LONDON.- Sotheby’s London sale of 19th Century European Paintings on Wednesday, 2 June, 2010, is to include an important work by Norwegian artist Christian Krohg (1852-1925) of Leif Eriksson discovering America. Estimated at £150,000-250,000, the painting will spearhead the Norwegian component of the Scandinavian section of the sale. Leif Eriksson was a Norse explorer (c.970 – c.1020) regarded as the first European to land in North America, nearly five hundred years before Christopher Columbus. In November 1891 newspapers in Kristiania (now Oslo) announced that The Leif Eriksson Memorial Association was to stage a competition for Norwegian artists to execute a large painting of Eriksson for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, to coincide with a journey taken by the ‘Viking’ ship, a replica of the ‘Gokstad’ (excavated in 1880 after a ship burial centuries earlier), from Norway to the fair. The fair ce