Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Reily

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freyd%C3%ADs_Eir%C3%ADksd%C3%B3ttir

Leif Erikson’s daughter lived up to the shield maiden myth...


19 posted on 09/08/2017 1:11:37 PM PDT by Snickering Hound
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies ]


To: Snickering Hound

There are examples in Caesar’s Gallic Wars (Yes I know they are not Vikings!) of Celtic women with bows shooting at Romans. And there is the Leif Erikson daughter example in a few sagas that you just cited. However most historians of the Norse era dismiss the whole shield maiden thing as myth.

Now I personally would like it to be true, hot babes with swords in leather! What’s not to like!


27 posted on 09/08/2017 1:23:40 PM PDT by Reily
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies ]

To: Snickering Hound

Freydís is described as Leif Erikson’s full sister. This was the first saga written in the late twelfth century and is a crude version of the accounts that happened in Vinland. Freydís is mentioned only once in this saga. This is the most famous account we have of Freydís.

After expeditions to Vinland led by Leif Erikson, Þorvaldr Eiríksson and Þorfinnr Karlsefni met with some success, Freydís wants the prestige and wealth associated with a Vinland journey. She makes a deal with two Icelandic men, Helgi and Finnbogi, that they should go together to Vinland and share all profits half-and-half. Freydis asks her brother Leif Erikson to use the homes and stables that he has built in Vinland. He agrees that they all can use the houses. Helgi and Finnbogi agree that they will bring the same number of men and supplies, but Freydis ends up leaving after the brothers because she had smuggled more men into her ship. Helgi and Finnbogi, arriving early, take refuge in the houses until Freydís appears and orders the brothers to move, as the houses were her brothers and meant for her. This is one of the many disagreements that would happen in the time they are there.

In Vinland, there was tension between the two groups. Helgi and Finnbogi set up a settlement separate from Freydis and her crew. Freydis eventually went to the brothers’ hut and asked how they were faring. “Well,” responded the brothers, “but we do not like this ill-feeling that has sprung up between us.” The two sides made peace.

When she returned to her husband, Freydis claimed Helgi and Finnbogi had beaten her, and, calling him a coward, demanded that he exact revenge on her behalf, or else she would divorce him. He gathered his men and killed Helgi and Finnbogi as well as the men in their camp when they were sleeping. When he refused to kill the five women in the camp, Freydis herself picked up an axe and massacred them.

Freydís wanted to conceal her treachery and threatened death to anyone who would tell of the killings. She went back to Greenland after a year’s stay and told her brother Leif Eiriksson that Helgi and Finnbogi had decided to stay in Vinland. However, word of the killings eventually reached the ears of Leif. He had three men from Freydís’s expedition tortured until they confessed the whole occurrence. Thinking ill of the deeds, Leif still did not want “to do that to Freydís, my sister, which she has deserved”. However, he remarked that he foresaw Fredydis’ descendants having little prosperity. The Greenlander Saga concludes that everyone thought ill of her descendants afterwards.


Sounds like a real winner(not).


33 posted on 09/08/2017 1:51:35 PM PDT by JohnyBoy (We should forgive communists, but not before they are hanged.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson