Eiriksdottir

Joan Clark’s historical novel Eiriksdottir (1993) tells the story of Freydis Eiriksdottir, the illegitimate daughter of Eirik the Red and half-sister of the famous explorer Leif Eiriksson. Despite living in a time when the roles of women were heavily constricted, Freydis sets out to make a name for herself by organizing a voyage from Greenland to Leifsbudir—a settlement of Leif Eiriksson’s presumably near or in North America—to collect resources for trade with Norway and points beyond. In its fictionalized portrayal of the preparations for the trip and the voyage itself, Clark’s novel addresses the weight imposed by traditions and the challenges associated with the superimposition of differing worldviews.

Marginalized not only by her gender and her out-of-wedlock birth, Fredyis is also separated from the rest of her community by her “inclination to be wild.” This drive to assert her own identity and pursue her own needs is, to a large extent, the genesis of her voyage. Not content with her lackluster marriage to Thorvald Einarsson—a relatively poor hunter—Freydis wonders “how much longer ... she [must] endure a marriage with no furniture.” In addition to her desire for resources for both her house and trade, Freydis’s inclination towards travel is heavily influenced by her own family’s storied past. As one of the original Greenland settlers who came from Iceland, Eirik the Red established the family’s penchant for exploration. His son, Lief, further cemented this tradition by being one of the first Europeans to reach Vinland—the Greenlanders’ name for what was presumably North America. Furthermore, upon Lief’s return to Greenland he had spoken very highly of Vinland and encouraged others to travel there. Though Freydis’s trip to Leifsbudir is primarily a quest for material wealth, it also allows her the opportunity to follow in Leif’s footsteps and to more closely align herself with the paternal side of her family—a relationship only partially realized in her youth.

The novel opens with an exploration of Freydis’s own background and her preparations for the trip. Due to her lack of material wealth she must carefully negotiate all the necessary requirements for the trip. While she figures she can procure a crew and borrow Leif’s ship, she realizes this will not insure her of what she is looking for. In order to bring back enough raw material she must secure a ship of her own for the return voyage. Because, as the novel’s opening line indicates, “there were no trees in Greenland,” Freydis must look elsewhere for a capable shipbuilder. As luck would have it, the ship of two Icelandic brothers lands in Greenland while Freydis is preparing for the trip and they have a Norwegian shipbuilder with them. These brothers, Finnbogi and Helgi Egilsson, and their Icelandic entourage provide the main source of tension in the novel. Freydis arranges that both crews will travel to Leifsbudir and that the Egilsson’s shipbuilder will build Freydis a ship in return for accommodations at Leifsbudir and sufficient sailcloth for a new ship of their own. Upon arrival at Leifsbudir, however, relations between the crews disintegrate and eventually become violent. The upshot of this violence is that only Freydis’s crew returns to Greenland and they do so on Sigurd’s Steed, the Icelanders’ ship. Needless to say, this return is not as triumphant nor as economically beneficial as Freydis had planned.

Thematically, Eiriksdottir is concerned with the evolving relationships between the past and the present and between myth and reality. One of the principal devices in this respect is the character of Ulfar and his sporadic journal entries that are spliced into the novel’s omniscient third-person narration. Lent to Freydis by Leif, Ulfar is a thrall—a slave—who has been promised freedom upon his return to Greenland after the expedition’s completion. His journal entries offer challenging alternatives to the myths and traditions the other Greenlanders live by. For example, Ulfar points out that “Greenlanders find it convenient to overlook the fact that Eirik and his father were murderers outlawed from Norway and Iceland”: “I am told Eirik referred to the Icelanders who accompanied him as colonists, as if they were brave and courageous folk rather than renegades who refused to live within the laws of the land.” Described as one of only two people who could write in Greenland—the other being “Geirmund Gunnfard, the priest sent from Thingeyvar, Iceland, for the purpose of converting the Greenlanders to Christ”—Ulfar makes many of the Greenlanders uncomfortable. Though “Leif held the written word in high regard and seemed to think his family grew in stature by having their comings and goings written down,” Freydis and her husband are wary of written language. As Freydis points out: “I distrust scratchings on sheepskin... There might be something about the mark that can be used against you later on.” While Freydis expresses reservations about the permanence offered by text, she nevertheless wants to establish herself in the historical records.

This tension surrounding the written word is symbolic of the more pervasive challenges associated with the clash of differing worldviews. Over the course of the novel, Clark highlights how contemporary Greenland society was undergoing dramatic change, in part related to an increase in trade. The animistic beliefs of the Greenlanders gradually were being replaced by faith in a single Christian god. By highlighting the complexities of this change, Eiriksdottir draws attention to the ways in which allegiances and communities are often formed on the basis of imposed differences. This is perhaps most evident while Freydis and company are in Leifsbudir. Sharing Leif’s buildings with Icelanders, Freydis is inclined to be strategic and see differences where differences do not necessarily exist. Only periodically is this separation between Greenlanders and Icelanders dismantled. For example, at one of only a few common gatherings “many of the men ceased thinking of themselves as Icelanders or Greenlanders, and regarded their fellow drinkers as Norsemen like themselves.” Furthermore, the narrator points out the constructed nature of this division: “In fact it had been less than two score years since the Greenlanders’ forbears had been Icelanders. As they talked and joked together, some of the farmers and sailors discovered they had more in common than they had thought.” Ultimately, however, the novel’s characters are governed by their elemental existence that overly depends upon superstition and tradition and this causes the Greenlanders and Icelanders to come in conflict with each other.

Caused in a large part by Freydis’s actions, this conflict throws her character into question. In the end, readers are challenged to determine whether she behaves as a brave leader or a selfish individual. Furthermore, Clark encourages readers to examine Freydis’s character in light of her past and how this background affects her. Ultimately, readers must decide whether Freydis is a feminist precursor—a proactive woman in a masculinist world—or someone who capitalizes upon her circumstances and manipulates others for her own gain.