These sagas were written in the 13th century, more than 200 years after the events they narrate are supposed to have happened. How much truth is there in the Vinland sagas? After upbraiding them for their lack of manliness, Freydís takes an axe and butchers the women herself, a merciless act that has no parallel in Old Norse texts.Īs in Eirik the Red’s Saga, the group makes it back to Greenland with their spoils, but although Freydís bribes her crew to keep quiet, the word gets out about these horrific killings, and she ends up a social outcast. Only a small number of women remain alive, but the men draw the line at murdering them. One morning, at Freydís’s behest, her crew shamefully ambush, tie up and kill the men in the other group. The group sets up a camp in Vinland, but in this version, the situation deteriorates because of mutual suspicion and in-fighting rather than an external threat. Read more | Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the first lady of Viking Vinland.However, Freydís stealthily brings five more people than agreed, so she has a larger force than her partners. She and a pair of brothers she teams up with agree to bring the same number of participants on the journey, and to divide whatever resources they acquire equally. Here, she is active in the planning and decision-making for the expedition and more of a doer than in the other saga.
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Listen: Johanna Katrin Fridriksdottir explores what everyday life was like for women in Norse society, the opportunities available to them and the challenges they faced on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast Freydís Eiríksdóttir in The Saga of the Greenlandersįreydís is rather less palatable in The Saga of the Greenlanders, another version of the journey to Vinland. It conveys her vulnerability as a mother-to-be and her extraordinary bravery despite her lowly status. Eirik the Red’s Saga thus gives a sympathetic account of Freydís. We hear no more of her, but we are told that the group makes it safely back to Greenland. This sight makes such an impression on the skrælings that they turn around and leave, and Freydís manages to get away. She picks up the sword of one of the slain Vikings and brandishes it at the attackers, then slapping it on her naked breast. Freydís runs more slowly than everyone else because of her pregnancy, and when she has fallen behind the rest of the group, she sees no option remaining but to defend herself. Despite peaceful interactions at the beginning, relations become less friendly and eventually, the explorers must escape from an attack in which several of them are killed. In Vinland, the Norse explorers soon encounter the land’s native inhabitants, referred to as ‘skrælings’ in the saga. Read more | Vikings: Valhalla – the real history behind Netflix’s successor to Vikings.In contrast, Freydís receives no description of her personal qualities or achievements. Moreover, Leif is the captain of a Viking ship and is said to have spent time in the retinue of King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, a mark of great distinction. But as the daughter of someone who was probably a servant or enslaved, this signals that Freydís’s social status was lower than her brother’s. It was not unheard of for Viking men to havĮ more than one female partner. According to this saga, Eirik escaped from Norway to Iceland because of the unlawful killings he committed, later moving to Greenland for the same reason.įreydís is introduced as the illegitimate daughter of Eirik by an unnamed mother, whereas her brother Leif Erikson – Leif ‘the Lucky’ – is the son of Eirik’s wife Thjódhild. The more famous of the two sagas is Eirik the Red’s Saga, named after Freydís’s father, the Viking Eirik ‘the Red’. Viking ‘warrior women’: Judith Jesch, expert in Viking studies, examines the latest evidenceįreydís Eiríksdóttir in Eirik the Red’s Saga.
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