HE is credited with discovering America 500 years before Christopher Columbus and is immortalised across the USA every year on his birthday which has been proclaimed a national holiday.

Now Leif Erikson’s links to Scotland have been recognised with a bust of the Viking explorer unveiled in Lewis.

The Leif Erikson International Foundation said its “final project” of donating a 2ft high bust to the Uig community which “will complete the list of locations where the Sagas say Leif visited or lived”.

According to the Saga of Erik the Red, Leif visited the Hebrides in the year 1000 while en route back to Trondheim in Norway after being blown off course.

The Foundation believe from their research that “Uig is the most likely place in the Hebrides that Vikings might have inhabited”.

During his time on Lewis, Erikson fathered a child called Porkaetill, which means Thor’s cauldron, and is the precursor to the modern version of Torcuil.

The dedication ceremony was held on Wednesday afternoon with 24 members of the International Foundation in attendance.

Many of the local place names in the Hebrides are of Norse origin and Uig is also the location in which the Lewis chessmen were found in 1831.

According to the Sagas of Icelanders , Leif was the first European who landed in the territory of modern-day Canada.

But before that, he grew up in Greenland, where the family of Erik the Red moved after they colonized the land.

The details of his voyage in 1000 are a matter of historical debate, with one version claiming his landing was accidental while another said that he had sailed there intentionally after learning of the region from earlier explorers.

In the early 1960s, the discovery of the ruins of a Viking settlement in Newfoundland lent further weight to accounts of Eriksson’s voyage, and in 1964 the United States Congress authorized the president to proclaim each October 9 as Leif Eriksson Day.

According to a 13th-century Icelandic account The Saga of Erik the Red, Eriksson’s ships are said to have drifted off course on the return voyage home, finding dry ground at last on the North American continent.

It is believed they are most likely to have disembarked in what is now Nova Scotia, which Eriksson named Vinland, perhaps in reference to the wild grapes that his landing party saw there.

However, The Saga of the Greenlanders, which dates to the same era, suggests that Eriksson had heard already learned of “Vinland” from another seamen, Bjarni Herjólfsson, who had been there more than a decade earlier.

But regardless of his motives, Erikson is generally credited as the first European to set foot on the shores of North America, nearly five centuries before Christopher Columbus would arrive in 1492.

A Viking village from the 11th century was discovered in 1960, in L’Anse aux Meadow, on the northernmost top of the island of Newfoundland. Archaeologists unearthed eight houses and food remains.

For many, the results of these excavations confirmed the expedition of Leif to North America. L’Anse aux Meadow was declared Leif’s Vinland.

Now a UNESCO National Historic Site, it is the oldest European settlement to have been found in North America, and more than 2,000 Viking objects have been recovered from it, supporting accounts that Eriksson and his men wintered there before setting sail for home.

According to the 13th-century Saga of Erik the Red, in the year 1000, Leif travelled to Trondheim and on the way back to Greenland he he was blown off course to the Hebrides, which were then under Norse rule.

Joni Buchanan, chairwoman of the Uig Historical Society, now hopes the links with Erikson and the unveiling of the bust last week can boost visitor numbers which are already high due to the chessman.

She said: “It is great that the International Foundation have recognised his links and have donated us a bust. It is another piece of Viking heritage for visitors to admire when they come to find out about the chess men.

“Leif is believed to have blown off course on his way back to Greenland and Uig is his most likely place where he landed. He fathered a child here, called Torcuil, and he would later leave to join him in Greenland.

“We have a small museum here and about 80% of all our visitors come to lean about the chess man and how they came to be buried in the beach. “Nobody knows the answer but it is a fascinating story. They are still listed in the top ten things to do at the British Museum. Now some of them are in Stornoway Museum too and they still hold great appeal for visitors”.

The Seattle-based Leif Erikson international foundation has already installed 22 statues across Scandinavia, Canada and the USA.

A spokesman for the |Foundations said: “Uig is the most likely place in the Hebrides that Vikings might have inhabited. Uig is also the location in which the Lewis chessmen were found in 1831.

“They are thought to have been made in Trondheim in the mid-12thcentury and there is no certainty about how they ended up in Uig, buried in the sands”.