The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, no one believed that the details of Gudrid’s story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scientists discovered what may have been this pioneering woman’s last house, buried under a hay field in Iceland, just where the sagas suggested it could be. Joining scientists experimenting with cutting-edge technology and the latest archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid’s steps on land and in the sagas, Nancy Marie Brown reconstructs a life that spanned—and expanded—the bounds of the then-known world. She also sheds new light on the society that gave rise to a woman even more extraordinary than legend has painted her and illuminates the reasons for its collapse. "... [A] marvelously sneaky history of the Viking mind. A nimble synthesis of the literary and the scientific that will charm even readers who didn't know they were interested." --Kirkus Reviews "Brown rightly leaves scholarly work to scholars. Instead, her account presents an enthusiastic appreciation of her education in how fieldwork and literature offer insights into the past." --The Seattle Times "Brown's enthusiasm is infectious as she re-teaches us our history." ?The Boston Globe   Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, no one believed that the details of Gudrid’s story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scientists discovered what may have been this pioneering woman’s last house, buried under a hay field in Iceland, just where the sagas suggested it could be. Joining scientists experimenting with cutting-edge technology and the latest archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid’s steps on land and in the sagas, Nancy Marie Brown reconstructs a life that spanned?and expanded?the bounds of the then-known world. She also sheds new light on the society that gave rise to a woman even more extraordinary than legend has painted her and illuminates the reasons for its collapse.    "Brown rightly leaves scholarly work to scholars. Instead, her account presents an enthusiastic appreciation of her education in how fieldwork and literature offer insights into the past."? The Seattle Times   "[Brown has] a lovely ear for storytelling."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review   NANCY MARIE BROWN is the author of A Good Horse Has No Color and Mendel in the Kitchen . She lives in Vermont with her husband, the writer Charles Fergus. NANCY MARIE BROWN is the author of A Good Horse Has No Color and Mendel in the Kitchen. She lives in Vermont with her husband, the writer Charles Fergus. chapter 1 At Sea They set sail in good weather. But once they were at sea, the fair winds died. They were tossed this way and that and made no headway all summer. Sickness set in. . . . Half their people died. The seas rose, and they were faced with danger on all sides. —The Saga of Eirik the Red The first time i saw a viking ship in the water, i was struck with the desire to stow away on it. Writers, even the normally sedate scholarly type, tend to wax effusive about Viking ships. They were “unrivaled,” “the best and swiftest ships of their time,” “the swift greyhounds of the oceans,” “the ultimate raiding machine,” “a masterpiece of beauty,” “the most exquisite examples of sophisticated craftsmanship,” “a poem carved in wood.” “What temples were to the Greeks,” wrote one expert, “ships were to the Vikings.” Said another, “Plato may have denied the existence of ideal forms in this world, but Plato never saw a Viking ship.” The story of Gudrid the Far-Traveler, however, begins with a shipwreck. As The Saga of the Greenlanders tells it, Leif Eiriksson had just spent a year in Vinland as the first Norseman to set foot in the New World, and was heading home with a ship full of timber and wine grapes. He’d had fair winds all the way and had just sighted the great ice cap when one of his crewmen admonished the young captain. “Going a bit close to the wind, aren’t you?” “I’m watching my steering,” said Leif. “But I’m watching something else, too. Don’t you see it?” It was a ship—or a skerry. He couldn’t tell which. The older man saw nothing until they came closer, then he, too, could see a wreck clinging to a bit of bare rock. Leif anchored close to the reef and sent his towboat over. He rescued fifteen people—to add to his crew of thirty-five—and as much of their baggage as he could fit into his already-laden ship. The wreck had been carrying house timber from Norway to the Greenland settlemen