Freydís Eiríksdóttir

Freydis is Erik the Red's fierce, formidable daughter — and one of the most startling women in the sagas. In the Vínland voyages, when the Norse are routed by the native Skrælingar and the men are fleeing in panic, the heavily pregnant Freydis cannot run; she seizes a dead man's sword, bares her breast, and slaps the flat of the blade against it with a war-shout so fierce that the attackers, unnerved, break off and flee. It is one of the boldest images of courage in the corpus. But the sagas give her a darker side too: in one telling she lures a rival party of brothers into a deadly trap out of greed and, when the men hesitate to kill the women, takes up an axe and does it herself. Freydis is the saga world's most ambiguous heroine — magnificent in her courage, terrible in her ruthlessness, a woman who frightens enemies and allies alike.