Read The Far Traveler - Nancy Marie Brown for Free Online

gods sit
sounds so melancholy that this rune stick brings to my mind a similar stick, found in an otherwise-empty coffin in a Viking cemetery:
This woman, whose name was Gudveig, was laid overboard in the Greenland Sea.
Perhaps the same was the fate of Bibrau, whose lover was so poetic.
    But it was not the fate of Gudrid the Far-Traveler. In spite of being shipwrecked and blown off course, she did not die at sea. Instead she was twice saved to sail again, as soon as she could, west, away from Greenland, away from Iceland, away from Norway and her trees, west off the edge of the known world, into the blue.

Chapter 2: Ransacking the Past
    As they were looking through Einar’s wares, a woman passed by the open doorway. “Who is that beautiful woman?” asked Einar. “I have never seen her here before.”
    “That is my foster-daughter, Gudrid,” replied Orm. “Her father is Thorbjorn of Laugarbrekka.”
    “She’d make me an excellent wife,” said Einar. “Has she had any offers?”
    “Indeed she has, my friend,” replied Orm. “She’s not to be had just for the asking.”
    —The Saga of Eirik the Red
     

    T HE OTHER VERSION OF GUDRID’S STORY BEGINS NOT with a shipwreck but with this glimpse of Gudrid through a young man’s eyes. Here is the scene: On the tip of a mountainous peninsula jutting from the west coast of Iceland sat a small Viking longhouse. Turf-clad, except for one wooden door, the house looked like a low hill in the jewel-green field. A turf wall encircled it, keeping the horses from grazing in the manured homefield. Toward the sea, the land dropped off into ragged cliffs alive with nesting seabirds. Seals sunned on the seaside rocks. A
knarr
and a six-oared fishing boat, both clinker-built and tarred black, lay beached in a tiny harbor of black sand. Behind the turf house rose a pyramidal black hill, then the clean white flank of the glacier called Snaefellsjokull, “Snow Mountain’s Glacier.” Beneath the glacier hid a volcano, known to the inhabitants of the house only from a pleasant side effect: Water hot enough for washing bubbled up from the ground not far away.
    The
knarr
belonged to Einar, a young and ambitious Icelander with a fondness for fancy clothes. He had spent the winter in Norway, whose king was fostering a new plan—towns—and a new merchant class. Einar, though his father had been a Viking’s slave, aspired to this class. His ship came home loaded with luxuries impossible to find in Iceland. Stacked in Orm’s shed, where Einar was setting up shop, were bales of linen and silk and fine wool dyed bright blue and red. He brought lumber, both oak and ash. Pine tar for preserving ships’ timbers. Barley and hops for brewing beer. Honey to make into mead. Perhaps even beeswax, for many of the Viking folk along this coast were Christians, and had been taught they must worship by candlelight.
    Orm owned the longhouse. He kept cows and sheep and was loyal to the chieftain who had granted him land. Gudrid was the chieftain’s daughter. Since her mother died, she had been raised by Orm’s wife. She was about fourteen when she passed the open doorway of Einar’s shop. Something about her—her looks, her dress, the way she walked or smiled—impressed the young man. Despite Orm’s warning, he decided to ask for her hand.
    His suit was denied. Gudrid’s father wouldn’t marry his daughter to the son of a slave. Orm’s hint that the young merchant’s wealth could be of use offended the chieftain. Ashamed that his money troubles were talked about, Gudrid’s father swapped his farm for a ship and took his daughter to Greenland to start a new life. Orm shrugged his shoulders and, loyally, went with him.
     
    The saga does not describe Orm’s farm, where young Einar unloaded his ship, it names it: Arnarstapi, “Eagle Peak.” I can imagine the green field and the cliffs and the harbor and paint the scene because I have driven down that long peninsula, under the eye of Snow