Norse Women Cast Adrift: A Christian Literary Trope in the Sagas of Iceland

• Main Author: Thomson, Adrian
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 2021
• Subjects: textual tropes; Middle Ages; Christian tropes; Life Sciences; Greenland; Iceland
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/researchweek/ResearchWeek2021/All2021/140; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/context/researchweek/article/2531/viewcontent/21325_Norse_20Women_20Cast_20Adrift_20A_20Christian_20Literary_20Trope_20in_20the_20Sagas_20of_20Iceland.pdf

During the late Middle Ages, three literary sources present a Christian textual trope known as “the woman cast adrift.†This trope features a woman of saintly or other prominence, who is “cast†upon the sea in a boat often lacking a rudder, oars or a sail. By divine will, against the sea and its storms, the woman reaches her intended destination. While these prominent sources were written in western Europe from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, similar tales of “women castadrift†are present in the Norse sagas of Iceland and Greenland, written earlier during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir of the Vinland sagas especially shows this Christian trope occurring a century earlier within European texts. This presentation seeks to contextualize Gudrid as an earlier figure within the trope of “the woman cast adrift,†based upon the trope's usual motifs. Presentation Time: Wednesday, 12-1 p.m. Zoom link: https://usu-edu.zoom.us/j/83570709111?pwd=dGpYQzZvT3dqdHdGNjMzaVZ3QnFLUT09