She and her husband Thorfinn Karlsefni led an expedition to Vinland where their son Snorri Thorfinnsson was born, the first known European birth in the Americas (outside of Greenland).
Thirty others went with them on the journey, but the group experienced complications due to poor weather, which slowed their progress during the summer.
One winter, Gudrid, her father Thorbjorn, and his companions feast at the home of Thorkel, who is visited by a seeress named Thorbjorg.
Thorbjorg arrives at Thorkel's home, intending to carry out several magic rites, specifically ward songs, for which she needs the women present to help chant.
[3] With minimal effort, however, Thorbjorg and Thorkel convince Gudrid that taking part in the chants will help the people present, and not damage her status as a Christian woman.
According to the Saga of the Greenlanders, Gudrid then accompanied her husband on his quest to Vinland, with the hope that he could retrieve the body of his brother Thorvald.
According to this account, Thorstein temporarily rises from his dead bed to tell Gudrid that she will be married to an Icelander and that they will have a long life together with many descendants.
While in Vínland, the couple had a son whom they named Snorri Thorfinnsson, who is the first European reported to be born in the Western Hemisphere.
There is a statue created by the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson in 1938 for the 1939 New York World's Fair of Gudrid on display at Glaumbær, in Iceland.
Its original Icelandic title refers to Gudrid as "Fyrsta hvíta móðirin í Ameríku" (The first white mother in America).
[14] Other copies of this statue, which typically refer to Gudrid as the "first European mother in America," are on display in Laugarbrekka in the Snæfellsnes peninsula on Iceland, in Ottawa, Canada, and at the Vatican.