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.