We live in an age where travel is becoming a commodity. £300 return fares, London-New York, non-stop. £60 tickets for the train to Paris. Competition has brought low fares and low fares have shrunk the world: the jet set is no more, and we should all be thankful for that.
But what if today was AD 980 and you were a good eight centuries away from the invention of the internal combustion engine, let alone a Wi-Fi-equipped airliner? Well, in that case you’d be up the creek without a paddle. Unless your name was Guðriður Þorbjarnardóttir from Laugarbrekka in Snæfellsnes, Iceland.
The X and XI centuries mustn’t have been easy on the tourism industry in Europe. Carolingian unity was well and truly a thing of the past, roads were still those designed by people walking around in togas and I doubt that the postal service was much better either or they would be reading something other than the Epistles to the Corinthians in church. In facts, it seems to me that long-distance travelling was something that one would indulge in only if part of a band of Saracen pirates. Or a Viking.
Laugarbrekka’s many charms were a bit hard to appreciate on the morning when we paid it a visit. A cloud the colour of graphite hung above a sea that was on the tenebrous end of the blues palette, all while a vicious wind pelted us with ice goblets that flew almost horizontally. The very act of inching the car’s door open sent the thing flying, breaking some part that I dearly hoped was covered by the insurance.
This was the place that Guðriður, daughter of Þorbjarn, called “home”. Hardly surprising, we figured, that one fine day her family decided they’d enough and that it was time to head towards pastures new. Like Greenland.
Greenland, avid readers of Norse sagas will know, had been colonised by an enterprising Viking called Eirik the Red who, with a brainwave worthy of an advertising agency, decided to give such a name to island that is 85% covered in ice as a mean to entice gullible settlers. Still, for a while everything seemed to go just fine: the colony functioned and Guðriður had tied the knot with one Þorstein, son of Eirik himself and brother of none other than Leif, the chap who was first to discover Vinland. Perhaps it was Leif’s raving reviews that convinced Guðriður and Þorstein to kiss Greenland goodbye and head over there too.
As we sat in our car, listening to the storm rumbling outside, I thought about travelling through seas such as the ones just a few hundred meters away from us. I thought about boarding a drakkar made of wood, not much longer than a bus, and setting sail into a sea peppered with icebergs and freak waves. Even considering the thing was enough to send me shivering.
On that particular occasion, though, things didn’t work and the trip ended in disaster with Þorstein dying in the process. Such a setback would’ve been enough for anyone to call it quits with this thing called travelling, but not Guðriður. Newly widowed, the redoubtable Viking returned to her native Iceland by way of Norway (stopovers are always cheaper as we know). There she met a gentleman going by the name of Þorfinnur Karlsefni who, the saga points out, was “a man of good family and good means”.
The newlyweds didn’t lack vision and, evidently, Guðriður still had a bee in her bonnet when it came to Vinland for, soon after becoming Mr and Mrs, they led an expedition across the ocean. This time the enterprise proved to be successful and the party – the saga mentions sixty men, five women and an unspecified number of animals – made landfall in what today is Mr Trudeau’s happy country sometimes after the year 1000. The small colony was soon cheered by the arrival of Guðriður’s son, Snorri, the first European ever to be born in the New World.
Snorri was still a little more than an infant when things, though, started to go south. Relations with the First Peoples with whom the Vikings had gotten in contact soon turned sour and, faced with the perspective of annihilation, Þorfinnur and Guðriður opted to cut their losses and make sail for the friendlier shores of Greenland and, thence, back to Iceland.
In her older age Guðriður, once again widowed, didn’t lose that feeling of wanderlust that had evidently been flowing in her veins. Her sons had by then flown the nest and she had recently converted to Christianity: no better time, then, for a pilgrimage to Rome. So off she went and, some say, managed to chat about her travels to the Pope himself. Whether she met the big man or not is unsure, but I’d like to think she did; what is certain is that, on her return, she became a nun and lived the rest of her years in a church built by her sons, becoming known as Víðförla or “far-travelled”.
