

They've already done it with another boat.

So, fingers crossed, I feel like there should be a moral to this story.

Something about never giving up on your dreams to travel through time and watch a Viking fight a bunch of Nazis.

(upbeat music) Thanks for watching "Minnesota Historia".

Your guide to all things quirky in Minnesota history.

Check out some of our other episodes where we go even further and deeper into the quirky, soft underbelly of this very weird state.

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