The Far Traveler

Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed past the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, few believed that the details of Gudrid's story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scientists discovered what may have been this pioneering woman's last house, buried under a hay field in Iceland, just where the sagas suggested it could be. Joining scientists with cutting-edge technology and the latest archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid's steps on land and in the sagas, author Brown reconstructs a life that spanned--and expanded--the bounds of the then-known world.--From publisher description.