Didrik Pining

Didrik Pining ( Dietrich and Diderik; * about 1428 probably in Hildesheim, † 1490/1491 in Vardo ) was a German sailor, according to the speculations to have discovered in 1473, which was 19 years before Christopher Columbus America.

Pining began his career as a pirate in the North Atlantic. He stood as a privateer to 1473 in the service of the city of Hamburg, and later of the Kingdom of Denmark. From 1478 to 1490 he was governor of belonging to Denmark Iceland. He died probably in 1491 as governor of Vardo in Northern Norway.

Expedition 1473

Together with the likewise derived from Hildesheim Hans Pothorst led Pining from 1473 was commissioned by King Christian I of Denmark and Norway and at the request of the Portuguese King Alfonso V, probably with the envoy and navigators João Vaz Corte- Real, from Bergen in Norway from an expedition to the West with the aim of Greenland. You probably got up there, maybe even to Newfoundland and Labrador, and thus to the North American mainland. However, the details of this trip must be reconstructed from scattered sources. As helmsman John Scolvus is ( elsewhere also John Skolp ) called. It conjectures have been made that it may have been at the mysterious figure of John Skolp to the young Christopher Columbus. Skolp was also identified on equally insecure basis, with Pothorst or Corte- Real.

Pining today

In Hildesheim there since the summer of 1974, a Didrik Pining - Elementary School, for the designation of which is the initiator of this school, Rector Heinz- Otto Ihde, had used; continues to be a city street is named after him. The DLRG local group Hildesheim had until the 1990s, a motor lifeboat with the name Didrik Pining. In early 2007, the mayor of Hildesheim, Kurt Machens, appointed a meeting room at City Hall by Didrik Pining Hildesheim.