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The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

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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

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.

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

I am just a general reader who happens to enjoy well-written history. I've never read much at all about the Vikings but the NY Times review of THE FAR TRAVELER was enticing and I was not let down by its promise. Nancy Marie Brown has reached back to a place and people obscured by time, doing a decent job of erasing some of the fog and cold desolation that obscure the Dark Ages and Medieval Epoch in Iceland and Greenland. She also succeeds in revealing a lot about contemporary archaeological practice and thought.

Brown turns first to the Sagas, the 10th and 11th century tales of Vikings, for inspiration. Though embroidered, the Sagas, written down some generations later, are regarded as holding historical memories. Brown focuses on one woman who appears in both the Eirik the Red and Greenland Sagas as her guide, Gudrid, who traveled from Iceland to Greenland to Vinland, back to Iceland and remarkably, in later age, on a pilgrimage to Rome. Her son Snorri was very likely the first European child born on North American soil, circa 1005. Her personal story reveals much about religion, economics, gender relations, values, world view and other aspects of her culture. Born late in the 10th century AD, she witnessed the spread of Christianity and the fading of the violent marauding male economy as the domestic textile industry spun by women on the farm began to reposition Iceland in the world trade scene. Brown travels to all of the places Gudrid did, reads scholarship on her topic and participates in archaeological digs and recreation of weaving studios.

The digs at L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland, have been reported on before, but Brown brings a fresh fascination to them in the context of Gudrid's life. She provides strong descriptive passages of the places she visits and there is one map in the front of the book. It would have been nice, however, to have had some illustrations. I would also like to have known a little more about Brown's own context and interest in this subject.

For any reader who appreciates a good, real-life mystery and enjoys learning about the old crafts and lost arts, Far Traveler satisfies on all counts. As in her previous book, A Good Horse Has No Color, the author writes with such descriptive precision and sense of immediacy that the reader experiences the search for information about this historically significant Icelandic woman as if right by the author's side during the discovery process. A book you want to immediately re-read on reaching the last page when the story comes full circle.

This is an extraordinary acheivement. The author follows the character of Gudrid throughout her journeys through in Viking world of the late 900s and early 1000s and, along the way, paints a vivid picture of life at that time. The writing is engaging and apparently effortless, but the research that supports it is massive, as described in 35 pages of footnotes and references at the end of the book. The author's passion is clear throughout, and further evidenced by her having worked as a volunteer archaeologist one summer in Iceland to excavate Gudrid's home. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the Vikings.

The story of Gudrid the Far Traveler is amazing in its ability to engage an otherwise indifferent reader. One may not feel particularly attracted to Viking lore, to accounts of archaeological digs, or to Icelandic or New World history, but upon hitting the first page of The Far Traveler, there is a seduction waiting. It doesn't take more than a few pages to get hooked. The author, Nancy Marie Brown, is a marvelous storyteller for this particular form of nonfiction. She's done her research - both in the pages of old tomes as well as in the field - and she is able to convey very ancient history with a fresh, contemporary feel. To top that off, Ms. Brown has an amazing sense of humor and her serious but accessible account of Gudrid and her travels is punctuated by tongue-in-cheek remarks that make the reader feel as though they are actually with Ms. Brown in person, hearing her relate the story with more than a few mischievious asides. What strikes one the most is why we have not heard more of Gudrid throughout history. After all, most of us know about Leif Ericksson and of Erick the Red. Why has Gudrid been kept hidden? We owe a debt to Ms. Brown for introducing us to such a fascinating character from history. This is the kind of book that one starts with no particular expectation but finishes with astonishment. At the end, the reader has had a crash course in Viking history, Icelandic history, a bit about the history of Greenland, has learned about the discovery of Vinland, how to look for and excavate Viking long houses, and has gained familiarity with the famous Sagas. If all that seems too much for one book, look at it this way: Brown gives the reader options. After reading The Far Traveler, some may want to do further exploration into Viking history, others may want to read the Sagas in their full, original state. Still others may want to book a trip to Iceland, now a suddenly more interesting destination because of this book. The Far Traveler is full of surprises, a delight to read, and a labor of love on the part of its author who was determined to introduce the world to Gudrid.

