Characters
1828 – the true story of a horrible double murder takes place on the farm, Illugastaðir. The people in this story lived at various locations shown on the map below. The place of the murders, Illugastaðir, shown with the letter “I”; the place where the criminals were beheaded at Vatnsdalshólar – the “V”; and the burial location, Tjörn – the “T.”
From VATE Inside Stories
Agnes Magnúsdóttir
Agnes, the central protagonist, is an enigmatic woman whose story drives the novel. It is important to distinguish between the historical Agnes and the fictional Agnes as re-imagined by the author. She is illegitimate, retaining fleeting memories of her mother who abandoned her at six years of age, and certain that the man named on her birth certificate is not her true father. Kornsá, in the Hunavatn District, is twice home to Agnes. It is where her mother leaves her with ‘a kiss and a stone’ aged six; at thirty-three, Agnes finds herself dragged there again ‘because of two dead men and a fire’ (p. 71). Her foster mother at Kornsá, Inga, is one of the few people who ever show her kindness. Inga, against her husband’s wishes, teaches Agnes to read and write, also gifting her a love of the Icelandic Sagas. After the devastating death of Inga in childbirth, Agnes lives and works as a servant at many other farms in the valley, suffering ill treatment and sexual advances at the hands of some masters. As a single, illegitimate woman, life is extremely hard. Agnes is subject to gossip, her aloof personality and intelligence making her an outsider in the valley. This inability to find security and love gives rise to bitterness. She simply wants to be judged for who she is rather than what has happened in the past: ‘It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself. No matter how much you try to live a godly life, if you make a mistake in this valley, it’s never forgotten. No matter if you tried to do what was best. No matter if your innermost self whispers, “I am not as you say!”—how other people think of you determines who you are’ (p. 108).
Meeting Natan while working at Geitaskard alters Agnes’s sense of self-worth immeasurably. Although her relationship with Natan is at the expense of Maria’s friendship and further isolates her from the other farm workers, Agnes falls in love with this mysterious and renowned womaniser. Natan awakens Agnes emotionally, sexually and intellectually. She experiences intense passion for the first time in her life and Natan’s offer of the housekeeping position at Illugastadir is like a dream come true. Agnes envisions love, happiness and responsibility awaiting her as she leaves the valley, a place of loneliness and heartbreak, behind her.
Agnes’s incarceration at Stóra-Borg after her trial brings her to the brink of despair. The darkness of her cell focuses all attention on her physical and psychological state, as well as her complete disempowerment—she loses her words, her freedom and soon, her life. The trial epitomised her inability to fight the rigid, patriarchal processes of the justice system. Her words are changed or thrown back at her like insults: ‘Everything I said was taken from me and altered until the story wasn’t my own’ (p. 100). Her transportation from Stóra-Borg to Kornsá is a painfully undignified experience and Agnes is astute enough to sense immediately the family’s reluctance to have her in their home.
The months spent at Kornsá see a physical transformation of Agnes as well as great variations in her psychological state. Her impending execution is ever present; however, there are moments when she briefly experiences satisfaction and even happiness. While her relationship with Jón and Lauga is tense, Steina provides some company. Agnes gradually warms to Margrét and it is the farewelling of Margrét that in the end proves most difficult for her. At first dubious about her choice of Tóti as her religious guide, Agnes gradually views him as more than a ‘child’ and it is his presence that assists her in her final hours.
Björn Blöndal
Blöndal, the District Commissioner, is first introduced through the historical documents of Chapter One. His letters to two members of the clergy are published, including that to Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson explaining the role required of him as the spiritual advisor of the accused before her execution. The detail of his letter to Tóti establishes that Blöndal is the controlling force in arrangements for Agnes. His is the formal voice of administration and his tone towards Tóti is patronising: ‘In all things, Reverend, if you cannot construct your own counsel, seek mine’ (p. 7). Blöndal is first met in person when he dismounts from his horse at Kornsá and asks Steina: ‘Do you know who I am?’ (p. 10). Blöndal’s disdain for the crumbling croft is evident as the narrative perspective is constructed through his eyes. ‘The hovels of the peasants and farmers had begun to repel him, with their cramped rooms of turf that issued clouds of dust in the summer, irritating his lungs’ (p. 11). As we learn later, his own house is a luxurious one for the region, with glass windows and proper tiled floors. Blöndal’s arrogance towards Lauga and Steina and his refusal to eat the hard-earned food they serve him, make him an unlikeable character, as does his lack of sympathy towards the girls’ fears about having Agnes in the house.
Blöndal is also portrayed as favouring pretty, young Sigga while making an example of Agnes. He is concerned about the financial costs of the trial, imprisonment and executions of the three accused and determined that an example be made of Agnes and Fridrik through their execution. Blöndal monitors Tóti’s progress as Agnes’s spiritual advisor. Tóti’s summons to Hvammur allows the reader to view the District Commissioner’s home and gain further insights into his character traits as he questions and lectures Tóti. Blöndal’s judgement of Fridrik, based on his red hair and his view that Agnes’s reticence and secretiveness is a sign of her guilt, further alienates us from him. Blöndal’s servant also reveals that Natan healed the District Commissioner’s wife. The documents at the start of Chapter Thirteen highlight Blöndal’s painstaking organisation of the executions, as does the Epilogue; his descriptions of the executions match the man’s detachment, officiousness and formality.
Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti)
Tóti, the son and assistant of the Reverend Jónsson of Breidabólstadur, is a young, unworldly man. His only exposure to life outside the valley has been university study in Copenhagen. The appointment as Agnes’s spiritual advisor rattles Tóti: a month after Blöndal’s visit, his stomach is ‘crowded with nerves’ and he ironically wishes he were too ill to travel to Kornsá to meet Agnes for the first time. Tóti’s father disapproves of his son’s acceptance of the task, refusing to offer any advice. The first meeting between Tóti and Agnes is viewed from her perspective; Agnes observes his red hair, physical awkwardness and youth. He has no recollection at this stage of any previous meeting with Agnes, arriving home from this first encounter feeling ‘like a wet rag wrung dry and left distorted upon the ground’ (p. 48). Interestingly, Tóti recalls her smells and the colour of the vivid bruise on her chin; this sensory relationship with Agnes continues throughout the novel. He is constantly questioning his faith and ability to provide spiritual guidance, frequently turning to prayer to help resolve his fears: ‘Please guard my heart against...the horror this woman inspires in me’ (p. 50). The first real meeting with Agnes is a test of courage for Tóti. Uncertain of how to approach his task of bringing her to absolution, Tóti’s awkwardness continues, with Agnes having to complete sentences for him. He still has no memory of helping her over a flooded river and yearns for his snuff horn. His attempts to sound paternalistic and self-assured do not fool Agnes as she tells him: ‘Perhaps I have made a mistake, Reverend’ (p. 82).
After the failure of the first meeting, Tóti intends to write to Blöndal reneging on the agreement. Surprisingly, it is his father who suggests that as a servant of God he would be disgracing himself. Tóti decides to change tack with Agnes; unsure of her religiousness, perhaps she would prefer to talk of other things. He heads to Undirfell in search of more information, hearing gossip from a local woman, Dagga, who claims Agnes was always fixed on bettering herself and wanted to get ‘above her station’ (p. 92). The local Reverend Pétur Bjarnason shows Tóti the Ministerial Book that reveals Agnes’s confirmation date and records her excellent intellect and her strong knowledge and understanding of Christianity. He tells Agnes of this discovery when they next meet but is unable to persuade her to speak of her past; however, as he goes to leave, Agnes suggests Tóti return the next day and they can talk as she works. Hannah Kent also reinforces for the reader that Tóti has other commitments besides his religious duties. He must work alongside his father harvesting the crop at Breidabólstadur. Each time he rides to Agnes, he is taken away from other duties at home. The conversation Tóti has with Agnes beside the stream (pp. 106-110) is their first of length. She speaks of her parents, Tóti’s innocence of the world apparent as he blushes when Agnes talks of pregnancy and her mother’s relationship with a married farmer. He next sees Agnes, summoned by Jón, after her hysterical reaction to the news of Sigga’s pardon. This encounter allows Tóti to become closer to Agnes, as he listens to her express her bitterness and belief that Blöndal and the court are hypocrites who follow the will of men, not God’s law. Tóti asks for the irons binding Agnes to be removed and prays with her. When Agnes reveals she is glad of his presence, Tóti squeezes her hand, their first physical contact. We sense his pride as Agnes reveals more of her background but are curious at the revelation of some of Tóti’s thoughts as he watches Agnes’s hands knitting: ‘He fought off an irrational desire to touch them’ (p. 137). This night, spent listening to Agnes’s stories, is a turning point in their relationship.
The visit to Blöndal’s home at Hvammur is a revelation for Tóti. He gasps at the beauty of Blöndal’s study, is fascinated by the etchings, furniture and other decorations, and so taken aback at the abundance of food brought to Blöndal’s desk, he is reluctant to eat. Blöndal’s patronising and detached tone unnerves Tóti, who has revealed he provides Agnes with ‘a final audience to her life’s lonely narrative’ and chosen to pray ‘for her’ rather than with her (p. 166). Tóti is forced to sit and listen to Blöndal’s diatribe about the murders and his declaration that Agnes killed Natan because she was spurned. Blöndal is trying to re-position Tóti to see Agnes as ‘a woman loose with her emotions and looser with her morals’—a woman who as a practised liar is trying to ‘prick your sympathy’ (p. 170). Seeing Blöndal through Tóti’s eyes is a clever strategy on the author’s part. Whereas Agnes is the condemned criminal, Tóti is a young, inexperienced assistant reverend. Tóti’s desire to escape from Blöndal’s critical assessment of his performance is palpable and his subsequent encounter with Karitas, who shows sympathy for Agnes, help firm his resolve to guide her to execution on his terms, not Blöndal’s. He chooses to tell Agnes of his meeting with Blöndal and the direction that he engage her in regular prayer.
