![]() ![]() "Whispering warms them in the dark winters. As an outsider Rósa is treated with suspicion and contempt. Lea brings this ancient world brilliantly to life, from the bone-breaking cold and desolation of the countryside, to the warmth and, at times, poison, of the community. ![]() When she sets off with his manservant on the long journey to her new home, she is petrified of what lies ahead. ![]() Her hew husband, however, is a conservative and pious man, and she is expected to be silent and obedient. She is also still influenced by the old ways, the great Sagas and runes of folklore. Her father was a bishop and insisted on her learning to read and write. Rósa is, unusually for women at that time, well-educated. He has only recently buried his first wife, who died inexplicably. He is also the leader of his village, but there are worrying rumours about him. Jón Eiríkkson is a wealthy farmer and trader who will provide for her mother. She had little choice in accepting his offer of marriage, with her father dead and her mother old and ailing. In the south of the country, a young woman named Rósa is leaving her village to join her new husband in the west. ![]() It was the time of transition between the old beliefs, with their spells and haunting folk tales called Sagas, and the forbidding new Christian faith. A place of superstition and violent landscape, of brutal weather and scant food. Seventeenth-century Iceland was a strange, preternatural place. ![]()
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