The Viking Woman Who Travelled to the New World: Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir

The anticipation built within her as she sailed off the edge of the map. Ahead of her, an undiscovered land, the tantalising glimmers of possibility flickering inside her like neurons in the brain. Just what lay ahead? And would she ever see her home again? This may not have been an easy time to be a woman in many places, but a Viking woman was different. She became the most travelled woman in the Middle Ages. But harsh conditions and famine in a fledgling colony in Vinland would test her mettle. Viking women have been lost to history but they played a far more important role than anyone realises. This is the story of one Viking adventurer, Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, and the one question we all have: did she really exist as her sagas claim?

The Sagas of Gudrid

The name of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir [guth-free / thr-weath-foilr-laa-theaur-bya-ru-aar-eau-oht-ayre] (sorry Icelanders, your language is a nightmare) appears in two Viking sagas: The Saga of Greenlanders and The Saga of Eirik the Red.

You just don’t think of Vikings named ‘Eric’, do you?

In one saga, Gudrid is poor and ends up shipwrecked on her way to Greenland. In the other, she’s rich and survives a harsh Greenland winter before travelling to Vinland, now coastal North America. Each saga is like a giant, ancient tree. While minor details vary, the story is essentially the same.

In both sagas, Gudrid was born in the late 9^th century in Snæfellsnes, Iceland. That’s over 1,000 years ago. She was born to a Christian family, early adopters in a time when paganism reigned. As a child, Gudrid lived with friends of her father, a tradition at the time and not at all weird.

At 15, Gudrid travelled with her father, Thorbjorn, to Greenland, where the trouble-making Eirik was busy setting up a new Viking settlement. ‘Eiriks’ are notoriously troublesome, it seems…

Gudrid had already turned down a marriage proposal, not because she was too young but because her father arranged it. Oh, and the guy she was to marry was her father’s slave. She didn’t like that a great deal.

So that’s how she ended up on a voyage to Greenland, where she married Thorir, a Norwegian man, but he died the following winter during a famine. So then she marries Thorstein, son of Eirik, the younger brother of Leif, the first European man to set foot in the Americas.

Following in Leif’s footsteps, Thorstein set sail for the New World. And he took his new bride with him. This was her choice. But they never made it to Vinland, literally ‘wine land’, the Vikings’ name for a region of North America.

Winter was coming and they had to turn around. They made it back to Greenland just before the harsh winter set in. All around Gudrid, one by one, people started dying. The brutal conditions brought famine and, among the dead, Thorstein. He died of the plague. Gudrid believes she was visited by his ghost, telling her:

“Your destiny [will] be a great one.”

She was now widowed, stranded in this never-ending winter. Every day was a battle to survive. She was 17 years old. Viking women had far greater equality than we may realise. It was her choice where to live, her choice of who to marry next, and even her choice about what to do with her life.

It might not sound radical by today’s standards, but 1,000 years ago?

Gudrid decided to marry Thorfinn Karlsefni, an Icelandic merchant, known by the nickname, ‘The Makings of a Man’. But what did Gudrid want in life?

Well, she wanted to complete the journey. The journey that killed Thorstein’s brother and the journey Thorstein himself could not complete. Gudrid wanted to travel to Vinland.

She and Thorfinn joined an expedition that included sixty men, five women and some sheep, and they headed out for the New World…

The Journey to Vinland and the Viking Nun

In one saga, Gudrid is ‘the fairest of women’ and had a lovely singing voice. In another, she’s described as knowing ‘well how to carry herself among strangers’. It came in handy when dealing with indigenous peoples later on. The settlers made it.

The Viking ship, with Gudrid onboard, landed in Vinland (North America) some 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Gudrid and Thorfinn lived in a settlement in Vinland for the next three years, having a son named Snorri, the first European born in North America.

But numerous hostile encounters with indigenous people meant that this simply wasn’t a safe place to raise a family and so, reluctantly, Gudrid and her family set sail back to Iceland. Although, along the way, they stopped off in Norway and Greenland.

Gudrid was as well-travelled as her nickname suggests.

