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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remarkable Perspective on the Norse World, October 15, 2007
Nancy Marie Brown's The Far Traveler is a wonderfully intelligent and immediate narrative not only of the journeys of Gudrid, the Icelandic colonist of North America around the year 1000 who also made a pilgrimage to Rome, but also of the dangerous world and harsh climate she inhabited--and how her people, the Icelanders and Greenlanders, sustained their way of life in the North Atlantic environment.
With little known from the Icelandic sagas about the life of Gudrid, author Brown makes excellent use of a range of sources to reconstruct the Norse world, recounting along the way her own work as a volunteer archaeologist at Glaumbaer in Iceland, likely Gudrid's last home. Not to be forgotten among these sources of information are the experimental archaeologists who have built replicas of Viking ships and, as important, have reconstructed the techniques of women's work in the Norse world, so much of it based on the economically vital production of cloth from wool.
I highly recommend this engaging, fluently written, deeply researched book.
--Patrick J. Stevens, curator, Fiske Icelandic Collection, Cornell University Library
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vivid Account of Viking Life, September 23, 2007
The far-traveling Viking woman of the title was Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, once a sister-in-law of Leif Eirikson and reputedly the mother of the first European child born in North America. The little which is known specifically of Gudrid comes from two Icelandic sagas: "Eirik the red's Saga" and "The Greenlanders' Saga", but even those two sources disagree with one another about details of Gudrid's life. What we can be reasonably sure of is that Gudrid was born in Iceland, traveled to the new Norse Greenland colonies in about the year 1000, became a ward of Eirik the Red, and married his son, Thorstein, who soon died. Widowed, Gudrid then married the Icelandic merchant Thorfinn Karlsefni, apparently convinced Karlsefni to attempt colonization of the newly discovered Vinland, lived with her husband for three years in Vinland -- at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, it seems -- giving birth to a son, Snorri, then returned to Greenland and then back to Iceland, where Karlsefni died. In later life, Gudrid may have made a pilgrimage to Rome and returned to Iceland to die a nun.
With so few details of Gudrid's life certain, the greatest part of Nancy Marie Brown's book is devoted to exploring what we know of Viking life, especially in Iceland, and what we don't know, plus a first-hand account of Brown's experiences as a volunteer archaeologist at the site of what appears to be Gudrid's final home in Iceland. Along the way, the author discusses the nature of Icelandic sagas and the fine Viking arts of cheese-making and weaving. All this is done in an engaging manner that brings Gudrid (and modern Iceland) fully to life.
My only real criticism of the book is that it could have benefited from additional maps and from diagrams of the Norse ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows and of Gudrid's Icelandic farm at Glaumbaer.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful book!, September 25, 2007
A powerful book. The Far Traveler is a striking play with some of the concepts of the age that it relates. In saga time, divinatory practice was said to open up the past, revealing hidden information about people and their (wrong)doings. This book represents remote sensing in a dual sense; not only does it provide an illuminating account of high-tech archaeology and the ways in which it gazes beyond the surface layers of modern Icelandic farmland, also, and more importantly, it convincingly reconstructs a series of spectacular events from distant times and contexts. Thanks to Nancy Marie Brown's vivid imagination, detailed research, and, above all, skilful narration, the brave world of Gudrid finally gets the treatment it truly deserves. A moving and gripping account, in a language strangely reminiscent of the saga style. Gisli Palsson, author of Travelling Passions: The Hidden Life of Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Travelling Passions: Stefansson, the Arctic Explorer
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