Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir’s story is told in the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders, the 13th-century Icelandic chronicles, known collectively as the Vinland Sagas. As the story goes, Gudrid was born in the late 9th century in Snæfellsnes, Iceland, to an early Christian family when paganism was the norm. As a child, she grew up with friends of her father, a traditional custom of the period. At 15, her father declined a marriage proposal she received since the guy’s father was a slave. Instead, she joined her father on a voyaged to Greenland to join the new Viking settlement of Erik the Red – the first settler in Greenland. On her arrival to Greenland, Gudrid married a Norwegian man named Thorir, but he died the following winter during a famine that hit the colony. Then, she married Thorstein Eiriksson, the son of Erik the Red and the younger brother of Leif Erikson, the first European man to set foot in the Americas. Gudrid joined her new husband on his quest to retrieve the body of his brother Thorvald from Vinland, the Viking settlement in the coastal area of North America (Canada of today). Before sailing west, they decided to spend the winter in Lysufjord, Norway, where Thorstein died during a plague that struck the area. The legend tells that her dead husband’s ghost appeared to her, telling her that she was destined for greatness and that a church would be built at her farm in Iceland. At 17 years old and twice widowed, Gudrid returned to the settlement in Greenland. There she married a man named Thorfinn Karlsefni. She urged her new husband to travel to Vinland, and the couple joined an expedition that included sixty men, five women, and a selection of livestock. The new settlers arrived safely in North America, reaching the New World 500 years before Columbus. Gudrid and her husband lived in Vinland for three years, leaving because of hostile encounters with the indigenous peoples. During this time, Gudrid gave birth to her son Snorri Thorfinnsson, who became the first European born in the Western Hemisphere. On their return to Iceland, Gudrid and her family settled on a farm called Glaumbær, where Gudrid had another child. In her 40s-50s, Gudrid embarked on another voyage, this time a foot pilgrimage to Rome, returning as a nun. She lived the rest of her life reclused at a church. Throughout her life, Gudrid crossed the North Atlantic Sea eight times, traveling farther than any other Viking. Read more...