Three Scandinavian songstresses, three muses

The Curse by Agnes Obel was one of the first songs to inspire Where The Ice Burns

From the very beginning when I began work on Where The Ice Burns, music accompanied me on my journey as a writer. Every morning, before I began writing, I would listen to certain pieces of music by three Nordic singers in particular, all of whom had a huge impact on how I wanted my novel to feel. The fact that all three of these musicians were from Scandinavia meant even more to me, as their poetry fed into my own creative muse. 

When I write, I do so in silence, but the music of the Danish singer Agnes Obel: http://www.agnesobel.com/ 

the Sami singer Mari Boine: http://www.mariboine.no/, 

and Aurora from Bergen (where I live in Norway): http://www.aurora-music.com/  

vibrated in my heart as I began to type away. The suggestion of their lyrics created images in my head, and made me want to write fiction that would be as moving as their music.

On this blog, I will feature songs that had a specific impact on the writing of Where The Ice Burns and today is the turn of the song 'The Curse' by the Danish singer, Agnes Obel. This song spoke so directly to me of the events that occurred in the winter of 1662/1663 in Finnmark.

Obel sings, 'The Curse ruled from the underground down by the shore' and to me I could see the haunting landscape of Vardø island in Finnmark, and the wretched stretch of land called Steilneset where the condemned women were burnt. In an online interview (http://amusicblogyea.com/2014/02/02/gimme-your-answers-an-interview-w-agnes-obel/) Agnes Obel talks about what inspired her song, The Curse:

The Curse was also inspired by a book I was reading at the time about how the human mind is wired to give meaning to things that might just have been chance, creating a narrative fallacy of our lives. I think the consequence of this can be both positive and negative, a curse or/and a blessing, making us create beautiful things, and see symbolic meaning in otherwise random things, but also making us blind and potentially destructive and conceited.

On a subliminal level for me the song The Curse touches upon the belief system of the seventeenth century. How dark magic was attributed to the death of a lamb, or the poor yield of fish, or a storm that wrecked a ship. Indeed, the true curse of witch hunting was the dark meaning attached to random acts of chance.