Freydis Eiríksdóttir

Depending on which of the two accounts of Freydis Eirksdóttir (c. 970-c. 1004 CE) one reads, she was either a heroic woman warrior or a wicked and also one of the best female Viking warriors in history, cunning murderer. She appears in The Saga of the Greenlanders and Erik the Red's Saga, in which she plays the lead role (a villainess). Freydis, the daughter of Erik the Red, travels to Vinland with a group in Erik the Red's Saga (Newfoundland, North America). When some locals attack them, the guys in the party flee, leaving Freydis to defend herself. "Why run you away from such worthless creatures, stout men that ye are, when, as it seems likely to me, you would slaughter them like so many cattle?" she cries out to them. If I had a weapon, I believe I could fight more effectively than any of you (Chapter 12). Freydis, despite being sick (perhaps pregnant) and alone herself, seizes a sword from a fallen friend and, after ripping open her shirt and striking her breasts with the blade, challenges the adversary, who flees, sparing her group.

She travels to Vinland with her husband, his soldiers, and two brothers/business partners in The Saga of the Greenlanders. She accuses the brothers of abusing and beating her and threatens to divorce her husband if he doesn't take revenge because she dislikes them and thinks they are arrogant. Freydis uses an axe to murder all the women after her husband and his soldiers kill the brothers and their party but refuse to harm the women. It's possible that this second story, which was created after the first, is an effort to disparage the powerful female protagonist from the first. Freydis has a greater chance of reflecting an actual historical person than the more obviously mythological and legendary characters discussed above because it is generally believed that these two sagas that refer to Vinland remember real people and events that were at least partially preserved through an oral tradition.