Seattle, Washington: Leif Erickson and Ugly Columbus Statue

At the shore of Shilshole Bay in Ballard in Seattle there is a bronze statue of Leif the Lucky looking out over the Puget Sound, a body of water he never knew existed.

There is also a wooden statue of a viking that I call the Monument to the Unknown Norwegian on the side of a bank on Market street, the main drag of Ballard which is heavily Scandinavian in population. To balance these two tributes out, we also have a statue of Christopher Columbus (in a modern, free-associational, non-representational style) at the downtown waterfront area, also facing the Sound, also a body of water CC never even dreamed of. As yet we have no monuments to Irish monks in coracles but give us time. [Rahne Kirkham, 07/15/2001]

[RA: The Christopher Columbus statue, whose face resembles a bug-eyed space alien from Close Encounters, is regarded by some critics as the ugliest in the world. It was rejected by the Seattle Arts Commission, but the Seattle City Council overruled them and installed it in 1978.]