Aurora's Light

I discovered the music of Aurora not long after I began writing Where The Ice Burns. I fell in love with her lyrics, and her essence as an artist immediately. At times when I doubted my own creative vision I would play her music, and almost immediately I was able to feel the heartbeat of my characters inside my head, and their words and actions began to flow.

Aurora's album is called 'All My Demons Greeting me as a Friend', the title of which strangely resonates with my investigations into the witch trials in Finnmark. Some of the tracks in particular trigger moments in the book for me. I know of course that Aurora's meaning with her music could be something else entirely, but I think art is as much as about the creator, as the viewer, listener, or reader, and their personal interpretations and journeys. So with the track, Runaway, I saw my main character, Ingeborg, running away from the past, and the stigma of being branded a witch, trying to find a place called home, 'a soft place to fall.'

I have read that Aurora's song, 'Running with the Wolves' is very much about the environmental devastation of our modern age, but for me this song also brings images into my head of the young girls and women accused of witchcraft, imprisoned in the witches' hole and craving to be free, 'to run with the wolves.' These captives were often accused of turning into birds, and cats, and other creatures, escaping to dance with the Devil, and in the line 'I'm running with the wolves tonight' I imagine them wishing that they really could escape their reality by turning into a wild one.

The track 'Under The Water' immediately calls to mind the cruel water ordeal that many of the accused women were forced to undergo. The theory behind this test was that water was sacred so that if the water received the woman and she sank she was not a witch, but if she floated she was. Stripped to their underclothes, the accused were trussed hands to ankles and thrown in the Arctic water in the middle of the winter. It is surprising they did not freeze to death. But, not one of the accused drowned. All floated 'like a bob' upon the water. As I listen to Aurora's song I imagine the women wishing that they could drown, willing themselves to drop to the bottom of the fjord, an escape from the fiery stake and peace at last.

 The song that resonates with me the most powerfully is Winter Bird. Every single line seems to speak of the pain and suffering of the persecuted.
'My tears are always frozen / I can see the air I breathe/ Got my fingers painting pictures on the glass in front of me / Lay me by the frozen river where the boats have passed me by / All I need to remember is how it was to feel alive.'
All the captive women were like winter birds, trapped and in torment.

Aurora is around the same age as my main narrative voice, Ingeborg, and the other girls accused of witchcraft in the novel. To see Aurora singing brings these young women alive again for me, with their shared power and purity of spirit. The fact that she is Norwegian herself, and from Bergen, makes her words and music even more special to me. I feel that listening to her music has added more depth to the mood and atmosphere of the novel. A few months ago I saw Aurora singing live. It was an unforgettable experience and I had the pleasure of talking to her for a few minutes afterwards. It was important to me to let her know just how much her music has inspired my work as a writer. Aurora is a northern star, her light and inspiration enduring.

Sami words, and Sami Spirit

Mari Boine 

I have been listening to the music of Mari Boine since I came to live in Norway. She has always transported me to a place of intense creativity. Her music meant even more to me as I wrote Where The Ice Burns because of its setting in Finnmark, and the importance of the Sami experience in the novel. The first victims of the witch hunts in seventeenth century Finnmark were Sami.

Mari Boine Singing Elle

I love the sounds of Sami words, although I do not know their meaning. Once I read the English translations I know that the spirit of them have infused me. The deep connection between nature, the landscape of the north, and the human heart is a constant inspiration in my writing. 

The song Elle from the album It Ain't Necessarily Evil was one I played time again. Elle is on the soundtrack to the film, The Kautokeino Rebellion, the true story of a revolt in the town of Kautokeino in northern Norway in 1852 by a group of Sami because of injustices against their people by the Norwegian authorities. I found the film very moving. 

Image from the Kautokeino Rebellion

I have included the Sami lyrics to Elle, as well as their English translation to show you the poetry and the beauty of Mari Boine's musical vision. But it is not just her words, but also her voice that has such power. One moment fragile, the next forceful, as if she can sing as a child, and a wise woman. 

Mari Boine

So here are the Sami lyrics to Elle, followed by the English translation that I found on the link below.

Elen Skum (Elle)

De rahpasii giđđaeatnu fas

De dulvvi miel luoittašeimmet

Jiekŋaidja gárttai viimat vuollánit

Bieggabártnažan

De girdilin biellocizažiin

De joradin guovssahasain

Vuoibmás vuoiŋŋ ahagas šogádeimme ovttas

Mu bieggabártnažan

De rahtase jienaheamit fas

De golggiihii sátnerávdnji

Gálbmon gáttiin go mii viimat gávnnadeimmet

Bieggabártnažan

Go váccašat ealloravddas de...

Go guođuhat suhkesoivviid...

