The magic system in this novel, while inspired by historical sources, is largely from my own imagination. As such, I chose not to use Old Norse terms like sei?r and v?lva/v?lur to describe pre-Christian Nordic magic and its practitioners, nor terms like go?i to refer to spiritual leaders, as they evoke a specificity I wished to avoid—both out of respect for modern-day pagans and for worry of spreading misinformation. As such, I chose to replace these words with terms like “magic,” “witchcraft,” “seeress,” “witch,” and “sorceress,” which you will see used in the English translations of the sagas （except for go?i, which also came to mean something like “chieftain” in the Icelandic Commonwealth era）。 Likewise, the mentions of the noaidi and their magic （noaidevuohta） were inspired by research and are not meant to reflect Sámi spirituality today.
The details of what the Winternights feast days entailed are almost entirely made-up except for the animal sacrifice （which is one of the most well-documented aspects of pagan rituals in the North） and the ritual sprinkling of blood, as well as the games, drinking, and the fact that weddings commonly occurred in tandem with this festival. The details of Eirik and Gunnhild’s wedding and the feast that followed are also imagined.
The duck-patterned silk that Gunnhild sews into her dress is a silly little detail that has a historical basis. Fragments of such a silk were found in the Oseberg ship burial, which predates this novel by roughly a hundred years, making Gunnhild’s silk an heirloom by the time it’s in her hands. Other silks have been found in Viking Age graves, and they, along with a number of grave goods that originated in far-off places, indicate the vast reach of trading networks at this time. Viking Age Scandinavians were keen sailors who had contact with many other cultures even before they entered the historical record at Lindisfarne in 793 CE. Ahmad ibn Fadlan, the writer mentioned above, is actually one of our only contemporary sources on the Vikings—and he was in fact writing at approximately the same time this novel takes place, on the other side of the Viking world.
My studies of the Viking Age from textbooks, podcasts, and museums, and through my own hands-on experiences with living history, informed much of this book. “Viking” was a job title, not a race of people. Women would often travel alongside men, especially when they were settling in other lands, but would also sometimes stay home and tend to the farm, and defend it against other Vikings if necessary. Divorce was not taboo and could be initiated by either the husband or the wife. Textile work, for which women were largely responsible, was not treated as unimportant; everyone needs clothing, and the Vikings would not have gotten far without sails for their ships. And while I do believe Viking warrior women existed and should be celebrated, I also believe a woman does not have to pick up a weapon and engage in combat in order to have a story worth telling. The stubborn, clever, resourceful women of the Icelandic sagas are proof enough of this, even if their choices are sometimes questionable.
Finally, although separate gender roles are likely to have existed in the Viking Age, this isn’t to say that people never crossed or blurred the boundaries between these spheres. Queerness is not a new phenomenon, and Halldor’s experience as depicted in this novel is just one way that someone we would interpret as transgender could have lived. We’ll never know how many people we’d recognize today as LGBTQIA+ have been omitted from history, but we have always been here, and we always will be.
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FURTHER READING AND A select bibliography are available on my website. Any mistakes are my own.
APPENDIX
I chose to anglicize all Old Norse （ON） names of people and places in this novel by removing special characters （á, ?, etc.） and rendering the letters ? and ? as th and d, respectively. Old Norse is an inflected language, which means that the spelling of a word can change depending on how it’s used in a sentence, so I removed the case endings as well, as English does not use them. Therefore, “Eiríkr” becomes “Eirik,” “？órólfr” becomes “Thorolf,” “Gunnhildr” becomes “Gunnhild,” and so on. This also reflects how Old Norse names appear in English in the Penguin Classics editions of The Sagas of Icelanders. As in modern Icelandic, the letters ei together are pronounced eyy （as in “hey”） instead of like “eye,” meaning that names like Heid and Svein are pronounced heyd and sveyn, respectively （as opposed to hide and svine）。
*—denotes a quasi-historical figure
?—denotes that the figure in question is deceased by the time the main action of the novel begins
PEOPLE
Gunnhild Ozurardottir*—a witch; later known in history as Gunnhild, Mother of Kings Oddny Ketilsdottir—a farm girl from Halogaland and sworn sister to Gunnhild Signy Ketilsdottir—Oddny’s sister; also a sworn sister to Gunnhild Vestein Ketilsson—brother of Oddny and Signy
Ketil?—a farmer in Halogaland; close friend of Gunnhild’s father, Ozur Yrsa—wife of Ketil and mother of Oddny, Signy, and Vestein Ozur*—Gunnhild’s father, a hersir in Halogaland
Solveig—Gunnhild’s mother
Alf and Eyvind—Gunnhild’s brothers
Ulfrun—Solveig’s favorite servant
Vigdis—head of the cooking staff on Ozur and Solveig’s farm Eirik Haraldsson*—the chosen successor of his father, King Harald, and second king of Norway; later known as Eirik Blood-axe Thorolf Skallagrimsson*—one of Eirik’s hirdsmen, an Icelander whose family’s interactions with Norwegian royalty are recounted in Egil’s Saga Halldor—a raider
Svein—a skald, one of Eirik’s hirdsmen
Juoksa—a Sámi noaidi （practitioner of magic）
Mielat—Juoksa’s apprentice
Heid—a seeress
Kolfinna—a raider
Thorbjorg—a witch in the employ of King Olaf
Katla—a witch in the employ of King Halfdan
Queen Gyda*—King Harald’s second wife, who oversees his estate at Alreksstadir in Hordaland; famously rejected his marriage proposal until he brought all of Norway under one rule Saeunn—head of the textile workshop at the Hordaland estate Hrolf—the Lawspeaker at the Hordaland estate; Saeunn’s father Ulla—a Sámi woman at the textile workshop at Alreksstadir Hrafnhild—the head of the cookhouse at Alreksstadir
Runfrid—tattooist of King Eirik’s hird
King Harald*—the first king of Norway, who united the country under one rule; father of Eirik Blood-axe, among many children by many wives Thorir the hersir*—a friend of King Harald; foster father to Eirik; foster brother to Skallagrim （Thorolf’s father） Arinbjorn Thorisson*—Thorir’s son; foster brother to Eirik; close friend of Thorolf Olaf Haraldsson*—son of King Harald; king of the Vestfold region after the death of his brother Bjorn at Eirik’s hands Tryggvi Olafsson*—Olaf’s son; cousin and foster brother to Gudrod Bjorn Haraldsson?*—son of King Harald and king of Vestfold before being murdered by Eirik; full brother of Olaf, who has sworn to avenge him; father of Gudrod Gudrod Bjarnarson*—Bjorn’s son; fostered by King Olaf after his father is murdered by Eirik Halfdan Haraldsson*—son of King Harald; one of the kings of the Trondheim region Rognvald Haraldsson?*—son of King Harald and Snaefrid; killed by Eirik at their father’s behest for practicing witchcraft Thora*—mother of Hakon, King Harald’s youngest son