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About The Sea Road (Unabridged)

The 11th century Viking world is expanding-across Iceland to Greenland and on to what is now known as North America-and one woman is there all the way to tell the story. Gudrid, featured in the sagas, was a real person: reputedly the first European to give birth in North America, possibly the first Icelandic woman to make a pilgrimage to Rome and a witness to a northern world where pagan mysticism was clashing with an insurgent 'new religion', Christianity. The Sea Road is not another well-worn tale of male warrior explorers: it is Gudrid's story of hazardous voyages in open boats, of the perils of bearing children in hostile environments, of subsistence farming and precarious times of feast and famine. Twice-married, each time to daring pioneers who risked death or desperate poverty in the search for fabulous riches, she was a fearless traveller and a sensitive interpreter of the spiritual world. Margaret Elphinstone's story is both a gripping adventure and an erudite insight into the Viking age of exploration, violent conflict, religious turmoil and astonishing creativity.