The Far Traveler Women's Roles

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Did women’s roles evolve in the middle ages? Nancy Marie Brown’s, The far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman is about her admiration for Gudrid a strong and independent Viking woman born in Iceland, and earned the nickname “the far traveler” because she traveled from Canada to Rome and sailed past the north Atlantic eight times. In The Far Traveler, Einar, the son of a slave who was fond of expensive clothes and materials, asked Gudrid’s father for her hand in marriage which was the backstory of why gudrids family sailed off to Greenland. The story about Gudrid was multifaceted. One was The Saga of Eirik the Red and The Saga of the Greenlanders. The red Gudrid was rich and protected all her life. Gudrid’s father refused Einar’s offer because he did not want to give his daughter to man whose father was a slave,…show more content…
He and Gudrid left Iceland with all his property and moved to Greenland but, Gudrid’s father did not travel alone, he travelled with several people including, Orm and his wife, who raised Gudrid when her mother died. When they left for Greenland, food and water were scarce and she watched “Orm and his wife die miserable deaths and as well as other members of her family she loved” (Brown, 2007, p. 33). When they arrived at Greenland, Gudrid and her father were the only ones that survived the journey. From there, they resided with Eirik the Red. In the other saga, Green Gudrid was married to a Norwegian merchant named Thorstein Eiriksson, Leif Eiriksson's (who is claimed to be the first person to discover America in The saga of Eirick the red) younger brother, and Eirik the Red's son. Due to illness in Greenland, her father and husband died. After they passed away, she went back to Iceland and married Thorfinn Karlsefni an “Icelandic merchant” (Brown, 2007, p. 38). Red Gudrid inherited everything and was wealthy and Green Gudrid inherited her
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