The far-traveling Viking woman of the title was Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, once a sister-in-law of Leif Eirikson and reputedly the mother of the first European child born in North America. The little which is known specifically of Gudrid comes from two Icelandic sagas: "Eirik the red's Saga" and "The Greenlanders' Saga", but even those two sources disagree with one another about details of Gudrid's life. What we can be reasonably sure of is that Gudrid was born in Iceland, traveled to the new Norse Greenland colonies in about the year 1000, became a ward of Eirik the Red, and married his son, Thorstein, who soon died. Widowed, Gudrid then married the Icelandic merchant Thorfinn Karlsefni, apparently convinced Karlsefni to attempt colonization of the newly discovered Vinland, lived with her husband for three years in Vinland -- at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, it seems -- giving birth to a son, Snorri, then returned to Greenland and then back to Iceland, where Karlsefni died. In later life, Gudrid may have made a pilgrimage to Rome and returned to Iceland to die a nun.
With so few details of Gudrid's life certain, the greatest part of Nancy Marie Brown's book is devoted to exploring what we know of Viking life, especially in Iceland, and what we don't know, plus a first-hand account of Brown's experiences as a volunteer archaeologist at the site of what appears to be Gudrid's final home in Iceland. Along the way, the author discusses the nature of Icelandic sagas and the fine Viking arts of cheese-making and weaving. All this is done in an engaging manner that brings Gudrid (and modern Iceland) fully to life.
My only real criticism of the book is that it could have benefited from additional maps and from diagrams of the Norse ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows and of Gudrid's Icelandic farm at Glaumbaer.