Gudrid thorbjarnardottir biography of michael

I write two strands of fiction in parallel: historical novels, usually concerning espionage in the 20th century, and modern-day crime novels set in Iceland. Usually, I enjoy keeping these two strands separate, but every now and then I cannot resist the urge to let Iceland’s fascinating history seep into my detective novels. inom first heard of Gudrídur Thorbjarnardóttir, or Gudrid the Wanderer, when I was researching my first brott novel set in Iceland. One of my characters was a priest, and so inom went to meet one, the Reverend Sigrídur. She showed me her church, an fantastisk modern building with an altar bathed in light reflected off water, in the Reykjavík suburb of Grafarholt. The church was dedicated to a woman named Gudrid, who lived around the year 1000 AD. Sigrídur told me about Gudrid, and why she was called The Wanderer. She was born in Iceland, got married in Greenland, gave birth to her son Snorri in Vínland – the Norse name for North America, returned to Iceland and went on

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On that marvelous bus tour that we took with Yrsa last week, I learned about the first European woman to come to North America—or Vinland as she and her fellow Norsemen called it.  With Yrsa’s permission to horn in on her territory, I am going to report what some quick research yielded about life of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir.  Most of what I report here comes out of “The Saga of Eirick the Red” and The Saga of the Greenlanders,” which—if one pieces them together and takes a few liberties with exactly how many husbands she had—will give us an idea of Gudrid’s life.

For a long time, Gudrid’s story was thought to be pure myth, even after the discovery of the Viking longhouse in Newfoundland.  It wasn’t until 2001, and the discovery of her house in Iceland, precisely where the sagas said it was, that historians began to take seriously the reports of her adventures.  Viz—

Born in Laugarbrekka, Icel

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Michael Ridpath's Blog

I first heard of Gudrídur Thorbjarnardóttir, or Gudrid the Wanderer, when I was visiting my ecclesiastical contact, the Reverend Sara. She showed me her church, an amazing modern building with an altar bathed in light reflected off water, in the Reykjavík suburb of Grafarholt. The church was dedicated to Gudrid. She told me about Gudrid's travels from Iceland to Greenland to North America and back again, and then on to Rome, all around the year 1000 AD. I found this extraordinary; I still do.

As I discovered more about Gudrid, I determined to write a book about her. But writing a twenty-first-century detective novel about a Viking explorer is not easy. It took me several years to alight on a way of doing it, but I got there in the end.

A TV crew is making a documentary about Gudrid, following in her footsteps to Greenland and North America, when someone is murdered. Magnus investigates. The resulting book is called The Wanderer.



Before Magnus could get o