The Sea Road
Margaret Elphinstone

This could well be called Gudrid's Saga.If you've enjoyed other Icelandic Sagas you will probably like The Sea Road. As an old woman, Gudrid tells her remarkable life story to an Icelandic monk. She was born in Iceland, which was already on the edge of the known world. She traveled to what we now call Greenland and lived there. Later she went to Vinland, and gave birth to the first European in North America. The settlement she lived in could well be at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, or possibly an undiscovered site further south. After the Vikings were driven out of Vinland she returned to Iceland, then traveled to Rome, where she told her story to Agnar. She founded a small convent in Iceland shortly before her death.

The Vikings were some of the widest traveled people in the European Middle Ages, their longships taking them all over the North Atlantic, through the Mediterranean to Byzantium (modern day Istanbul), and well into Russia. Gudrid's journeys are respectable even by male Norse standards. She could well be the best traveled woman in the world prior to the British Empire.

However, her story is more than a physical journey. She talks of how she lived, about the impact of disputes on her and the people around her, the struggle to survive in a harsh land, and the obligations of maintaining a social standing. Some thought her to be a witch, during a time when the old Norse Gods hadn't quite given way to Christianity. They believed that ghosts could still trouble the living, and were very concerned that the dead were laid to rest properly.

One section of the book shows how she and another man coped with the ghosts of her husband, and the man's wife. It leads to them spending 5 long months in the winter, surrounded by the dead. For this time they are quite literally outside the boundarys of the world.

This is a beautiful, multi-layered novel. A strange and complex time comes to life with Margaret's graceful prose and poetry. I bought The Sea Road new at Indigo in the trade paperback size.

The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone
McArther & Company ISBN1-55278-172-0