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heroineinabook's review
3.0
This book is bizarre in that the premise is good, the writing is good, but it took me nearly six months to finish which should have been a few days, maybe a week of solid reading. The Far Traveler become my albatross and I couldn't shake myself from its grip. What went wrong?
Simply put, this was not so much the tale of Gudrid rather Gudrid was the weak link for Brown to explore life and time of 10th century Iceland from a woman's perspective. By this I mean you'll be dozens and dozens of pages in with discussion on long house building or Viking weaving technology before you realise Gudrid has not been mentioned, even in passing, once. I learned a lot about Viking age, and this book definitely whetted my appetite to learn more, but I know even less about Gudrid than I did when I started the book - which seemed to defeat the purpose.
Brown admits in the beginning there is scarce information about Gudrid, just a few mentions in the sagas, but if you're going to explore the period of someone's life, shouldn't you at least tie them into the scene? And this is where I think the book failed. Brown had a lot of opportunity to make Gudrid a part of the conversation, and she isn't even a full stop at the end of a sentence.
I originally rated this 5/5 after the first 50 pages, but dropped it down to 3/5 because of the huge issue I had with Gudrid not being front and center.
Additionally, Brown does provide pages and pages of notes, acknowledgements, and sources to further your reading of the period.
Simply put, this was not so much the tale of Gudrid rather Gudrid was the weak link for Brown to explore life and time of 10th century Iceland from a woman's perspective. By this I mean you'll be dozens and dozens of pages in with discussion on long house building or Viking weaving technology before you realise Gudrid has not been mentioned, even in passing, once. I learned a lot about Viking age, and this book definitely whetted my appetite to learn more, but I know even less about Gudrid than I did when I started the book - which seemed to defeat the purpose.
Brown admits in the beginning there is scarce information about Gudrid, just a few mentions in the sagas, but if you're going to explore the period of someone's life, shouldn't you at least tie them into the scene? And this is where I think the book failed. Brown had a lot of opportunity to make Gudrid a part of the conversation, and she isn't even a full stop at the end of a sentence.
I originally rated this 5/5 after the first 50 pages, but dropped it down to 3/5 because of the huge issue I had with Gudrid not being front and center.
Additionally, Brown does provide pages and pages of notes, acknowledgements, and sources to further your reading of the period.
sindri_inn_arsaeli's review
4.0
Highly readable, imaginative yet well informed story of the life and journeys of a Viking age woman. Nancy Marie Brown is not a true expert, but she is a scholar of eclectic knowledge with the experience of multiple disciplines. She tells an excellent story with the wisdom to recognize and distinguish when she is depending on assumption and romance more than dependable fact. She does an excellent job as well depending on the experts she does seek out to assist and support the story she is telling. It's both the story of Gudrid the Far Traveller, and of Brown's own story of coming to understand the woman whose history she was searching for.
zalkacs's review
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
A bit of a dense read, but a very informative and fascinating book. Less about Gudrid herself, and more about what her life could have been like, based on archaeology.
jmkemp's review against another edition
5.0
An awesome mix of documentary history and archaeology, to bring a character to life. Even though we can't be sure hat Gudrid was a real woman that actually existed the combination of the sagas and the archaeology give a great understanding of life in the viking period, and particularly from a female perspective. This is not a tale of warriors and raiders, but one of persuasion and influence and a hard life on the very frontiers of where humans could exist.
alexandrachan's review against another edition
3.0
Meh. A lay person's weaving of archaeological finds with the old Norse sagas of Gudrun, first Viking woman to make the trip to the New World.
justiceofkalr's review against another edition
Okay, I'm admitting defeat. This book has just become too much of a slog. There is essentially no organization to it, and at most a chapter's worth of information on Gudrid. The author jumps all over the place and tries to vaguely tie it back in to Gudrid with some of the weakest links ever. There's some information that could be really cool in a better edited book, but it just gets so lost in here with all the diversions and minutiae that I really couldn't enjoy any of it.