As their conversations continue, although it is mainly Agnes speaking, Tóti’s character is the means by which elements of her story are unveiled. We know because of the changing narrative perspective that Tóti is not privy to all of Agnes’s past, but Hannah Kent deliberately draws these two characters closer together. Tóti increasingly notices Agnes’s eyes, hands and body, and when Agnes finally starts to talk of Natan, ‘He felt that some invisible membrane between Agnes and him had been broken’ (p. 210). He increasingly wants to spend time at Kornsá, riding there even when the weather conditions are harsh, and against his father’s wishes. Agnes craves his presence when unbeknownst to her, Tóti falls seriously ill. His illness, first hinted at on pages 217, 224 and 236, is never named but keeps Tóti away from Kornsá for much of November and all of December. In moments of delirium he imagines Agnes has come: ‘Come here. See how our lives are entwined? God willed it so’ (p. 251). Tóti imagines Agnes kissing sweat off his skin and then, as flames lick and smoke pours, climbing on top of him, lifting her knife. It is not until January 6 when Blöndal’s messenger brings a sealed letter to the door that Tóti is able to struggle out of bed. He is deeply distressed upon reading the letter: ‘It could not be
happening. Not like this. Not with so much unsaid and undone, and him not even by her side’ (p. 314). The language chosen by the author as Tóti makes his way to the cold church to pray focuses on his terrible physical condition, as well as acting as a reminder of the Tóti’s physical awkwardness when we first met him: ‘unsteady’, ‘lurched’, ‘collapsed’, hands trembling’, ‘skin burning’, ‘ceiling swam above him’ (p. 315). He is determined to carry out his duty of delivering the letter of execution to Kornsá and being the one to tell Agnes she is to die in six days time. ‘Agnes, I will be there with you’ (p. 317), Tóti says as he feels tears at the back of his throat. All he can do is take her hand and reassure: ‘I am here for you, Agnes’ (p. 318). Tóti’s tenderness and humanity towards Agnes as she nears the end allows us to see how seriously he takes his role, a role that was thrust unwanted upon him. It is Tóti’s perspective through which we view 12 January, 1830.
Jón
Jón Jónsson, master of Kornsá, holds the position of District Officer, therefore placing him under the control of District Commissioner Blöndal. He has no choice but to accept the condemned Agnes into his home. We first meet the 55-year-old, blond haired Jón on page 19 as he and wife, Margrét, travel home about to learn of Blöndal’s visit. He is clearly shocked at his daughters’ news, trying to placate the household by immediately travelling to Hvammur to see Blöndal, but returning to say it is decided and there will be remuneration for Agnes’s custody. Jón is a farmer who ekes out a meagre existence. It is just enough to feed his household and little more. He has even had to sell the wood panelling that once covered the crumbling turf walls of the croft to pay a debt.
At first, Jón refuses to speak to Agnes. He expects her to earn her keep through farm labour but is able soon to acknowledge to others that she is good worker. There are subtle signs that Jón is not entirely comfortable with the impending execution. This is revealed in a conversation with Tóti on page 105. Margrét notices that Jón has become more watchful over his daughters since Agnes’s arrival but still feels he is more concerned about his duty to Blöndal than to his family. Steina reveals to Agnes her father’s dictum that the family not speak to her: ‘He thinks we’re better off leaving you to your chores’ (p. 124). When Agnes breaks down after hearing of Sigga’s pardon, Jón sends for Tóti, not wanting to inform Blöndal. Jón is overheard telling his daughters on page 178 that Agnes ‘must meet her God, and in an ugly way’. He says, ‘We must keep you safe from her’, also making it clear that Steina and Lauga must not pity Agnes. However, after Agnes assists with Róslín’s delivery, he starts to see her differently. When Agnes serves his meal, he looks her in the eyes for the first time quietly thanking her. Jón is not quite sure how to deal with his family’s interest in listening to Agnes’s conversations with Tóti. When he suggests the Reverend speak with Agnes away from his family, Tóti and Margrét do not agree, saying he has nothing to fear. ‘I hope that is the case’ replies Jón who then pinches his lips together and keeps quiet (p. 217).
Jón’s mouth opens in horror when Agnes tells Reverend Bjarnason her surname is Jónsdottir. We hear from Tóti that Jón has told the Reverend Agnes’s behaviour was ‘unpredictable’ and also ‘mentioned hysterics’ (p. 232). Through Margrét’s conversation with Agnes, Jón is revealed as a man who does not speak much. She knows he worries about her health and does his best to live a quiet Christian life, asking Agnes not to think him a ‘bad man’. ‘He wouldn’t wish harm to any soul, only with you here...’ (p. 270); Margrét’s words suggest Agnes’s presence has affected Jón, giving him more to worry about on top of the struggling farm and her illness. He reacts quietly when Tóti arrives with the news of the execution date but recognises Agnes’s shock, offering her brandy. Interestingly, as the convoy of horses makes its way to the execution site, Hannah Kent uses the title ‘District Officer Jón’ rather than simply ‘Jón’ as he rides alongside Tóti ‘with his mouth in a determined line’ (p. 325). When Tóti struggles to carry Agnes, Jón offers assistance and the final description of him in the novel is of a man ‘bent on his knees, his hands clasped before him, his lips muttering the Lord’s Prayer’.
Margrét
We are first introduced to Margrét as she and husband, Jón, head home to Kornsá through the Vatnsdalur valley. Margrét is wracked by fits of coughing and spitting that make her breathless. She is obviously unwell, but noticing the new cow of a local family tells Jón they could do with one as well. He says they can’t afford one, a response that allows the author to convey Margrét’s bitterness and frustration: ‘In good time I’ll be dead’ (p. 20). She too is a woman who has craved more from life. The news of Agnes’s impending arrival in her home is horrifying and Margrét struggles to understand the family’s obligation to Blöndal: ‘Are we just going to yield to this? Like a dog rolling over?’ (p. 27). Her anger increases when she learns that Jón will be at Hvammur when Agnes arrives. Margrét’s maternal instinct is to send her daughters away to safety, fearful that the family will be murdered in their beds. We view Margrét through Tóti’s eyes on the evening of Agnes’s arrival. He notes her ‘hard face’ and her comment, ‘I do not like to share my home with the Devil’s
children’ (p. 39). Her words to one of the guards are also harsh: ‘Just make sure the bitch stays away from the knives in my kitchen’ (p. 41).
More is revealed of Margrét’s hard existence through the third person narrative just before she first meets Agnes. Her despair at their unhealthy living conditions is shown as she thinks about the dust, the collapsing turf walls, the dankness in winter, mould dripping on blankets and the pervading illness: ‘The home had begun to disintegrate, a hovel that had spread its own state of collapse to its inhabitants. Last year two servants had died from diseases wrought by the damp’ (p. 43). Margrét’s own lungs are issuing ‘rot’ with increased regularity, Hannah Kent regularly drawing attention to her coughing fits to make the reader aware that Margrét, in her own way, is also facing an early death. Margrét’s reaction upon meeting Agnes is one of shock, particularly at the prisoner’s filth and wretchedness. She sees the physical signs of abuse including the large facial bruise that also shook Tóti. Margrét, ‘invigorated by [a] sudden curl of anger’, asks the guard ‘Is it necessary to keep her bound like a lamb ripe for slaughter?’ (p. 46). Forgetting her earlier fears, Margrét dismisses the guard and orders Agnes to follow her, aware of the crusted blood and stale urine. Her intention is to clean Agnes although her heart lurches when Agnes, desperate for water, falls to the ground and drinks from the kettle. She awakes early the next morning, watching the sleeping Agnes with fascination after a month’s wait of fear and anticipation. The only knowledge Margrét has about murderesses is from the sagas, reminding herself that Agnes is not a saga woman but a ‘landless work- maid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty’ (p. 52). She reflects on the washing of Agnes the previous night; a woman too weak to undress herself, flea-ridden, bony from starvation and a body that is ‘a terrain of abuse’ (p. 54). Aware of the strangeness that Agnes will soon be underground, Margrét provides clean clothes, food and an ointment to dress wounds made, ironically, by Natan. Although she speaks only briefly and harshly to Agnes, we are positioned to see that Margrét is capable of compassion and indignation at injustice. She may be appalled at Agnes’s crimes but cannot condone the ill treatment dealt to the prisoner at Stóra-Borg.
The practical Margrét quickly sets Agnes to work, wanting to know her servant skills and whether she can wield a knife to help cut hay: ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, you shall work for your keep. Yes, you shall pay for my inconvenience. I have no use for a criminal, only a servant’ (p. 61). She lays out a strict set of rules by which Agnes must abide. Margrét’s strength of character is also observed through her interactions with Róslín, a neighbour whose tendency to stickybeak and gossip she finds annoying. The sarcastic side of her personality is revealed as she defiantly tells Róslín the prisoner’s name and comments on the good eyesight Róslín must possess to draw her to Kornsá. The ensuing conversation with Róslín coupled with Margrét’s strength of character further position the reader in favour of the mistress of Kornsá. However, soon afterwards she slaps Agnes after Lauga’s accusation about the silver brooch, telling her, ‘You can prove your penitence by working like a dog’ (p. 74).
Many observations about Margrét come from Agnes’s perspective: her worn clothing, the ‘rattle of phlegm’ when she coughs, chasing the ravens away, an action that worries Agnes. Tóti also provides insights into Margrét’s personality, sensing she doesn’t like Agnes in the parlour and prefers Agnes to be working rather than talking with him. Hannah Kent also sets up a conversation between Margrét and her best
friend, Ingibjörg, as a means for the reader to hear how she actually feels about having Agnes at Kornsá. ‘She’s nothing like how I imagined a murderess’ reveals Margrét, describing how Agnes sleeps, works and eats, all in silence. ‘I often wonder what she’s thinking’ (p. 116). She tells Ingibjörg how Steina follows Agnes around, worrying that her daughter’s head might be filled with wickedness, and also complains that Jón only seems concerned about his duty to Blöndal. There is an implicit recognition at the end of the conversation that Margrét is finding the extra pair of hands rather useful. Margrét benefits from Agnes’s assistance in the kitchen and gradually relaxes as she becomes used to her presence. Guests come to eat one September morning and Róslín is appalled to see Agnes: ‘You invite us all with her here!’ Margrét appears to secretly enjoy Róslín’s discomfort and keeps Agnes mostly, but not entirely, out of sight.
