YOU HEAR IT ALL the time. It’s the Scandinavian heritage. It’s to blame for, well, name your issue: Our passive-aggressive ways, our weakness for booze, our dour demeanors. But we don’t buy it, especially when there are so many other things to blame—like clouds, great bars, clouds, and more clouds. Something positive you can attribute to the Norselanders? The bad-ass statue standing guard at Shilshole Bay Marina in Ballard. The axe-wielding Viking is, as every Seattleite worth their weight in Gore-Tex knows, Leif Erikson, believed to be the first European to set foot in North America, more than a thousand years ago. The statue of the Norwegian explorer has been a Northwest icon since the 1962 World’s Fair. But no one knew just how entrenched he was in the cityscape until last year when it came time to move the four-ton sculpture 200 feet up shore. The Norseman wouldn’t budge; his legs had been filled with cement in ’62 and not even a crane exerting 7,200 pounds of pressure could dislodge it. But Scandinavians (Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes), the largest immigrant group in Ballard, wanted their statue where they wanted it—amid a heritage plaza replete with traditional rune stones. The Leif lovers persisted until, last March, after 40 hours of hard nudging, a crew lifted the 16-foot piece and sent him out to be refurbished. The Viking came back in the fall, complete with plaques to sport names of Scandinavian Americans willing to donate to the cause. One other change: Leif used to stare out to sea, his back turned to the crowd like some passive-aggressive Seattleite. He’s turned around and now faces visitors to the bay.