Near the eastern entrance of Griffith Park at the intersection of Los Feliz Boulevard and Fern Dell Drive is a bronze bust of the Norse – Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson, who is believed to be the first European to set foot on North America several centuries before Christopher Columbus. A few steps away from Lief sits the bronze Berlin Bear. The LFIA is having both statues–the Leif Erikson bronze and the Berlin Bear–cleaned and conserved in the coming months. The Berlin Bear, the symbol of Germany’s capital city, was a gift from the citizens of Berlin to their sister city of Los Angeles. But why is there a bust of Leif Erikson in Griffith Park? The answer comes from Elizabeth Lovins, LFIA Director and founder/archivist of the Hollywood Art Center Archive, who shared her knowledge of this unexpected artwork and the woman who made it:
In the 1930s, Icelandic – American artist Nina Saemundsson moved to Los Angeles and taught at the Hollywood Art Center School. In 1936, fresh off her success with the WPA Prometheus statue in Westlake (MacArthur) Park, she sculpted a very unusual Leif Erikson portrait bust. Gifted to the city by the Nordic League, this, the third statue of the Viking explorer in North America, depicts a youthful, unadorned Leif. Saemundsson returned to Iceland in 1955, but her art lives on in Griffith Park. Leif Erikson Day is celebrated each year on October 9.
