“One of you clouds the futures of the others. For better or worse, your fates are intertwined.”
The Weaver and the Witch Queen by Genevieve Gornichec is a masterful work of fantasy set in the Viking Age and draws heavy inspiration from known historical records of people and places. Gornichec beautifully entwines ancient Norse magic and mythology to tell an utterly fantastic tale centering on a trio of sworn sisters and their love for one another, their pursuits of dreams, their need for vengeance.
“I think if my father were here, he would tell me to let this go. I don’t think the dead want us to die for them. I think a better way to honor them is to live.”
When we meet them, Gunnhild, Oddny, and Signy are the very best of childhood friends and they swear a blood oath to always be there for each other. As Fate is wont to do, their lives are torn apart by forces beyond their control. Gunnhild is promised in marriage to an older, lecherous man and in protest, she runs away to apprentice with a revered seeress and witch. Her family and friends assume she is dead. Oddny and Signy’s father, Ketil, dies, leaving his family to scrabble out a meager living on their farm across the bay from Gunnhild’s childhood home. Ten years after Gunnhild’s disappearance, raiders swoop in on Ketil’s family, brutally killing the girls’ mother and brother, kidnapping Signy. Oddny escapes and swears to find and rescue Signy. Little does she know that Gunnhild, now a young witch and seeress, has been keeping an eye on their farm in the form of a swallow and saw the gruesome attack firsthand.
Certain Signy has been sold into slavery, Gunnhild sets out to aid Oddny in her quest. Along the way, Gunnhild and Oddny find themselves in the unlikely company of warriors in service to King Eirik. Gunnhild agrees to join forces with Eirik, as his wife and resident witch, in his struggle against his jealous brothers and their very powerful witches. In exchange, Eirik agrees to help Gunnhild and Oddny search for and recover Signy. Oddny is surprised to find one of the men who raided her home as part of Eirik’s hird. Halldor was thrown into the sea after the raid at Oddny’s home for failing to capture Oddny. For his role in the raid, he is obligated to pay Oddny a sizable sum of restitution monies. Raiding in service to a greater lord is the best way for him to raise the necessary funds. As plans are laid and events unfold, both women realize that they, and Eirik, and Halldor share a common enemy – Eirik’s brothers and the witches who support them. The quest lays bare old grudges and scars, challenges their motives and loyalties, and unearths unknown strengths while exposing carefully hidden weaknesses.
Gornichec was careful to make her starring female cast realistic, without playing into the “shieldmaiden” trope. She says this in the Author’s Note, “While I do believe Viking warrior women existed and should be celebrated, I also believe a woman does not have to pick up a weapon and engage in combat in order to have a story worth telling.” In The Weaver and the Witch Queen, this point is crystal clear. Gunnhild, Oddny, and Signy are clever, vibrant, and fierce without needing to cross swords or heft a shield. They are each a force to contend with in their own right.
“A woman need not be defined by her men…She can stand for herself and make her own way.”
One particularly interesting and exceptionally well executed addition to the story is the inclusion of a transgender character. (No, I won’t mar the beauty of this storyline by telling you who…sorry, not sorry.) This character is immensely complex, and their part of the narrative is essential to story development. Gornichec says this about it, “Queerness is not a new phenomenon, and [XXX’s] experience as depicted in this novel is just one way that someone we would interpret as transgender could have lived. We’ll never know how many people we’d recognize today as LGBTQIA+ have been omitted from history, but we have always been here, and we always will be.”
I love a good piece of fantasy. I love it even more when the true history and modern thematic tones are woven so subtly into the weft and warp of the piece that a reader might not even recognize they’re there until after she’s sat with the book a while. That’s art and let me tell you, The Weaver and the Witch Queen wholly qualifies.
For the interested…this is a new release as of July 25, 2023, and I read it on my Kindle via NetGalley.