This book is far from what the title makes it out to be. Expecting a chronicling of the life of a Viking woman who comes to North America, I was surprised to find a detailed history of Greenland and Iceland with just a few sprinklings of Gudrid in between. I'm a huge fan of the old Norse world and loved reading these, but sometimes the random tangents the book took were just too hard to uninteresting to read.

Towards the end of the book, the author starts to ramble and at one point writes for 15 pages about the types of weaving done by Icelandic women; going into minute details about every single part in the process of turning wool into cloth. The final chapter of the book only begins to mention the Norse pagan religion, something that probably should have been addressed right from the beginning. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, Brown once again mentions her titular character, only to end the tale 2 pages later.

If you're a fan of Vikings, Norse Mythology or Nordic History, this book is a good read. But even die-hards will question the author's tangents and be begging for a more complete or compact story about Gudrid.

The far traveller: Stories of a Viking woman The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman
The far traveler is not a story about a specific person. Is about how a woman named Gudrid learned to live in the middle of a changing time for a group of people that left Norway searching for a life freed from the rule of a King. The result was an invention of culture told in the Viking Sagas. Gudrid is a woman in the Sagas. The book ends up as being a story of investigation by archeologists of the Viking ways of living. The amazing thing is that Gudrid is never lost, she comes up in all of the explanations the archeologists find for how they survived in such adverse conditions. It was cold and they had to build houses, the wood was scarce they had to make the houses out of turf, the bog was everywhere: house making, tool making, sheep processed foods, beverages, food for cattle. Wool was all they had to make cloth for every use and enough cloth to make sails, imagine that! Plundering was the way of men a similarity with Robin Wood's philosophy. Women were able to clean up the Vikings medieval economy with millions and millions of hours of weaving. Gudrid was a weaver. Boat making was the connection to the mainland because there was no wood in Greenland that accounts for the wide strakes of the ships but they made boats clinking thin strakes to each other to make thik strakes. Gudrid travelled a lot by boat even for a Viking woman. If English is not your first language this book calls for very specific vocabulary, have a dictionary at hand. The descriptions of the islands and of the fjords makes one want to see them to imagine better how the culture survived. The Viking concept of farm, for example, is very different than the one I am used to. Gudrid lived in a farm.
Gudrid lived for a long time and earned in her family the title of nun that is the same as independent woman. She had estate that was hers to manage. In the Catholicism of the era that invaded the Celtic culture and the Viking culture too women with the social status of Gudrid found escape from the hard life of the Vikings. The promise of an afterlife gave more to women that the Viking mythology, they were free to enter a new life where they had a sanctified status. That promise together with the medieval phenomenon of religious pilgrimage allowed women like Gudrid to travel alone and safely to Rome. The archeological research shows clearly that Vikings were in North America way before Columbus. The tephra for the volcanic activity shows with certainty that Viking lived way before Columbus. Maybe Gudrid was there too! It was surprising and makes anyone curious about those settlements. The author promises in the beginning a story of the friendship between Gudrid and an indigenous woman of Greenland, the book falls short of that story. The descriptions of the interaction of the Vikings with the indigenous were brief. It was very agreeable to read this book and I recommend it vividly. I knew basically nothing of Viking culture and I am thrilled with this culture and ready for more books from this author.

Tonight a few people were gathered at my house and, not for the first time, I mentioned this book in conversation as a fascinating read that seems to me to shed light on the way that ancient histories get embroidered, and on what they probably can and can't tell us about what happened and about the values of the people who participated in their evolution and passed them on.

And I loved the detailed account of Norse weaving!

The takeaway is that this book was a memorable pleasure to read and helped me think about mythic stories: how they develop and what they mean. Disclosure: long, long ago, I majored in anthropology, and the group at my house was a bible discussion group.