Geneva’s Viking ship gets VIP visitor
Norway's President of the Storting, or parliament, Masud Gharahkhani was quick to admit that he doesn’t look like your typical Viking when he visited Geneva Friday.
The Iranian-born and Norwegian-naturalized Gharahkhani, whose position is akin to the speaker of the House in the United States, is traveling through the Midwest to learn more about local politics, issues and culture in middle America before a NATO summit in Washington D.C. on Monday, July 8.
He visited the Viking ship at Good Templar Park and the Geneva Public Library with Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns Friday morning as part of his tour.
The ship — a replica of the Gokstad, built circa 850 — sailed from Bergen, Norway across the Atlantic Ocean to Chicago for the 1893 Columbian Exposition World’s Fair.
Following the tour, Gharahkhani thanked all the volunteers and members of Friends of the Viking Ship for “preserving our history and culture, and teaching it to future generations.”
Gharahkhani’s trip to the library included seeing the replica head and tail pieces of the ship, meeting local politicians and doing roundtable discussions with about 80 local business leaders and residents.
Talking about how intertwined Norway and the U.S. are, Gharahkhani said from the 1800s to 1910, 800,000 Norwegians emigrated to the U.S. from Norway, whose population at that time was only about 2.3 million.
Many of them settled in the Midwest.
“I love the U.S. and I love Norway, and here we have both,” he said. “It’s beautiful, I love the people, which is the most important thing.”
Norway is a constitutional monarchy. As president of the Storting, Gharahkhani is second in the line of leadership succession behind the prime minister.
Gharahkhani walked in the Evanston Fourth of July parade Thursday with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky before meeting with officials and residents in Morton Grove. He was given the full Chicago treatment when it came to meals, dining at the Billy Goat Tavern and Lou Malnati’s.
He’ll make stops in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota before Monday’s summit, which marks the 75th anniversary of NATO.