Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir

The extraordinary career of Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir (born c.980) as a Scandinavian pioneer, traveller and mother of the first known European to be born in the New World is preserved in two probably thirteenth-century works known collectively as the Vinland Sagas.

During an ill-fated voyage by sea, which testifies to the deep-felt wanderlust of the Icelander, Gudrid and her father spent a tough winter stranded in Greenland, sheltering at the house of a farmer named Thorkel, during which Gudrid revealed some of her considerable accomplishments. In those lean times, the divination of future prospects for hunting and husbandry was a matter of keen interest; the advice and predictions of wise men and women were often sought. On one occasion, Gudrid was asked by a visiting seeress if she knew the chants required for carrying out the appropriate magic rites:

Gudrid answered, ‘I have neither magical powers nor the gift of prophecy, but in Iceland my foster-mother, Halldis, taught me chants she called “Warlock songs”.’

[The seeress] answered, ‘Then you know more than I expected.’ Gudrid said, ‘These are the sort of actions in which I intend to take no part, because I am a Christian woman.’

…Thorkel then urged Gudrid, who said she would do as he wished.

In Eirik the Red’s Saga, she and her father set out the following spring and came to the settlement of the legendary Leif Eiriksson (c.970–c.1020) at Brattahlid on the southwest coast of Greenland. In the Saga of the Greenlanders, Gudrid was already married to a man called Thorir; together with their companions, they survived shipwreck, from which they were rescued by Leif Eiriksson returning from his voyage of discovery to Vinland. That winter Thorir died of a sickness. On the outcome of this family setback, the two versions agree: Gudrid was taken into Leif’s household at Brattahlid, and married his younger brother Thorstein.

When Thorstein decided he would sail to the New World described in such glowing terms by his brother, Gudrid and her father went with him, seemingly undaunted by their previous experience of those dangerous and hostile waters. It was an unlucky voyage: they lost their bearings and saw no land for the whole of that summer and, as winter came on, they made landfall at Lyusfjord, on Greenland’s northwest coast, and were taken in by a farmer; but as winter deepened, sickness struck and fever killed many of them, including Thorstein and Gudrid’s father, Thorbjorn.

Gudrid, returning to Brattahlid and by now possibly twice-widowed, was once more taken into Leif Eiriksson’s household; and here she married again, this time a wealthy visiting trader called Thorfinn Karlsefni. Now an orphan, albeit the beneficiary of her father’s wealth, it is significant that she asked Leif, effectively her guardian and protector, for his advice; or rather, perhaps, for his approval of her decision.

Inspired and attracted by stories of Vinland’s wealth and opportunities, the newly married couple fitted out ships sufficient for sixty men and five women plus animals, and sailed west.

…made an agreement that anything of value they obtained would be divided equally among them. They took all sorts of livestock with them, for they intended to settle in the country if they could. Karlsefni asked Leif for his houses in Vinland, and Leif said that he would lend but not give them to him.

They then put out to sea in their ship and arrived without mishap at Leif’s booths [perhaps of turf walls, to be roofed by ships’ sails and spars covered with more turves], where they unloaded their sleeping-sacks. They soon had plenty of provisions, since a fine, large rorqual [perhaps a fin whale] had stranded on the beach… They had plenty of supplies from the natural bounty there, including grapes, all sorts of fish and game, and other good things…²

For three years they explored the east coast of the Americas from northwest Newfoundland – where a Viking Age settlement, possibly Gudrid’s or Leif’s own hall, has been excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows – as far south, perhaps, as Maine. They found wild vines and self-sown grain; timber in abundance from great forests that came down almost to the sea;^† and natives with whom they first traded and then fought. Somewhere in Vinland, Gudrid bore a son, Snorri: the first European born in the New World.

A counterpoint to Gudrid’s story is provided in the Vinland sagas by Freydis, the illegitimate daughter of Eirik the Red and, therefore, Gudrid’s stepsister-in-law. Gudrid does the right things: she is beautiful, talented, tough and resourceful; marries conventionally and conducts widowhood and courtship with dignity; bears no children outside wedlock and brings honour to her husband’s family.

In the alternative narrative told in Eirik the Red’s Saga, Freydis joins Thorfinn’s and Gudrid’s expedition and is present when natives attack their compound. Thorfinn and his men flee, but Freydis follows them and calls out:

‘Why do you flee such miserable opponents, men like you who look to me to be capable of killing them off like sheep? Had I a weapon I am sure I would fight better than any of you.’ They paid no attention to what she said. Freydis wanted to go with them, but moved somewhat slowly as she was with child. She followed them into the forest, but the natives reached her. She came across a slain man, Thorbrand Snorrason, who had been struck in the head by a slab of stone. His sword lay beside him, and this she snatched up, and prepared to defend herself with it as the natives approached her. Freeing one of her breasts from her shift, she smacked the sword with it. This frightened the natives, who turned and ran back to their boats and rowed away.³

In the sagas, then, heroines and anti-heroines needed each other to balance the requirements of the narrative, just as fallible mortals needed their capricious superhuman gods; and just as brother fought brother.

Thorfinn Karlsefni’s fleet eventually sailed back to Norway laden with exotic and valuable goods, its crews recounting many tales that must have grown taller in the retelling.

Gudrid is hardly a rounded historical figure. But those who wrote down her story in the centuries after her death remembered with admiration a woman of character: of stoicism and bravery, intrepidity and resourcefulness; and archaeologists have fleshed out much of the context of those early settlements in Greenland and Iceland. It is hard to think of another woman of the Early Medieval period of whom it can be said that two of her houses have been identified and excavated.