We had talks about Vikings and fjords and ate food fresh from the towns at which we docked. I went walking in far-flung places blanketed in thick white snow – the north cape, a beach dotted with Viking graves – and visited fishing villages in Finnmark with less than sixty inhabitants. It amazed me how undaunted the locals were by the snow, the darkness, and by how remotely they lived. They didn’t just endure it – they lived creatively and with a connection to nature that I found admirable and moving.

Although the research that I’d planned was useful, it was those chance encounters during my travels that proved the richest, and which fed into the book with the most potency. Spending a day sitting at Geirangerfjord, carefully observing the breathtaking landscape, enabled me to bring the fjord in the story to life on the page. In Oslo, I bought a book about Norwegian fairytales, but I merely dipped into it – it had become clear during my travels that myth and folklore were a big part of Norwegian life, and so I began to write my own fairytales – these appear in the book under a fictional title, P. Johansen’s Book of Remembered Norse Folk Tales, that Aurelia translates.

I’d had an idea of what Granhus looked like before I visited Norway, and during that first trip to Oslo I stumbled upon a house that looked exactly like the house in my mind, right down to the trees surrounding it. It felt like I’d stepped inside the novel, that it somehow already existed, and that I was merely listening to the story as it unfolded, transcribing instead of creating it.

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Read on for an extract …

They bind our feet and ankles, tear off our clothes and douse us with alcohol. Amy’s crying and shaking like a new lamb, and I want to reach out to her but Stevens’ knife is held to my throat, his face so close I can smell his disgusting breath. He uncurls his fingers to show me the stones before shoving them into my mouth, breaking my teeth. I gag on blood and broken molars.

They start to cut Amy’s hair, hacking off her silky black locks so close to the skin that blood oozes darkly from her pale scalp. With a terrific lunge Stevens plunges his knife deep into my chest, scraping my collarbone, the shock of it causing my knees to buckle. I cannot breathe, nor speak. Amy lets out a long cry, like a wounded animal.

Already I can smell the fire. I do not fear it.

Wait for me, Amy. Wait.

LIV, 1998

Lòn Haven

The Black Isle, Scotland

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