When I really engage with a book I always want to find out about the writer (she lives in Oxford) and I want to see what else she has written; in this case not very much, one other novel and 2 books for young people. So, having read The Dance Tree, the ‘other’ book is The Mercies and now I’m not sure which I enjoyed most. There is another strong historical setting, further north this time, in the distant reaches of Scandinavia, near the Arctic Circle. The time is the seventeenth century and I had to investigate several maps to find out where the borders of Norway, Sweden and Finland were at that time. I didn’t know that Norway went to the north of Sweden and Finland or that it had a border with Russia. I also was ignorant of the fact that Lapland is not really a country at all but a huge area in the north of all 3 countries, inhabited by the Sami (the Lapps) a semi nomadic people for whom reindeer herds provide their way of life.
The story is grounded on the island of Vardo in farthest northern Norway. Today it figures on line as a good destination for seeing the northern lights and going on a snowmobile ride but in the last few centuries it’s indigenous populations would have taken the word ‘remote’ to another level.
In the story, watching the sea, as women do who have menfolk fishing, they see an enormous wave, or is it a whale, rise with egregious haste out of a calm sea and envelope the tiny boats. Death comes in a few appalling, watery moments and the island where fish is their food source becomes an island of women. The savagery of the situation sends the women reeling for explanations: did someone or something conjure the storm…or the whale? Is it a punishment for sins? And they take comfort where it is offered, runes scraped above doorways, poppets, little dolls etc.
At the time of the story, the King of Norway, Christian 1V wishes to make the entire population follow his Lutheran Protestant religious beliefs and practices and he employs someone to weed out the pagan ways which proliferated among the Sami people. These people were discriminated against at a time when religious tolerance was in short supply. This is done with horrific and grotesque witch trials and burnings. Ursula, living a peaceful, comfortable life with her sister and father in Bergen is married off with indecent haste to a Scottish man on his way to the remote island of Vardo at the edge of the Barents Sea, to clear out any non Christian ways. Ursula has no idea what this means or will entail. She finds herself living with her rather cold, new husband in little more than a wooden hut and with no idea or experience of keeping house. She badly needs a friend. Maren fills this roll. She lost her father, brother and her betrothed in the fishing tragedy. She is fascinated by Ursula and the foreignness of her life. Their stories become entwined with dramatic and unforeseen results. I could not have predicted the ending of the story but it was convincing and satisfying.