The novel is based upon the life of Gudrid, who appears in Graenlendinga Saga and Eirik's Saga, which deal with the exploration of Greenland and Vinland in the tenth century AD. The narrative shifts between past and present time: Gudrid's first person narrative tells her own story to a scribe in a Tuscan monastery at the end of her life. Third person flashbacks, and dialogue with the scribe, punctuate this narrative.

Gudrid was born in Iceland and brought up by foster-parents. her father went bankrupt, and emigrated to the colony in Greenland. Gudrid's first husband, Thorstein Eiriksson (son of Eirik the Red) died in a famine, in spite of Gudrid's efforts to save him. Gudrid then married Thorfinn Karlsefni, who was the first long-term settler of Vinland (Newfoundland?), where Gudrid's son was born. They left after an inconclusive battle with the native Americans, and returned to Iceland. In her old age, the widowed Gudrid made the pilgrimage to Rome, after which she returned to Iceland to become an anchoress.

In re-telling Gudrid's story as a first person narrative, the perspective of the sagas is altered to one woman's viewpoint. Gudrid struggles with paradoxes which confront her: Christianity and witchcraft, civilisation and savagery, loving relationship and violent death. In all her adventures, confronting famine, wilderness, hostile savages, storms at sea, and finally, a corrupt church and state in Rome, she tries to retain her own standards of integrity, and to construct a narrative which makes sense of her life.