The first European women to visit the Americas were Norse women who travelled there around the turn of the first millennium. Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir and Freydís Eiríksdóttir are the two most famous of these women. What we know about them comes from the accounts of Icelandic sagas, so you have to take the stories with a grain of salt. There are inconsistencies between the two accounts, particularly when it comes to the life of Gudrid. However, both women play interesting roles in the narratives of the two Vinland sagas, the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red, so I'll talk about those below.

Freydís was the daughter of Erik the Red and the sister of Leif Erikson, the latter of whom led the most famous Vinland expedition. Whether she was his full sister or half sister varies between accounts - the Saga of Erik the Red says she was illegitimate. The Saga of Erik the Red has the shorter but more memorable account of Freydís between the two sagas. The story goes that there was a great battle between the Norsemen and the Skræling, the Icelandic word for the Native Americans who already lived in "Vinland" when the Vikings arrived. (Please note that while the term is the one used historically, some circumpolar Indigenous people today consider it a slur.) Freydís was eight months pregnant at the time. As the battle starts to turn in the Native warriors' favour, Freydís sees her kinsmen retreating and issues the following admonishment:

"Why run you away from such worthless creatures, stout men that ye are, when, as seems to me likely, you might slaughter them like so many cattle? Let me but have a weapon, I think I could fight better than any of you." They gave no heed to what she said. Freydis endeavoured to accompany them, still she soon lagged behind, because she was not well; she went after them into the wood, and the Skrælingar directed their pursuit after her. She came upon a dead man; Thorbrand, Snorri's son, with a flat stone fixed in his head; his sword lay beside him, so she took it up and prepared to defend herself therewith.

Then came the Skrælingar upon her. She let down her sark and struck her breast with the naked sword. At this they were frightened, rushed off to their boats, and fled away. Karlsefni and the rest came up to her and praised her zeal.

In this episode, the character of Freydís fulfills a common trope in Icelandic sagas - that of the woman inciting her male kinsmen to battle. Female characters are frequently called upon to admonish men as cowards for failing to honour their obligations, typically for family-related vengeance. Freydís goes above and beyond in this scene though, eight months pregnant and scaring away an entire army by hitting her naked boob with a sword. Whether this is actually happened is of course impossible to say. The fact that she was pregnant in the story, though, shows us the intent of the Norse to try to make a settlement in Vinland.

The Saga of the Greenlanders doesn't include this story but does give us a more detailed look at Freydís's role in planning the trip to Vinland. She is shown engaging in negotiations with Icelandic merchants and with her brothers, keen to secure herself some of the wealth expected to come from the Vinland settlement. Once she gets to Vinland, however, she comes into conflict with the merchant brothers Helgi and Finnbogi, with whom she had agreed to share profits from the venture. She ends up pretending that the brothers had beaten her and telling her husband he must kill them in revenge or else she would divorce him. Her husband killed Helgi and Finnbogi as well as all the men in their camp. There were five women in the camp who her husband refused to kill, but Freydís took up an axe and killed them herself. After this massacre, Freydís returned to Greenland. At first she tried to lie about the whereabouts of Helgi, Finnbogi, and their crew, but Leif eventually found out the truth. He couldn't bring himself to punish his sister for her crimes, but the saga writer tells us that her descendants carried the shame and stigma of this event.

Both of the stories about Freydís are difficult to fully accept for different reasons. The story about her scaring away an entire army is outlandish, if entertaining. The story about her dealings with Helgi and Finnbogi could be an attempt to comment on her descendants more than an actual story of what happened. Freydís again fulfills the saga role of the woman calling men cowards for not fulfilling their violent obligations. Since this is such a stock type, it's difficult to know exactly what happened, and we probably never will. The story in the Saga of the Greenlanders does suggest that elite women were an active part of the organization of the Vinland voyages.

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