Recommended listening: Norwegian Folk Songs - Pelle Joner
Story
The sea passage from Greenland to Norway was long, and sailors were known from time to time to lose their way. Luckily for them, the Norse had outposts on islands all along the route. Lewis, a rugged island in the Outer Hebrides, was one such Norse colony, and the town of Valtos was one of its most prominent villages. Named vald hus in Old Norse, meaning the house of one in power, it was a prosperous community of Norse settlers. Some of their families had been on the island for well over a century by now. Rich burials of noblewomen full of jewellery and finely woven textiles tell us that the people of that region lived about as well as one could in the island's sometimes harsh conditions.
In the summer of 999, a lost ship found its way to the Hebrides. Its captain was Leif Eriksson, who was en route to visit the king of Norway. His father, Eirik the Red, had founded the Norse colony in Greenland, and while Leif didn't know it yet, King Olaf wanted Leif to spread Christianity to the settlement there. But before he could meet the king, he was blown off course and ended up on an unidentified Hebridean island. Lewis is as good a candidate as any for his stay, and as an important settlement, Valtos may well have been the one to host the waylaid explorer. Leif was out of luck - the winds would not pick up again until the end of the summer, so he had a few months to while away on the island.
The locals took notice of their exalted visitor, and one local in particular got to know him rather well: Thorgunna, the chieftain's daughter. We know very little about Thorgunna's life, not even the names of her parents. She was probably considerably younger than Leif since she was unmarried and he was about thirty at the time. But the two of them got to know each other, probably while sitting around her father's table as he played host to Leif and his crew. By the end of the summer, Leif had fallen in love with her. He'd also noticed that she was margkunnig, "knowledgeable of many things" - in other words, Thorgunna knew magic.
Seiðr magic carried a strong association with women in Norse culture. It was known to involve spells and songs, and the women who practiced it were renowned for their ability to make prophecies. Beyond that, it's hard to say exactly what it meant for Thorgunna to be margkunnig. The Saga of Eirik the Red was written long after she lived. By the time the sagas were being written down, all of the Norse realms were Christianized, and seiðr was more of a mythologized memory than a living art. Trying to recover the actual practice of seiðr is therefore no easy task. But according to the story, Leif had come to see that Thorgunna was skilled at seiðr magic, a quality that was not to be taken lightly in a woman.
At the end of the summer, the winds turned in Leif's favour, and his crew prepared to depart for Norway. As he got ready to leave, Thorgunna approached him and made a demand: She wanted to go with him. Their exchange is immortalized in the following words of The Saga of Eirik the Red:
Leif asked whether her kinsmen were of any mind to agree to this, and she declared that she did not care. Leif said he was reluctant to abduct a woman of such high birth from a foreign country - "There are so few of us."
Thorgunna spoke: "I'm not sure you'll like the alternative better."
"I'll take my chances on that," Leif said.
"Then I will tell you," Thorgunna said, "that I am with child, and that this child is yours. It's my guess that I will give birth to a boy, in due course. And even though you ignore him, I will raise the boy and send him to you in Greenland as soon as he is of an age to travel with the others. But it's my guess that he will serve you as well as you have served me now with your departure. I intend to come to Greenland myself before it's all over."
Leif's response to her prophecy is not recorded, but he did leave her with a few parting gifts: a golden ring, a cloak from Greenland, and a belt buckle of walrus ivory. With that, he left for Norway to meet the king, and Thorgunna was left behind with three gifts and a child to remember him by.
Thorgunna did give birth to a son, just as she had predicted. She named him Thorgils, and while he was eventually sent to Greenland and recognised by his father, in many ways he seemed to take after his mother. He never became popular in Greenland, and everyone believed there was something uncanny about him. While women could practice seiðr without censure, at least in pre-Christian Norse society, it was considered embarrassing for a man to do so. Perhaps Thorgils was too strongly associated with his mother's magic to make a good impression on the Christian converts of Greenland. Leif had another son, Thorkel Leifssonn, who succeeded him as chieftain in Greenland. Thorgils's fate is unknown, and so is Thorgunna's. Did she join her son and former lover in Greenland as she'd always wanted to?
We find Thorgunna here in the year 1000, standing on the cusp of when her future is lost to history. If Leif had agreed to take her, or if her parents had let her go, she might have given birth to Thorgils in Vinland, where Leif travelled at the turn of the millennium. Instead she remains at home, cradling her son on the shores of the village where she grew up. Did her ability to predict the future give her comfort as she looked out on the unforgiving sea? Or did she long to be with Leif, venturing out into the great unknown?
In the summer of 999, a lost ship found its way to the Hebrides. Its captain was Leif Eriksson, who was en route to visit the king of Norway. His father, Eirik the Red, had founded the Norse colony in Greenland, and while Leif didn't know it yet, King Olaf wanted Leif to spread Christianity to the settlement there. But before he could meet the king, he was blown off course and ended up on an unidentified Hebridean island. Lewis is as good a candidate as any for his stay, and as an important settlement, Valtos may well have been the one to host the waylaid explorer. Leif was out of luck - the winds would not pick up again until the end of the summer, so he had a few months to while away on the island.
