Gudrin is shown telling her life and travels to an Icelandic speaking monk in Rome. The Sea Road is a very creative way to tell the woman’s side of the story. Sagas were intended to entertain as well as to tell history and genealogy to their audiences and this novel does that as well even if it is not strictly told in saga style. As well as appearing in the sagas, Gudrin Thorbjarnadottir is the central character in Margaret Elphinstone’s novel. Both sagas were based on oral tradition and lore and then written down in the thirteenth century. This is a novel of an important character in two Norse sagas, The Saga of the Greenlanders and Erik the Red’s Saga which take place in the eleventh century. “The audacious female traveler Gudrid of Iceland is the original explorer’s explorer…Elphinstone has written a fine tribute to a woman whose tale is as warm and inviting as a hot spring on a clear winter day.’ The Times, UK Gudrid’s narrative describes a multi-layered voyage into the unknown, all recounted with astonishing immediacy and rich atmospheric detail. But it is the accidental discovery of North America, a place the Vikings call Vinland, that leads Gundrid to ponder the world and her place in it. With her husband Karlssefni, Gundrid traverses the sea from Iceland to Greenland, Norway, and even Rome. Strong and self-reliant, Gundrid Thorbjarnardóttir lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. This vivid historical saga of Viking exploration follows the adventures of an intrepid 11th century woman who voyages to North America.ġ1th century Iceland is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked, even as Christianity gains favor, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern icefields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores.

The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone