In the 13th century, two chronicles were written that tell the tale of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, a native of Iceland who sailed to Greenland and then the New World, known to Vikings as Vinland. The Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Eirik the Red both tell of events that were passed down orally for a couple hundred years already. According to the longer saga Greenlanders, Gudrid also later traveled to Rome! But was she a real person, an amalgamation of characters, or completely fictional? Author Nancy Marie Brown, as well as some archaeologists, believe the story is plausible.
While some of the Gudrid story handed down in the sagas might be apocryphal—like her husband’s ghost coming back for a chat—Brown and other scholars argue that portions of the narrative are based on actual events.
Archaeology can often verify saga events. “When archaeologists pay attention to the sagas and actually go looking for stuff where the sagas say they should look,” Brown says, “they have often found [what they’re looking for].”
In Gudrid’s case, archaeologists have excavated the Glaumbaer turf house described in the sagas as her final home in Iceland. The structure is unlike any other Viking age turf home in Iceland, most resembling one built hundreds of miles away in a North American Viking settlement—the very settlement Gudrid and her husband supposedly built on the tip of a Newfoundland peninsula.
That's not the only evidence of a real Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir. Read her story and the research confirming it so far at Smithsonian.