After Leif

Out of the Atlantic's grey mists one overcast afternoon last week emerged a snug, grey-hulled motorship with red, white and blue striping on her two buff funnels, gay bunting flapping from her halyards. She was the 18,673-ton Oslofjord, new $3,000,000 flagship of the Norwegian America Line, on her maiden voyage to the land Norse Leif Ericson previewed some 938 years earlier. Leif the Lucky's 75-foot ship was a Viking man-o'-war with a single candy-striped sail and places for 35 men. The 588-foot Oslofjord is a businesslike luxury liner with four 4,400-h.p. hydraulic-geared Diesels, accommodations for 800 passengers.

On the Oslofjord's deck, as she poked up The Narrows of New York Harbor last week and eased into quarantine, paced an authentic-looking Viking. He was Able Seaman Eugen Knutsen, burdened for a reception tableau with a shirt of mail and the weight of 938 years of Norse legend. At quarantine, Viking Knutsen received a visitor. She was Rosebud Yellow Robe, sprightly, college-bred great grandniece of Sitting Bull. Last week Rosebud mislaid her peace pipe but gave sheepish Leif a beaded tobacco pouch and the welcoming ceremony was over.

The saltier of the Oslofjord's visitors were interested by her duplex bridge, with all the essential instruments of the enclosed lower portion duplicated on a hurricane bridge above. On the bridge no great spoked wheel governs the Oslofjord's, helm, but a modern button-control system--a button for port and one for starboard. To the suggestion that old-line Norse steersmen might prefer the traditional twirl of the wheel to this newfangled steering, weathered Captain Kjeld Irgens, commodore of the Norwegian America fleet, had a gruff answer. "Quartermasters," said he grimly, "shall learn to like it."

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