The locals took notice of their exalted visitor, and one local in particular got to know him rather well: Thorgunna, the chieftain's daughter. We know very little about Thorgunna's life, not even the names of her parents. She was probably considerably younger than Leif since she was unmarried and he was about thirty at the time. But the two of them got to know each other, probably while sitting around her father's table as he played host to Leif and his crew. By the end of the summer, Leif had fallen in love with her. He'd also noticed that she was margkunnig, "knowledgeable of many things" - in other words, Thorgunna knew magic.
Seiðr magic carried a strong association with women in Norse culture. It was known to involve spells and songs, and the women who practiced it were renowned for their ability to make prophecies. Beyond that, it's hard to say exactly what it meant for Thorgunna to be margkunnig. The Saga of Eirik the Red was written long after she lived. By the time the sagas were being written down, all of the Norse realms were Christianized, and seiðr was more of a mythologized memory than a living art. Trying to recover the actual practice of seiðr is therefore no easy task. But according to the story, Leif had come to see that Thorgunna was skilled at seiðr magic, a quality that was not to be taken lightly in a woman.
At the end of the summer, the winds turned in Leif's favour, and his crew prepared to depart for Norway. As he got ready to leave, Thorgunna approached him and made a demand: She wanted to go with him. Their exchange is immortalized in the following words of The Saga of Eirik the Red:
Leif asked whether her kinsmen were of any mind to agree to this, and she declared that she did not care. Leif said he was reluctant to abduct a woman of such high birth from a foreign country - "There are so few of us."
Thorgunna spoke: "I'm not sure you'll like the alternative better."
"I'll take my chances on that," Leif said.
"Then I will tell you," Thorgunna said, "that I am with child, and that this child is yours. It's my guess that I will give birth to a boy, in due course. And even though you ignore him, I will raise the boy and send him to you in Greenland as soon as he is of an age to travel with the others. But it's my guess that he will serve you as well as you have served me now with your departure. I intend to come to Greenland myself before it's all over."
Leif's response to her prophecy is not recorded, but he did leave her with a few parting gifts: a golden ring, a cloak from Greenland, and a belt buckle of walrus ivory. With that, he left for Norway to meet the king, and Thorgunna was left behind with three gifts and a child to remember him by.
Thorgunna did give birth to a son, just as she had predicted. She named him Thorgils, and while he was eventually sent to Greenland and recognised by his father, in many ways he seemed to take after his mother. He never became popular in Greenland, and everyone believed there was something uncanny about him. While women could practice seiðr without censure, at least in pre-Christian Norse society, it was considered embarrassing for a man to do so. Perhaps Thorgils was too strongly associated with his mother's magic to make a good impression on the Christian converts of Greenland. Leif had another son, Thorkel Leifssonn, who succeeded him as chieftain in Greenland. Thorgils's fate is unknown, and so is Thorgunna's. Did she join her son and former lover in Greenland as she'd always wanted to?
We find Thorgunna here in the year 1000, standing on the cusp of when her future is lost to history. If Leif had agreed to take her, or if her parents had let her go, she might have given birth to Thorgils in Vinland, where Leif travelled at the turn of the millennium. Instead she remains at home, cradling her son on the shores of the village where she grew up. Did her ability to predict the future give her comfort as she looked out on the unforgiving sea? Or did she long to be with Leif, venturing out into the great unknown?
Artist's Comments
It's so great to do a Scottish entry again! A lot of my masters research was centred around this part of Lewis, so it was especially cool to explore the area's medieval past. There were a few details of the saga that made this illustration challenging to depict. The "tooth-belt" Leif gave to Thorgunna was particularly tricky to interpret. I ended up going with a belt buckle rather than a belt of walrus tusks, since there was no such item in the archaeological record but there was an ivory Norse belt buckle found in Lewis. The ring is based on one found on the Isle of Skye. I didn't end up including the cloak, partially because the Greenland cloaks that the saga writer referred to might have been an anachronism in the story, but the tortoise shell brooch she's wearing is like one found near Valtos in Lewis.
A character also called Thorgunna and also from the Hebrides appears in Eyrbyggja saga, but the character is so different and doesn't match the chronology of this story that I didn't attempt to reconcile both versions. (She's an old woman in the year 1000 and has nothing to do with Leif.) Interestingly though, that Thorgunna is also associated with magical happenings. Special thanks to the people on the medievalists chat who helped me puzzle through some of the Old Norse material!