The family found themselves at a farm named Glaumbær, where Gudrid had another child. In her late 50s, she embarked on another voyage, this time ON FOOT to Rome. She left a Christian Viking, she returned as a nun. To walk that distance is about 568 hours or getting on for 24 days, without sleep or rest. Well, I say ‘on foot’, some of it was on a boat, but in either case, a bloody long time…

Some people believe Gudrid met the Pope on her little trip. Upon her return, she spent the rest of her life living as a nun and a recluse on her farm. Nobody quite knows what a ‘Viking nun’ looked like, so we can only guess.

Maybe she rode into battle wearing her habit, swinging her rosary beads as a weapon…

She outlived three more husbands but by this point, I’ve lost track. She went on to found several nunneries, spending her last few years living in a church Snorri built for her. Aww, what a son. By the end of her life, she had crossed the North Atlantic Sea at least eight times, travelling farther than any other Viking, male or female.

Ultimately, the Viking settlement in Vinland was abandoned. But are these sagas just that? Stories and tall tales of a great Viking woman who couldn’t possibly have existed?

Or was she real after all?

The Truth of Gudrid

Can we trust the sagas? After all, they include stories of dragons, ghosts, witches and all manner of fictional events. But these sagas also include the names of real people, real places and real events. While one or two minor details may differ, predominantly they seem to be pretty accurate.

“[The sagas] all claim to present some kind of truth.” Lars Lonnroth (scholar).

Both ‘Greenlanders’ and ‘Eirik the Red’ were passed down orally for more than 200 years until they were finally written down in the 13^th century. The sagas are so cherished that no one would dare embellish them. Those familiar with Gudrid’s story would have called out any storyteller if they took one too many liberties…

While some parts of Gudrid’s story are apocryphal, such as the husband’s ghost, many elements of Gudrid’s story are based on actual events. But what of this mythical settlement in Vinland?

Well, the only known Viking settlement in North America is L’Anse aux Meadows, located in the northernmost part of Newfoundland. It’s thought it was too windy for a permanent settlement, so its intention was as a staging post for farther expansion south.

Just imagine if the Vikings conquered America before the Europeans?

Carbon dating places L’Anse aux Meadows’ age at around 1000AD, lining up with when Leif and Gudrid would have visited the New World. And in that settlement, there is a small rock, confirming men and women lived and worked together here over 100 years ago.

While Gudrid’s story is over 1,000 years old, making it impossible to be 100 per cent accurate with every little detail, there is every chance she was real. Simply put, we have no reason to doubt the sagas.

When we think of Vikings, we think of the men. But the women were just as important and played a huge role in Viking society. Whether Gudrid was real or not, she demonstrates just how important Viking women were in Viking society.

There were, most certainly, plenty of Viking women just like her.

The Viking Woman Who Travelled to the New World

So was the impossible-to-pronounce-unless-you’re-Icelandic Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir real? I like to think so, although we’ll never know for sure. But the importance of her story is that it confirms what so few people know:

Viking women were real and every bit as brave and daring as Viking men. Even better, Viking women faced very few limitations and many were free to live the lives they wanted to live. Just look at Gudrid. Her father gave her a man to marry and she said ‘no’. And what did her father do? NOTHING! That’s fine, darling, who do you want to marry?

She ended up going through quite a few husbands…

While her sagas undoubtedly contain fables, half-truths and fiction, Gudrid’s story is certainly plausible. From what we know about her, this adventurer who travelled to the new world, it makes sense that the Vikings told stories of her that became the sagas. To immortalise a Viking woman in such a way, and to make it clear that this journey was her choice, shows the importance the Vikings placed upon women in their society.

It’s safe to say Gudrid was one of the most travelled people in the Middle Ages. Her journey was extraordinary and incredibly influential. She wanted adventure and so that’s what she sought out. Over 1,000 years ago, she sailed off the edge of the map to seek out a new life in the New World. That she did.

And for me, why can’t she be real?

Author Nancy Brown once said:

“Viking women were as courageous and as adventurous as Viking men and… there were far fewer limitations on the life of a woman in those times than we may think.”

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https://www.thoughtco.com/lanse-aux-meadows-vikings-north-america-167165