Chapter Eight, sees Margrét and Agnes talking more openly together; they both feel a sense of foreboding in the grey sky as the coldness of autumn arrives. They both list people they know who have died on the mountains. Margrét finds some comfort in talking about death aloud ‘as though in naming things, you could prevent them from happening’ (p. 199). She wonders if that is the reason why Agnes speaks more to the Reverend than to her. Agnes’s role in the birth of Róslín’s baby provides a shared moment with Margrét. She admires the way Agnes stays calm, taking control of the breech birth, stroking Róslín ‘with those slender palms of hers, soothing her...’ (p. 200). This event marks a turning point in their relationship. Margrét starts to ask Agnes about herbal medicine and dyes. She recalls Agnes’s arrival, now feeling that it had unified the family and brought them closer together. But Margrét also worries that she is getting too used to Agnes’s presence and her usefulness. Her back pain has eased and cough is less troublesome. ‘She avoided thinking about what would happen when the day of execution was announced’ (p. 202). When Agnes suffers a panic attack on the meat-salting day, Margrét finds her outside and sits by her side. Her gesture of taking Agnes’s hand is touching: ‘Come Agnes. You’ll catch your death’ (p. 207). Steina has noticed the changing nature of the relationship between her mother and Agnes, telling Lauga; ‘For all she says, I think Mamma holds a fondness for her now’ (p. 208).
Margrét, increasingly troubled by her hacking cough that brings up clots of blood, agrees to try Agnes’s lichen jelly despite Lauga’s protestations. One night she awakens to hear Agnes crying in her sleep and goes to soothe her. She sits on the edge of Agnes’s bed coughing blood, seeing the truth of Agnes’s murmured words, ‘Two dying women’ (p. 269). Margrét suggests they go to the kitchen where she builds up the fire and makes them warm milk. This is a pivotal conversation between the two women as they progress from discussing day-to-day practicalities to Agnes recalling more stories from her past. Tóti’s absence, the reason as yet unknown to both women, has brought Agnes’s tale to a halt but now the reader can appreciate why Hannah Kent makes this authorial decision. Margrét, who feels an impulse to put her arm around Agnes, can now become the audience as Agnes tells of her life at Illugastadir and the events leading up to the murders. Margrét’s shock is palpable when Tóti arrives with the execution letter; however, she instinctively knows Agnes will want to hear the news from Tóti. ‘It’s not right...It wasn’t her fault’ mutters Margrét who is desperate to help Agnes.
Margrét’s gesture of providing Agnes with respectable clothing and the silver brooch is poignant. ‘It’s the least we can do’, she tells her daughters. The reader’s final image of Margrét is of her entwining her fingers in Agnes’s and telling her, ‘You are not a monster’ (p. 323). Agnes also hears Margrét’s other words: ‘We’ll remember you, Agnes...I am right here, Agnes. You’ll be all right, my girl. My girl’ (p. 324).
Steina
‘Steina Jónsdóttir was piling dried dung in the yard...’ (p. 10). Life is not easy for Steina, the elder daughter of Jón and Margrét. Her life extends little further than the family’s turf croft at Kornsá where she is expected to work hard. Blöndal observes her ungainliness and dirty fingernails when he first arrives to inform the family about Agnes’s placement with them. Even though her sister, Lauga, is younger, Steina appears to defer to her—a tense sisterly relationship is depicted in the novel. Her reaction to Blöndal’s news is one of shock, ‘one hand over her mouth and the other clutching the letter’ (p. 17). However, she astutely sees through his scheme: ‘You’re putting them here? With us? Because the court in Reykjavik wants to avoid the cost of sending them abroad?’ (p. 17). Steina recoils with anger as Blöndal patronisingly places his hand on her shoulder. We learn when her parents arrive home that Steina has thrown Blöndal’s letter into the fire after arguing with Lauga and is further upset when Lauga is the one to break the news of Agnes.
She is sickened by the thought of the murders but when Agnes arrives, Steina’s character allows the reader a contrasting view of the prisoner from the rest of the Kornsá family. She recognises Agnes: ‘I think I know you...You were a servant here in this valley before, weren’t you?’ (p. 77). Steina remembers, as a young girl, meeting Agnes on the road as the family moved to Kornsá in May 1819. She recollects how Agnes plaited Lauga’s hair and gave them an egg each. Although the rest of the family seem concerned about Steina’s efforts to be friendly towards Agnes, her curiosity, intuitive humanity and memory of the small kindness shown ten years earlier, draw Steina to this condemned woman living amidst them. She asks Agnes if she is hurt when Gudmundur’s deliberately clumsy handling of the scythe makes her stumble, is inquisitive about Agnes’s medicinal and cooking skills, and apart from Tóti, is the only person to openly communicate with Agnes. Margrét believes Steina makes up stories, the smiles she witnesses her daughter direct at Agnes worrying her that Steina will be influenced like Sigga: ‘What if Agnes has the same effect on Steina? Makes her go to the bad. Fills her head with wickedness’ (p. 118). Lauga complains that Steina talks about Agnes all the time: ‘You treat her like a sister more than you do me’ (p. 210). Steina’s response shows her capacity for compassion and empathy: ‘And I can’t stop thinking that she wasn’t always like this. She was our age once...’ (p. 210).
It is Steina who inadvertently triggers Agnes’s emotional collapse when suggesting she help mount a petition or appeal: ‘You know, like the one they’ve got up for Sigga’. Steina sees Agnes’s grief and begs her parents for help. She is curious about the conversations between Agnes and the Reverend, listening with fascination to Agnes’s unfolding tale being told to Tóti at night. Unlike Lauga, Steina is not interested in Róslín’s gossipy stories of Agnes, suggesting an independence of thought and a desire to reach her own conclusions about Agnes. This is another reason Steina’s character is so important to the novel; she listens to Agnes, appreciating answers to her questions. Steina values Agnes’s words and can (ironically) also see how skilled Agnes is at housekeeping. She is full of admiration for the way Agnes salts the meat and makes the lichen jelly that eases Margrét’s cough. Steina is depicted at times as clumsy, careless with her clothes, a poor cook and an unskilled knitter but she is an intelligent girl who feels frustration at her family’s lack of power. As observed by Agnes, Steina is not a happy girl but is unlikely to escape her destiny of living a hard life like her mother. She is ‘tear streaked’ the night before the execution and wraps her arms around Agnes’s neck upon their parting, loudly sobbing, ‘I’m so sorry’ (p. 324). Perhaps Steina could have been the friend Agnes never had.
Lauga
Many readers will not warm to Lauga. She is a contrast to her sister’s more reasoned and compassionate approach to Agnes. Lauga, although younger than Steina, is portrayed as possessing greater confidence and skill at household chores. She is more interested than Steina in making a good impression on Blöndal, providing him with food, speaking politely and seemingly aware of his position of power. After Blöndal’s departure, an angry, anxious Lauga tells her sister off for putting their social standing at risk by challenging him and furthers the sisterly tensions by ensuring she is the one to tell her parents. She has heard about the trial and is fearful of Agnes’s presence at Kornsá from the very start, viewing it as a punishment for the family: ‘But why, Pabbi?...What did we do wrong?’ (p. 26). Lauga is influenced by superstition, asking her mother if Agnes will show some outward hint of evil or evidence of the Devil; ‘a harelip, a snaggle tooth, a birthmark; some small outer defect’ (p. 52). She listens to the gossip of Róslín and is quick to jump to conclusions; for example, when she accuses Agnes of trying to steal her brooch. Lauga refuses to sleep in the bed next to Agnes, watches her like a hawk all the time and does not work co-operatively with her on the chores. She is angry at her sister’s familiarity with Agnes, jealously complaining that Steina has more time for the prisoner than for her own sister. Agnes notes Lauga as a ‘tremendous sulker’ who reminds her a little ‘of Sigga, only smarter’ (p. 178).
As her mother starts communicating more openly with Agnes, Lauga’s anger and jealousy build further. She complains to Margrét that she’s sick of Agnes staring at her clothes and belongings. Margrét wonders how Lauga could be jealous ‘of a woman who would be dead before the weather turned again’ but does notice a change in her daughter: ‘Yet, there was an intensity to her revulsion that seemed fired by something more than resentment’ (p. 201). Even the day spent preparing the meat brings out the worst in Lauga, who claims Agnes has probably poisoned the whole barrel. She angrily tells Steina: ‘Am I the only person who sees her for who she is?’ Lauga had expected Agnes to be locked up, not to live freely in their home. She claims ‘everyone in the valley gives us strange looks now’ and worries that because they are ‘all marked now’, she and Steina will ‘never be married’ (p. 209). Perhaps it is Lauga’s concerns about the repercussions for the family’s social status in the valley that drive her behaviour, whereas Steina is more focused on the present rather than the future. Ironically, the reader also remembers Agnes’s concerns about how she was perceived by the people of the valley. As Agnes tells her story to Tóti, Lauga interrupts to say she knows about Natan’s dreams from Róslín. When her father reprimands her, Lauga reacts angrily: ‘My interference! How about her interference! She’s in our home!’ (p. 214). She also responds when Agnes declares herself to be ‘Agnes Jónsdottir’ to Reverend Bjarnason: ‘What? She isn’t our—‘ before being cut off by Tóti (p. 230). The suggestion of a jelly to ease Margrét’s cough is also treated with loud derision but her mother silences her daughter: ‘Enough, Lauga...Enough’ (p. 254). Surprisingly, Lauga gasps with shock when the letter of execution arrives and that night is found by Margrét crying in the pantry ‘I only wanted a minute to myself’ (p. 320). The next morning, blinking away tears, she hands over her brooch for Margrét to pin to Agnes’s bodice, and when bidding farewell, Lauga collapses in tears when Agnes says to her: ‘That is the first time you have called me by my name’ (p. 324)
Natan Ketilsson Natan’s name is known throughout the valley and beyond, almost like a celebrity of the times, those not having met him personally hearing of him through gossip, rumour and stories. Some choose to greatly admire his skills at healing while others view him as a womaniser, sorcerer or dangerous atheist who got his name from Satan. Natan is clearly a cruel, complicated and manipulative man who may be interpreted by some readers as amoral. The manner in which he manoeuvres Agnes and Sigga, and his antagonism towards Fridrik, helps drive the plot to its ultimate conclusion. Yet, he is also a charismatic and intelligent man with a great penchant for the natural world. Natan tells Agnes: ‘Do not think nature is not watchful of us...She is as awake as you and I...And as secretive’ (p. 119). He is described as ‘not handsome’: ‘I thought he looked like a fox with his chestnut hair and beady little eyes...’ (p. 192) says Agnes, also noticing that Natan’s hands are like those of a woman.
So just who is Natan Ketilsson, who introduces himself to Agnes on their first meeting as Natan Lyngdal? This man with a ‘knack for discovering beauty’ (p. 52), who has ‘spent more time in beds of married women than in his Illugastadir workshop’ (p. 66), who has been whipped for stealing when younger, who is ‘never without money’ (p. 90), who ‘laughed at the word of God but trusted in dreams’ (p. 119), didn’t believe in sin but believed everything came in threes, had a lot of enemies, ‘liked to keep people guessing’ (p. 191) and whose ‘bastards litter this valley’ (p. 170). Natan makes Agnes the happiest she has ever been in her life but also treats her appallingly. He makes love to Agnes in a way she has never before experienced, teaches her much about science, healing and nature, trusts her in his workshop, reads to her from the sagas and provides good food, clothing, shoes and other gifts. But Natan also misrepresented Agnes’s role at Illugastadir, provokes arguments, leaves bruises on her body (p. 221) and slaps her hard after the ‘death waves’ incident. He tells of breaking the front legs of a fox kit in order to make it cry so he can kill its mother, is frequently away for long periods of time, reprimands Agnes and treats her with scornful amusement when she speaks of his relationship with Sigga. The throwing of Agnes out into the winter snow can be seen as the action of a man who is ‘off-balance’. She talks of his moods and dark thoughts, recognising his contradictory nature: ‘He always knew what to say to people; what would make them feel good. And what would cut the deepest’ (p. 193).
When we reflect upon Natan, there is not a great deal to admire, a reaction that perhaps positions us to feel somewhat unsympathetic when he is murdered. Agnes’s narrative, or dual narrative if you wish (the one she tells to Tóti and Margrét and the additional parts she provides only to the reader), spends more time describing Natan’s darker character traits than his positive ones. The official narrative provided by the historical documents placed at the start of each chapter naturally portrays Natan Ketilsson as a victim of a brutal and unwarranted murder for which justice must be meted out to the perpetrators.
Sigga
The character of Sigga can only be constructed from court records and the views of others including Blöndal and Agnes. Sigga is first mentioned on page 37. Agnes refers to her as ‘unschooled in nightmares and ghosts’ remembering how she warned Sigga about ravens. We learn she was imprisoned with Agnes but taken elsewhere, ‘away from you’ (p. 38). Before Agnes fully reveals her story of Sigga, rumours about her are heard at Kornsá. One of the guards tells Tóti on his first visit ‘A lot of people Vatnsnes way hope Sigga will receive a pardon from the King. Too young and sweet to die’ (p. 41). This man also claims that Blöndal is behind Sigga, as she reminds him of his wife. Agnes, as she tries to understand why she herself is unable to appeal her sentence, tells Tóti that Sigga is ‘dumb and pretty and young...’. Tóti’s meeting with Blöndal reveals more information about sixteen-year- old Sigga. She burst into tears when summoned and according to Blöndal, did not even attempt to lie: ‘She is too simple-minded, too young to know how. She told me everything’ (p. 169). Sigga told him how Agnes hated Natan and was jealous of the attention he paid Sigga. She also testified in court that Natan preferred her attentions.
