On Columbus Day, the Minnesota Vikings decided Christopher Columbus wasn't worth celebrating.
"Today we celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day and honor the rich histories, cultures, traditions, and contributions of Indigenous peoples," the team posted on X. "We are grateful for the opportunity to learn from and engage with Indigenous leaders, organizations, and community members who help strengthen Minnesota every day."
Next to the post sat the team's logo, a Norse raider with horns on his helmet.
Minnesota has been hard on Columbus. In June 2020, protesters threw a rope around his statue outside the State Capitol in St. Paul and pulled it to the ground while state troopers watched. Three years later, the state erased Columbus Day from its official calendar and replaced it with Indigenous Peoples' Day. The reason given each time was that Columbus enslaved and killed native people.
The Vikings did that for hundreds of years before Columbus.
Vikings are known to be fierce warriors who raped, killed, pillaged, and enslaved anyone they captured during their raids. They and announced themselves in 793 by attacking an English monastery called Lindisfarne. They cut down the monks, stripped the altar of its gold and loaded the survivors onto their boats to sell. For the next three centuries, the Norsemen raided their way up and down the coasts of Europe, and the slave markets in Dublin did a brisk trade in the people they carried off.
Then they found America. Leif Erikson landed here around the year 1000, almost five hundred years before Columbus. The Norse sagas describe what happened when his brother's crew came across Native Americans for the first time. They killed eight of them.
Columbus was a latecomer.
Fans on X caught it right away. "Vikings were known for pillaging, raping, slaughtering, burning, and enslaving their victims," one wrote. "Better change your name too 🤡." Another pointed out that the Redskins had to go, the Indians had to go, even the Native woman on the Land O'Lakes butter box had to go, but the Vikings, "who were literally known for raping, pillaging, and destroying," somehow made it through untouched.
He has a point. Washington's football team spent two years as the "Washington Football Team" because nobody could agree on a name inoffensive enough. Cleveland is the Guardians now. Columbus came off his pedestal in St. Paul. The Vikings never had to change a thing, and apparently that was enough to make them comfortable lecturing the rest of us.
Twenty-nine NFL teams said nothing on Monday. Three posted about Indigenous Peoples' Day. Only one of those three has a mascot who would have burned down the village.
Fans don't watch the Vikings for this. They paint their faces purple, put on the horns and yell "Skol" so they can spend a Sunday afternoon not thinking about who's offended by what. A football team got on social media to tell them their holiday was the wrong one.
Leif Erikson's men killed Native Americans almost five centuries before Columbus showed up. Minnesota tore down Columbus and kept the Vikings.