Somewhere in Laugarbrekka, we were told, Guðriður’s legacy lived on and there it was: a small plinth holding a sleek, metallic drakkar. On it, standing tall and proud like the woman she undoubtedly was, was Guðriður the far travelled, little Snorri waving from her shoulder. In that snowy, windy morning in Snæfellsnes, it looked as if she was smiling at us in encouragement.
Love the images of that bleak winter landscape. All the grim but beautiful hues of winter. What a story. What a woman! Seems she deserves a much bigger statue, though the location of it, in that vast emptiness, seems perfect.
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I know, when I first saw the statue my first thought was “Is that it?” (well, actually my first thought was “How long before I get frostbite?”). But in hindsight, it fits her. Big statues are a bit like large SUVs in my mind. What a woman indeed.
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Really enjoy your writing style. Looks like quite a drive around Iceland. Am curious how you found out about all the history of the place.
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Hi Steven and Annie, thanks for dropping by! We did a nice drive indeed, about 800kms around the Snæfellnes peninsula north of Reykjavik. It was good fun! As for finding about Guðríður, well, I’ve got to thank the copy of Bradt guides in store at our local library.
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Great storytelling. As for your car door, when we were in Iceland last September our car rental insurance policy *specifically* excluded coverage of damage to the doors caused by wind! So I’m interested in hearing your outcome.
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Hey Rich! It turns out that the extra insurance I bought as an afterthought covered doors, tyres, windows, damage from ash rock and sand, being kicked by a pony and being chewed by a troll. So all good!
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They were made of tough stuff back then that’s for sure!
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Indeed. Really made me feel like a wimp.
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Oh! Just glorious. You have really embraced this story. And you’re so kind as to share. Great gradation to the last photo.
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Thanks Manja! Glad you liked it 🙂
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What a woman! I think her middle name must have been adventure. Thanks for sharing this story of courage and spirit and wanderlust, though I must say it didn’t make me want to rush off to Iceland 🙂
Alison
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Hi Alison! Thanks for reading. I hope the next few posts will convince you of the inescapable allure of Iceland. It’s a great place!
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And we complain about legroom on a flight. Tough lady.
So how do you type those weird fonts, and can you actually pronounce those names?
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Indeed we do, or we complain because it’s stairs instead of a jetway. As for the fonts, I type all my posts on Word, so I’ve had to use the “insert symbol” option. ð, or Ð in its capital format, is pronounced like “th” in “that”. And Þ is exactly the same but it’s used when the sound is at the beginning of a word. So Thor would be Þor. Why is that, no idea.
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Too complicated. It makes my head Þor.
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LOL! 😀
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Thanks for this tale of wanderlust. Some people are just born to travel, no matter what. Love the moody light in the photos. Perfect for the story.
If it hasn’t already been done, she needs a few things named in her honour.
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Indeed she ought to be named at least a ship after her! Thanks for reading LD.
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Incredible photographs ~ and the wanderlust that flowed through Guðriður is to be admired, as well as your writing and telling of her story. It is so true that we now live in an age where travel is becoming a commodity and it becomes more difficult to find those true adventures…but it is easy to see that you also have some of this blood to seek such adventures and fortunately for us to photograph and write about them 🙂
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Hi there, thanks for reading and for the very kind words. Very very diluted blood I’ve to say, though.
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🙂
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Great story and great woman. Makes my current 20-some-hours slog home seem like a Sunday drive. I’m drawn to bleak landscapes, and this is surely one! (Well captured – I loved the photos.)
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Thanks Lexi! Where are you slogging to? And where from?
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Heading home from Bhutan – Paro to Bangkok to Taipei to Houston! I’m only in BKK right now and the 20-some hours is about to commence. Asia is always a killer for us in the middle of the U.S.
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Oh, that’s quite a jog. Safe travels!
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Fascinating, love this story of Guðriður. She was such an intrepid adventurer!
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Indeed she was! Thanks for reading Angelina.
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