Saturday, October 08, 2011

The famous Gudridors....


Among the ten female explorers (many of whom seem to be eccentric 18th century rich Englishwomen), this one stands out:

Gudridur
who according to the sagas, traveled to Greenland and Vinland, had a baby in Vineland, married a couple of times, became a Christian, and later traveled to Rome before returning to Iceland to become a hermit.
A story of her travels can be found HERE. and a map HERE. Another little known fact: Gudridur Irish, descended from an Irish freedman.

But she isn't the only Gudridur who made it into the history books.

Guðríður Símonardóttir (1598 – December 18, 1682) was one of 242 people abducted from the Westman Islands, Iceland in 1627.[1] The attacks by Barbary corsairs came to be known as the Turkish abductions and Guðríður became known as Tyrkja-Gudda.

And another little known fact is that many Icelanders emigrated to the Americas:

During the 19th century several waves of emigrants left Iceland. The first one went during the 1850s to Utah but organized emigration on a large scale started in the 1870s, mainly to Canada, North-Dakota and Minnesota. Almost a quarter of the entire population of Iceland emigrated between 1870 and 1914
.

There is even an Utah Icelandic Society, and every year they hold celebrations in Spanish Fork Utah...and one of the early Icelandic settlers was Gudradur Ulfsdottir. The story of the Icelandic settlers there can be found HERE.

An article on those who settled in "New Iceland" Manitoba (and found it too cold) is found HERE.
and yes, Tolkien fans, the nearby town of Gimli Canada was also settled by Icelandic immigrants.

That town is most famous for the "Gimli Glider", one of the classic air crash stories where by some miracle and some good flying skills, everyone got out alive...

one more piece of trivia:

The DNA of Scandanavians includes Celtic and other strains, but one mystery is that some of the population has a genetic marker found mostly in Native Americans. LINK2

Another article HERE says one skeleton was Arab
(From a Rus trading connection with the Arabs?)

---------------------------------
the original link for the previous post are headsup by FTJoeCarter.

No comments: