Although Leif may never be totally eclipsed as the first European to encounter North America, he has had to stand lately in the shadow of Gudrid Thorbjar-nardottir (Gudridr Eorbjarnardottir), one of the first Icelandic (temporary) settlers in America and mother of its first European infant, Snorri Thorfinnsson. We have already seen that William Morris chose her as one of three Vinland adventurers to depict in stained glass. In 1998, Jonas Kristjansson, former director of the Icelandic Manuscript Institute (later the Arni Magnusson Institute), wrote a novel called Verold vtd (The Wide World), the subtitle of which translates as “a novel about the life and destiny of Gudridur Eorbjarnardot-tir, the most widely traveled woman in the Middle Ages.” In the year 2000, the catalog for an exhibition entitled Living and Reliving the Icelandic Sagas featured “sagas that describe the Norse encounter with North America and the life of Gudridur Eorbjarnardottir, a remarkable Icelandic woman whose journeys carried her to the New World and to Rome.” Despite the exhibition being partly supported by the Leifur Eiriksson Millennium Commission of Iceland, Leif does not get a mention in this New World connection.56 Also in 2000 Margaret Elphinstone, a Scottish author of historical novels (living in Shetland, a group of islands once settled by Vikings) published The Sea Road, “an ambitious re-telling of the Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman,” according to its back cover, on which also Magnus Magnusson writes “for a thousand years [Gudridr] has deserved a saga in her own right. Margaret Elphinstone has made good the omission at last.” Most recently, Nancy Marie Brown has published a beautifully written re-creation of Gudridr and the world she lived in, entitled The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman. The book was released on Leif Eriksson Day, 2007.57
World History
