On that marvelous bus tour that we took with Yrsa last week, I
learned about the first European woman to come to North America—or Vinland as
she and her fellow Norsemen called it.
With Yrsa’s permission to horn in on her territory, I am going to report
what some quick research yielded about life of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir. Most of what I report here comes out of “The
Saga of Eirick the Red” and The Saga of the Greenlanders,” which—if one pieces
them together and takes a few liberties with exactly how many husbands she had—will
give us an idea of Gudrid’s life.
For a long time, Gudrid’s story was thought to be pure myth,
even after the discovery of the Viking longhouse in Newfoundland. It wasn’t until 2001, and the discovery of
her house in Iceland, precisely where the sagas said it was, that historians
began to take seriously the reports of her adventures. Viz—
Born in Laugarbrekka, Iceland in 980, Gudrid grew up to earn the
nickname Vidforla, the Far-Traveler. She may have traveled more miles than anyone—man,
woman, or child—during her time.
The sagas tell us that her first love was a young man named Einar. But her father refused his permission for them to marry because Einar was the son of a slave. Oh, the dishonor! But then Papa went broke and the to avoid the scandal of that, he took his daughter and along with thirty others followed Erik the Red to Greenland. Half the company died of plague along the way, but Gudrid and her daddy made it and there she married a Norwegian, who also promptly died.
The sagas tell us that her first love was a young man named Einar. But her father refused his permission for them to marry because Einar was the son of a slave. Oh, the dishonor! But then Papa went broke and the to avoid the scandal of that, he took his daughter and along with thirty others followed Erik the Red to Greenland. Half the company died of plague along the way, but Gudrid and her daddy made it and there she married a Norwegian, who also promptly died.
Lief Eiriksson, Lief the Lucky, soon showed up, planning a trip
to Vinland, now Newfoundland. Gudrid, at
that point a widow, married Lief’s younger brother Thorstein and went along on
the journey, but an illness devastated the ranks of the settlers and Thorstein
died.
Here is where the sagas take a paranormal turn. Thorstein came
back from the dead and told Gudrid that she would go to Norway
and then back to Iceland, that she would marry again, to another merchant, that
she would travel south on a pilgrimage, and that she would eventually return
once more to Iceland and found a church.
Gudrid, in fact, did has the ghost predicted, but with a big detour.
In Norway, she married the merchant Thorfinn Karlsefni and
promptly convinced him to take a party of settlers back to Vinland. They got together a group of sixty men and
five women, some livestock, and crossed the sea. In Vinland, Gudrid gave birth to the first
European child born in the New World—Snorri Thorfinnsson. Thorfinn and Gudrid soon took their baby back
to Greenland.
After Thorfinn died, Gudrid converted to Christianity, made that
pilgrimage to Rome, where she may have met the Pope. By this time, Snorri was married and settled
in Iceland. On her return from Rome, she
returned to be near him, built a church, and lived out her days as a nun and an
anchoress.
A Scottish writer, Margaret Elphinstone wrote a novel about
Gudrid—The Sea Road. Nancy Marie Brown’s The Far Traveler: Voyages of Viking Woman gives a nonfiction
account of the life of this remarkable woman.
Hooray for traveling women!
Annamaria - Monday
