Vatnsfjarðar-Kristín Björnsdóttir
Icelandic noblewoman (c. 1374–1458)
Kristín Björnsdóttir (c. 1374–1458), often called Vatnsfjarðar-Kristín, was an Icelandic noblewoman in the 14th and 15th centuries and one of the richest people in Iceland during her day.
Family
Kristín was the daughter of Björn Einarsson Jórsalafari and his wife Solveig Þorsteinsdóttir who lived in Vatnsfjörður in Ísafjarðardjúp. It is alleged, probably wrongly, that she had one brother, Þorleifur who had apparently been in peak health, while Kristín was sickly and confined to bed for long periods of time from a young age. Þorleifur drowned in Melgraseyri as an adult and, supposedly, when his corpse was brought home to Vatnsfjörður, Kristín shot up out of bed and was completely healthy from that point on, living to an old age. After her parents died, Kristín inherited all her family's wealth including dozens of plots of land spread widely throughout the Westfjords and several other assets. Many of the properties had provided access to fishing, driftwood and other resources. Kristín was considered a force to be reckoned with and very generous.
Marriages
Kristín married twice. Her first husband, Jón, whom she married in 1392, was the brother of Loftur Guttormsson and later died in the Black Plague.
“Vatnsfjarðar-Kristín Björnsdóttir” enters the record as icelandic noblewoman (c. 1374–1458). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Vatnsfjarðar-Kristín, Björnsdóttir and Icelandic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vatnsfjarðar-Kristín Björnsdóttir” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.