Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir

Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir (Icelandic: Guðríður víðförla Þorbjarnardóttir) was a Norse explorer, born around the year 980 at Laugarbrekka in Snæfellsnes, Iceland.

She appears in the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders, known collectively as the Vinland sagas. She and her husband Þorfinnur Karlsefni, led an expedition to Vinland where they begat their son Snorri Þorfinnsson, the first European born in the Americas outside of Greenland.

In Iceland, Gudrid is known by her byname víðförla (lit. wide-fared or far-travelled).

As recorded in The Saga of Eirik the Red, Gudrid was the daughter of a chieftain by the name of Thorbjorn of Laugarbrekka. As the story goes, a young man by the name of Einar asked for her hand in marriage, but because his father was a slave, Gudrid’s father refused to give her hand in marriage. Gudrid and her father promptly left Iceland and voyaged to Greenland to accompany Eirik the Red. Thirty others went with them on the journey, but the group experienced complications due to poor weather, which slowed their progress during the summer. After this setback, illness plagued the group and half of the company died. Despite these failures, Gudrid and her father landed safely in Greenland in the winter. Although it is not mentioned in The Saga of Eirik the Red, according to the Saga of the Greenlanders, at the time Gudrid was married to a Norwegian merchant named Thorir. According to this account, Leif Eirikson rescued Gudrid and fifteen men from a skerry, brought them safely to Brattahlid, and invited Thorir and Gudrid to stay there with him. That winter, Thorir died of illness.

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