Doing a medieval Norse story like this is a real treat for me. I have been to Lewis and loved my time there, including visiting a Norse mill with my family. It would be great to return one day and see Valtos (or Bhaltos, as it's known in Gaelic) myself and imagine what life must have been like for Thorgunna a thousand years ago. ~ September 9, 2020
A character also called Thorgunna and also from the Hebrides appears in Eyrbyggja saga, but the character is so different and doesn't match the chronology of this story that I didn't attempt to reconcile both versions. (She's an old woman in the year 1000 and has nothing to do with Leif.) Interestingly though, that Thorgunna is also associated with magical happenings. Special thanks to the people on the medievalists chat who helped me puzzle through some of the Old Norse material!
Doing a medieval Norse story like this is a real treat for me. I have been to Lewis and loved my time there, including visiting a Norse mill with my family. It would be great to return one day and see Valtos (or Bhaltos, as it's known in Gaelic) myself and imagine what life must have been like for Thorgunna a thousand years ago. ~ September 9, 2020
Resources
Want to learn more about Thorgunna and other women of the medieval Norse diaspora? Here are some recommended resources.
The Sagas of the Icelanders by Jane Smiley
Modern English translations of all the main Icelandic sagas. Includes The Saga of Eirik the Red in which Thorgunna appears, as well as The Saga of the Greenlanders in which Lief Erikson's voyages are also discussed.
The Vikings in Lewis ed. by Brittany Schorn and Judy Quinn
Excellent overview of the archaeological, literary, and place-name evidence for the early Viking settlements in Lewis. There's great material in here about female burials from the era which helped inform my portrayal of Thorgunna. The Viking archaeology of Valtos is described in some detail. You can read about the modern village here.
""Semiotics of the Cloth": Reading Medieval Norse Textile Traditions" by Kristen Marie Tibbs
This thesis includes an analysis of Leif's gift of the vaðmàlsmöttul grænlenzkan to Thorgunna. Tibbs speculates that the saga writer was referencing cloaks made with a technique unique to Norse Greenlandic weavers which had developed separately from Icelandic traditions. The earliest dated evidence of these cloaks in Greenland dates to after Thorgunna's time, so this may be an anachronism coming from the saga writer. In 1000 Greenlandic clothing was probably no different from Icelandic clothing. You can read in more detail about the special features of medieval Greenlandic weaving here.
Pabaigh Mòr on The Papar Project
The reference photo I used for the background of this illustration came from this website. The photo is a view of the island Pabaigh Mòr from Bhaltos. The Papar Project, the brainchild of Barbara Crawford, is an incredible survey of placenames in the Northern and Western Isles which contain the word papar, meaning "priest". The project maps the influence of Christianity in the Norse areas of medieval Scotland. Although the Saga account suggests Thorgunna was a pagan, the priests of Pabaigh Mòr were no doubt exerting an influence on her community in Valtos if that is indeed where she lived.
"The Volva (Norse Seeress) and Seiðr" by Jackson Crawford
This YouTube video gives a great overview of what Norse literature tells us about women who practiced seiðr magic. Also recommended is his related video on seiðr and gender in Norse society.
The Sagas of the Icelanders by Jane Smiley
Modern English translations of all the main Icelandic sagas. Includes The Saga of Eirik the Red in which Thorgunna appears, as well as The Saga of the Greenlanders in which Lief Erikson's voyages are also discussed.
The Vikings in Lewis ed. by Brittany Schorn and Judy Quinn
Excellent overview of the archaeological, literary, and place-name evidence for the early Viking settlements in Lewis. There's great material in here about female burials from the era which helped inform my portrayal of Thorgunna. The Viking archaeology of Valtos is described in some detail. You can read about the modern village here.
""Semiotics of the Cloth": Reading Medieval Norse Textile Traditions" by Kristen Marie Tibbs
This thesis includes an analysis of Leif's gift of the vaðmàlsmöttul grænlenzkan to Thorgunna. Tibbs speculates that the saga writer was referencing cloaks made with a technique unique to Norse Greenlandic weavers which had developed separately from Icelandic traditions. The earliest dated evidence of these cloaks in Greenland dates to after Thorgunna's time, so this may be an anachronism coming from the saga writer. In 1000 Greenlandic clothing was probably no different from Icelandic clothing. You can read in more detail about the special features of medieval Greenlandic weaving here.
Pabaigh Mòr on The Papar Project
The reference photo I used for the background of this illustration came from this website. The photo is a view of the island Pabaigh Mòr from Bhaltos. The Papar Project, the brainchild of Barbara Crawford, is an incredible survey of placenames in the Northern and Western Isles which contain the word papar, meaning "priest". The project maps the influence of Christianity in the Norse areas of medieval Scotland. Although the Saga account suggests Thorgunna was a pagan, the priests of Pabaigh Mòr were no doubt exerting an influence on her community in Valtos if that is indeed where she lived.
"The Volva (Norse Seeress) and Seiðr" by Jackson Crawford
This YouTube video gives a great overview of what Norse literature tells us about women who practiced seiðr magic. Also recommended is his related video on seiðr and gender in Norse society.