Kiran Millwood Hargrave is the author of The Mercies, an award-winning poet, playwright and writer of bestselling children’s fiction. In her first book for adults Millwood Hargrave, takes a horrifying real-life witch trial as her inspiration. The Mercies is set in the sixteen-hundreds on the Norwegian island of Vardø. When the men of the tiny community are drowned in a storm that seems to come out of nowhere, the women band together to make a new life without them. Touching on folk magic and belief, it’s a beautifully told portrayal of women in extreme circumstances. Kiran kindly agreed to an email interview ahead of the release of The Mercies.
Molly Aitken When did you first discover the story of the women of Vardø and what was it that inspired you to write it?
Kiran Millwood Hargrave A couple of years ago, I read an article about Louise Bourgeois’ final major installation. She’s one of my favourite artists, and The Damned, The Possessed and the Loved is an extraordinary piece of work: a metal chair perpetually aflame, surrounded by tarnished mirrors. Of course, I wanted to see it and looked up where it was. The answer was equal parts surprising, frustrating, and intriguing. It was on a tiny, remote, Arctic Circle island off the coast of Norway, named Vardø. What’s more, it was part of a memorial to ninety-one men and women who were burned on that spot for witchcraft in the 1620s. I had heard of Salem, of the Pendle witch trials and Trier, but never ones in Norway. The intrigue deepened when I learned that some of the women were accused of conjuring a storm that killed most of the island’s men three years prior to the first trial. I’m always drawn to bold images, and could see a structure emerging, beginning with the storm and ending with the trials. Further research threw up so little information, I knew I’d found a gap I wanted to write into.
MA The Mercies follows two women: an outsider from Bergen, Ursa and a Vardø woman, Maren. Was it important to you to have these different perspectives on the story?
KMH Not originally, but I always learn so much during the drafting of a story. The first draft was entirely from Maren’s perspective. She’s lived all her life in Vardø, and witnesses the storm that kills her brother, father, and lover. I loved being in her head but she’s so mired in this world, so caught by it, I was longing to let the story breathe. I wanted to allow it, and Maren, to lighten a little. This is where Ursa comes in, and being married to a witch hunter, she also allows the reader access to the other side of the story: the perpetrators of the violence. As I threw them together, a whole new story began to blossom. I always feel like the first moment when we switch to Ursa’s perspective is like opening curtains to let in a little light. Their names reflect this: Maren, for the sea, and Ursa, for the stars.
MA What was the Christian position on folk magic and folk belief in Norway at this time?
KMH Very, very grave. Folk magic was rife in Norway, but increasingly the old ways were given up in favour of Christian iconography and superstitions. At the time The Mercies is set, folk beliefs were seen to be the realm of the indigenous population, the Sámi people, and so of the devil. The prejudice and racism they faced had deadly consequences, and the only men killed in the Vardø witch trials were Sámi.
MA How significant was the weather and the character’s belief in its influence over them?
KMH Weather ruled everything, because the weather ruled the seas. The sea was this tiny island’s only resource, and fish was their main food, trade, livelihood. Wind weaving was one of the Sámi customs that went largely unquestioned, because sailors were so reliant on good weather. Certain Sámi men, known as noaidi, were said to have control over the tides and wind. The men burned at Vardø were noaidis.
To an extent, the weather still rules everything. The population shrinks vastly in winter. I’ve visited Vardø once in June, at the time of the midnight sun, and once in January, when the sun never rose past the horizon. The extremes are extraordinary to anyone from a temperate climate, or even just one that has days and nights with the sun rising and setting each day, all year round. My visit in winter was the most startling – the cold was absolute, the light never rising beyond a deep purple-blue. This was the season when the women were ducked in 1620, and it brought home the complete cruelty and violence of what happened. They would have had to break the sea ice to duck them. It still makes me shudder.
MA The persecution of the Sámi is a little known history. Did it feel important to shed light on it? And why do you think now is an important time for a tale like this?
KMH Indigenous populations are so often ignored in historical fiction, as well as contemporary, but their presence and influence is undeniable. They existed, and continue to exist, and to tell this story without them would have been to only tell part of the story. We accept exclusionary narratives with a very limited, othering view of them, because that is what we are used to. Even the word ‘Lapp’ is derogatory, because it was forced upon them by the settlers.
In The Mercies, I wanted to ‘other’ the settled population. The people who stay in this bleak, difficult place, year round, rather than roaming – it is stranger than the way the Sámi live. Maren’s sister-in-law Dinna represents the tension between the white and the indigenous peoples, but she also shows co-existence is possible and desirable. At this time in Vardø there were stark divisions between the two populations, exacerbated by the Church’s disapproval of Sámi ways. The message feels more prescient than ever, with fear-mongering and othering rife in the media and politics. Any society that divides itself into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is a dangerous one, for both sides and most of all for minorities. The first victims of the trials were Sámi – they were seen as easy targets by the Church.
MA Each section of the novel features a beautiful illustration by your husband Tom de Freston. Could you tell us about these images and how you came to use them in the novel?
KMH Tom’s art influences my writing in so many ways, but one thing that really permeated this novel was the tension between the domestic and the sublime, humans and nature, people and power. His art has always explored this, and throughout writing I had on my desk one of the first pieces of his I ever bought, from before we were together. A monoprint on glass, I came to know it very well, and saw so much more in it than I ever had before.
It’s now heading up the ‘Storm’ section, and I think it’s extraordinary in how it floats between tenderness and violence, possessing a weight and lightness that speaks of water or air, of rising and descent. It is absolutely beautiful, and absolutely threatening, and that is the quality I want The Mercies to hold too: multiplicity. I was overjoyed when he agreed to draw two new pieces for the other sections.
MA Can you speak about the folk magic in the story and perhaps something you discovered that you weren’t able to include in the book?
KMH Belief in the cunning folk and magic was a very practical part of life in Scandinavia before it was set up in opposition to religion. Indeed, religion adopted many folk practises, and set up services in traditional stave churches – look them up, they are incredible! – but still persecuted anyone who would use them outside their strictures. Many wise men and women (later labelled as inciting superstition) would have a ‘Svartbook’, or Black Book, which was said to hold parts of the Old Testament excised by the cunning folk, and in an early draft Kirsten held such a book. I decided to leave it out as it was rare to own a book at this time and in this place, but the research was fascinating. The Black Book contained spells and natural remedies for healing, and was often added to by different generations of the same families.
MA The women in The Mercies use folk magic to soothe their grief and trauma after losing almost all the island’s men. Is this how you define magic in the story: an attempt to heal from pain?
KMH At its heart The Mercies is about trauma, and how we heal, and so yes – many of the rituals and superstitions the women undertake after the storm are ways to cope. Rune stones for safety, fox skins as offerings: the women revert to the old ways because religion isn’t providing the relief they need in order to survive. As I say above, magic is a practical way of life and certainly not a source of evil for them.
MA And finally, what are you reading at the moment?
KMH Currently I’m on holiday in Hawaii, so my reading is determinedly unrelated to work, i.e. books unlike anything I am writing about. I’m reading the brilliant A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee, a thriller set in colonial Calcutta, and next have lined up Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurier. While I wrote The Mercies I repeatedly referred to Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, and Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. They were the touchstones for The Mercies.