By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

For years, American children memorized a set of rhymes that began, “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,” as they learned how Columbus sailed three ships west from Spain and “discovered America.”

But there’s plenty of evidence that the son of a Viking explorer beat him here by about 500 years.

And a Martinez man who comes from Nordic ancestors and Viking lands has set sail from Vallejo to travel through the Panama Canal and up the Eastern Seaboard to where that original explorer is believed to have landed. With him for part of the trip will be two Benicia residents.

Capt. Ingemar Olsson, originally from Sweden, said he hopes to examine where Leif Ericson landed on the northern tip of Newfoundland at a place now called L’Anse aux Meadows, but which Ericson called Vinland when he landed around the year 1000.

Ericson’s name is spelled several different ways: Leifr Eiriksson in Old Norse, Leifur Eiriksson in Icelandic, and Leiv Eiriksson in Norwegian. He was the son of Erik the Red, an explorer in his own right, recognized for having founded the first Norse settlement on Greenland.

After exploring the Newfoundland site, Olsson then will retrace in reverse Ericson’s course to Greenland and Iceland, then go on to Norway.

It won’t be a quick trip, Olsson said Monday just before leaving the Vallejo Marina on the 44-foot ketch Fool’s Castle, which is owned by Scott Bonomi and his girlfriend, Rene Canham, both of Benicia.

The journey will be taken in several legs, and the voyage will be timed so he can travel the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans when the waters are somewhat warmer, or at least have less ice.

Olsson isn’t making this trip alone, but neither did Ericson, who may have been inspired by the stories told by a merchant, Bjarni Herjolfsson, who claimed to have seen land west of Greenland after his ship had been blown off course, according to the icelandic saga, “Saga of the Greenlanders.”

Other version of the stories, including the “Eiriks Saga” that incorporates tales of Erik the Red, say Ericson saw the same land when he, too, was blown off course in 999.

After hearing Herjolfsson’s story, Ericson bought a ship and recruited 35 sailors in 1002 for the voyage west, landing first on a rocky area he called Helluland that may have been in Labrador, then reaching land a second time in a forested place he called Markland, possibly in Newfoundland.

Finally, he reached the place he named Vinland, possibly L’Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland’s northern tip. There he and his crew built a settlement where they spent the winter before returning to Greenland in the spring of 1003, their vessel carrying grapes and timber. Along the way, they rescued a crew from Iceland, earning Ericson the nickname “Leif the Lucky.”

His records, written in Norse, finally were translated into English in 1838.

Research in the 1960s by Helge Insgstad, an explorer, and his archeologist wife, Anne Stine Ingstad, determined that the northern tip of Newfoundland had had a Norse settlement, though other evidence indicates that Vinland may have been around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Subsequent but sporadic voyages were made by other Norse sailors for timber and trade for several hundred years, but unlike Columbus’s exploration, Ericson’s visit left no permanent settlement.

The Fool’s Castle crew will be far smaller than the number accompanying Ericson on his exploratory voyage, Olsson said. And the trip will be more leisurely.

The first leg of the trip will take them to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with a pause in San Diego Saturday and Sunday before continuing south.

On the first part of the trip, Olsson will be accompanied by Bonomi and Canham; Harry “Joel” Curtis-Brown, another Martinez resident; Charles Kite, of Vallejo; and Michelle Futerman, from Altadena.

From Cabo San Lucas, they will sail through the Panama Canal to Guatemala, where the ketch will winter until April. Olsson will travel home during the vessel’s stay, returning south in December with his wife, Deborah Kimbrell, a biologist and professor.

The trip through the Canal doesn’t take long, Olsson said, but there’s a line of vessels waiting to go through its locks that will take them from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. That wait could be as long as two weeks, he said.

Once through, the ketch heads to Guatemala to wait out the Atlantic’s hurricane season, he said. Then in April it will sail north through the Caribbean to Miami.

“Then up to Newfoundland,” he said.

Olsson said he expects to arrive in Canada in July, and that’s where his real work begins.

He’s calling his trip “In the Tracks of the Vikings,” and expects to produce a documentary and a book based on the journey of exploration.

Olsson has longed to explore L’Anse aux Meadows, which some believe is on the site of Ericson’s old settlement of Vinland.

“I’ve read about it, but I’m looking forward to seeing it,” he said.

Plus, there are the other areas Ericson visited, and Olsson wants to see those places, too.

From Newfoundland, he’ll try to retrace Ericson’s voyage, even if he’s traveling it in reverse.

Again, Olsson has watched his timing. “By the end of July,” he said, “the waters around Greenland usually are ice-free, with the exception of drifting icebergs.”

That’s when he’ll sail over the Davis Strait to southeastern Greenland, where Leif Ericson’s farm once operated. “We’ll visit his home in Greenland,” Olsson said.

Then he’ll travel through Prince Christian’s Sound and along Greenland’s east coast to Angmassalik.

The Fool’s Castle will sail over the Denmark Strait to Isafjordur on Iceland, and after circumnavigating Iceland Olsson will pilot the ketch across the Arctic Circle to the Faroe Islands and Shetland Islands in the North Atlantic.

Finally, Olsson plans to arrive in Bergen, Norway, “where the Vikings sailed from, when they explored the New World to the west.”

He expects to be back in Martinez by September 2014.

Olsson and his wife are semi-retired. That has given them the time to launch such an expedition.

The Gothenburg, Sweden, native moved to the United States 23 years ago, led here by his wife.

Olsson met his future bride at an airport, when she was obtaining a fellowship at Stockholm University as a geneticist.

The couple eventually moved to the United States in the 1990s, initially to Houston, Texas, then to Washington and finally to California, where Kimbrell was hired by the University of California-Davis.

“It’s very romantic,” Olsson said.

There’s also romance in the seas, but there’s more to this voyage for Olsson, who marks his return to sailing with this expedition.

“I’m an old Viking!” he said.

Olsson has the sailing chops to spend the bulk of a year aboard the vessel, especially in North Atlantic waters.

A member of the Swedish merchant marines when he was 16, he was part of the Royal Swedish Navy by the time he was 18.

The Navy was his career for 28 years, and much of his experience was in icy seas.

In 1988, he was an arctic explorer, crossing the Arctic Circle multiple times. “And living in Sweden, I’m used to the conditions,” he said.

“I’ve been in storms in the North Sea and the English Channel,” he said. “This boat is different, but I have sea legs.”

He’s U.S. Coast Guard certified for the trip, and has experience as a marine radio operator. Benician Rene Canham also is an amateur radio (ham) operator.

When Olsson first began planning his expedition, he spoke about buying a sailing vessel for the adventure, but Bonomi and Canham intervened, urging him instead to sail their ketch, a two-masted vessel that once was in Seattle, Wash.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” Olsson said. “I hope to find Viking artifacts.”

FOLLOW THE PROGRESS of the Fool’s Castle and her crew on Rene Canham’s blog, “Adventures of a Dumpy Old Broad at Large,” at dumpyoldbroad.blogspot.com.