Almmiravda ealaska ja sugada

Mu bieggabártnažan

Image from the film Kautokeino Rebellion

English lyrics to Elle

And to the spring river opened up again

And so we let ourselves drift with the flood

The night of ice had to give in

My dearest son of the wind

Surely I flew with the bluethroat

Surely I danced with the northern light

In the strongest breath we exhaled as one

My dearest son of the wind

The lips of the silenced people bursted out in speech

The stream of words once again were flowing

Over the frozen riverbands when we finally came together

My dearest son of the wind

When you're walking alongside the reindeer herd

When you guard the reindeer oxen with the great antlers

All of the horizon comes alive and starts to move

My dearest son of the wind

(The lyrics were found on this link:http://lyricstranslate.com/en/elen-skum-elle-elle.html)

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.

The Inspiration of Ice

Quiet on my blog has meant busy at work on the book. The first draft is always the beginning. Since October I have rewritten Where The Ice Burns three times. Always a time of learning as a writer, of challenge but also of passion as I strive to excavate the best book possible from all the months of research, character development and restructuring.

It has been a hard winter in Bergen. Dark, and icy cold. But drier than normal, the rain held at bay by fragile, and at other times brittle bright northern light.

The Bergen ice has helped me return time and time again to the stark winter landscape of the far north of Norway. Walking near my home, up in the mountains, and by the fjord I have found myself discovering so many different types of snow and ice.  I am fascinated by the variety of ice formations and take pictures.

The sight of the ice in arrested movement stills my heart, and yet the water striving to break free beneath the surface sends my mind drifting back in time to the landscape of my accused girls. Always my books are centred around setting. Landscape becomes a character.

All day all night

I return to Finnmark in July. Now the snow has thawed, revealing rock and bog, pools of deep blue water, and clear skies.

It is the time of year when the sun does not set. At midnight I set out for a walk along the ragged coast of the Varanger Peninsula near the small village of Ekkerøy. Little has changed since the seventeenth century. I follow the same path as my characters until I have a view of traditional wooden racks used for drying fish. The very same as the racks used by the fishermen's wives of my novel. Beyond are cliffs, spattered white, the air thick with screeching gulls.

Midday in Vardø December 2014

It looks like night but it is the middle of the day on the island of Vardø in mid-December. I shan't forget that howling, brutal wind from the Arctic. Ice and snow biting our faces, slipping on the road as we walked. In the seventeenth century witches were blamed for such bad weather. One way of surviving such bleak, relentless conditions was to give it a reason. Part of the battle between Good and Evil. Its not surprising to learn that the witch trials peaked in the winter months.

Discovering the witch trials of Finnmark

Map of Scandinavia 1656 by Anders Bureus

About three years ago I remember reading about the witch trials that took place in Finnmark in Northern Norway throughout the seventeenth century. I was shocked by their intensity. Out of a population of 3000, 135 persons were tried, and 91 executed. 77 of those executed were women, 14 men. This was much higher than the European average and matched other hotspots such as Scotland and  Germany. I tried to imagine the fear and paranoia that must have raged through such a small population. What really horrified me was that six girls were also accused, one as young as eight years old. I was drawn to discovering more about these girls, and the women accused in the trials of 1662 and 1663. Last year a story began to emerge. I started to research in earnest not just the trials in Finnmark but also the witch hunts in the whole of Europe. How was it that these extreme persecutions had taken place over a period of over three hundred years? I was determined to understand how it could have happened, what people thought and believed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For the witch hunters were not fanatical clerics but the authorities themselves. In both Scotland and Denmark the King himself instigated witchcraft legislation. King James VI of Scotland, who later became James I, and Denmark's Christian IV were both obsessed with witches. James wrote his 'Demonology' and, after his trip to Finnmark and Kola in 1599, Christian IV expressed a personal fear of Sami Sorcerers. He was determined to purge the North of witchcraft, reflected in the Witchcraft Decree of 1617. What began to emerge was that witches were so feared not just because of the harm they could cause to individuals, and the evil power they derived through their pacts with the devil, but also because they represented chaos, and disorder. Not always, but often the witches were viewed as terrorists and social deviants.

Finnmark 1662 published by Joan Blaeu

In December 2014 I travelled to Northern Norway, visiting Tromsø, Kirkenes and Vardø, an island in North Eastern Finnmark where the majority of the  trials took place, and where the women were imprisoned in the witches hole in Vardøhus fortress. I decided to go to the North during the period of the polar night for this was the time of year when the trials and executions peaked. This trip represented the turning point of my journey to write my new novel. 

The first night we stayed at the Snow Hotel in Kirkenes in a 'gamme' cabin. We watched the creation of the snow hotel for the coming season. This image is of blocks of ice cut from the fjord nearby and used for sculptures inside the main 'igloo' of the ice hotel. This photograph is taken at around 1 p.m. in early December. 

Coming soon

*** Where The Ice Burns - the upcoming novel by Kim Seeberg ***