It is modern-day Norway. A girl is born with a horrifyingly disfiguring scar running the length of her forehead. Shunned by her mother; largely ignored by her father who is disappointed she is not the boy he longs for. She grows up a lonely child, pretending to be a boy to win her father's love. Unable to cope with his strange daughter, he sends her to live with his father on a small island nearby. Her name is Brynhild. There, enchanted by the stories woven by her grandfather of the family's Norse past, she begins to have disturbing visions of a time far into the past, to which she feels increasingly drawn. One day, her grandfather returns home to find she has disappeared.
In tenth century Greenland, we find 15-year old Brynhild, her face scar-free. With her father, Sigurdur, they have joined Eirikur Thorvaldsson, better known to history as Erik The Red, who has been exiled from Iceland. This Brynhild also dresses as a boy, insisting she is a Shield Maiden out of Norse myth; a warrior woman with better sword and axe skills than many men. She idolises Leif Eiriksson, and is heartbroken when he refuses to take her on his voyage to find new lands farther to the West, where the Norse can settle. She finally persuades Leif's younger brother, Thorvald, to take her when he makes the voyage to further explore the new lands Leif Eiriksson had discovered - North America.
Based on extraordinary, myth-busting evidence, follow Brynhild's journey to its unhappy conclusion. It is one which is to have worldwide reverberations and change the minds of both Scientists and the Literary World forever.