These observations about Sigga do not appear to match Agnes’s recollections of her in the first half of the novel. Agnes remembers the dresses they make together, food they liked to eat and Sigga’s propensity to giggle. There is an implication at times that she misses Sigga. However, our view of Sigga is shifted when Agnes starts to tell her story of Natan: ‘And all that while, there was Sigga’ (p. 222). Sigga believes she is the housekeeper at Illugastadir, enthusiastically welcoming Agnes as an experienced servant who can help her. She had grown up at Stóra-Borg and hoped Agnes could both teach her and provide companionship at the isolated farm. Sigga’s infatuation with Fridrik and hopes of marrying him create tensions at Illugastadir. Again, Hannah Kent’s use of Agnes’s narrative perspective intertwined with the information about Sigga presented from Tóti arouses the reader’s curiosity. Is Sigga really as naïve as she is portrayed? Why does she sleep with both Fridrik and Natan? Has she been honest with Blöndal and her court testimony? Sigga’s character is also used to make the reader ask questions about Agnes’s version of events. Does it really take Agnes until page 264, when she hears Natan and Sigga making love, to understand how Natan is toying with them both? After Yuletide, Sigga talks less to Agnes, becoming moody and constantly watching out the window, an action Agnes interprets as desperation to keep Natan and Fridrik apart. Sigga shows kindness when she brings Agnes her clothing to the cowshed but is later depicted as seeming resistant towards Fridrik when he and Agnes return to Illugastadir. She claims Natan has changed his mind and won’t allow the marriage: ‘He says he will be the one to marry me if anyone does’ (p. 295). The last image of Sigga in the novel is of her crouched whimpering against a wall holding Rósa’s little girl.
Fridrik
Fridrik is only seventeen when he is charged with Natan’s murder. This seems very young to the contemporary reader but needs to be seen in context of 1820s Icelandic society. He has been brought up in a poverty stricken household and is represented as being extremely focused on money, particularly through gaining access to Natan’s hidden savings. The first mention of Fridrik is in the account from the Supreme Court Trials of 1829 that starts Chapter Three. One sentence in the report says ‘Fridrik came to commit this evil through hatred of Natan, and a desire to steal’ (p. 57). The testimony of Reverend Tómasson at the start of Chapter Seven focuses on Fridrik. He describes Fridrik as having a good intellect but reports a history of bad behaviour and disobedience such that his parents complained about Fridrik to the Reverend in autumn 1825 (Fridrik would have been fourteen). Blöndal reveals his view of Fridrik to Tóti during their meeting at Hvammur. Apart from the fact Blöndal doesn’t trust anyone with red hair (Fridrik is red-haired), he believes Fridrik ‘was a boy raised in a household careless with morality and Christian teaching...Slothfulness, greed, and rude, callow inclinations bred in him a weak spirit, and a longing for worldly gain (p. 171). Fridrik confessed to murdering the two men with the aid of Agnes and Sigga and showed no remorse or repentance at the time of his arrest. However, several mentions are made later in the novel of Reverend Tómasson’s success in encouraging Fridrik to repent and in ‘bringing him to God’ as his execution approaches. ‘Fridrik has come to repent of his crime and see the error of his ways...acknowledges that his impending execution is right... He recognises it as “God’s justice” ’ (p. 172). Fridrik’s family also suffer because of the Illugastadir murders. Agnes mentions that they were whipped and the younger brother tells the court of Fridrik’s stealing of Natan’s sheep even though his mother has told him not to mention the theft. His mother, Thórbjörg, who already has a criminal record, is sent to prison in Copenhagen.
Apart from Blöndal and the court documents, our interpretation of Fridrik is shaped by Agnes’s perspective. Fridrik unsettles her as soon as she meets him: ‘There was something off-balance in Fridrik’ (p. 235). Agnes believes he is desperate to prove himself a man, is easily offended and sees the world as against him. ‘I did not like that in him, the way he looked for a reason to anger. He liked to fight’ (p. 236). Fridrik talks constantly of fighting and money, Natan believing he only visited with the goal of stealing. Agnes portrays Fridrik’s relationship with Natan as fraught with tension, particularly over Fridrik’s hopes to marry Sigga. He is banned from visiting Illugastadir although does come when Natan is absent, on one occasion helping with the birthing of lambs, a task Agnes and Sigga are unable to manage alone. The symbolism of money is again associated with Fridrik when he offers Natan three silver coins in return for permission to marry Sigga. Tensions rise again at this time as Fridrik claims Natan has been taking advantage of Sigga: ‘He’s been raping her! I’m going to kill him’ (p. 282). This, plus Fridrik’s killing of Natan’s sheep, is part of the precipitous events leading to the murders. Agnes provides further insights into Fridrik’s family when she seeks refuge at Katadalur after Natan throws her out into the snow. She tells Margrét that Fridrik’s mother told him ‘ “You will not have Sigga while Natan is alive.” ’ Agnes’s account of the actual murders paints a picture of a cowardly Fridrik crumbled sobbing on the floor, unable to finish what he had begun. However, he has wit enough to implicate Agnes, telling her, ‘You’ll be hanged for this’ (p. 303).
Rósa Gudmundsdóttir
Rósa, although classifiable in literary terms as a minor character, has a presence that permeates Agnes’s story. She is another historical character who has been re- imagined by the author for the purposes of the novel. The real life Rósa Gudmundsdóttir, also known as Vatnsenda-Rósa, was a writer of well-known poems and songs in Iceland, and she did appear as a witness at the trial of Agnes Magnúsdóttir.
By the end of the novel, we are well aware that Rósa is Natan’s ex-lover, mother of his child and jealous of Agnes. She is also Poet-Rósa, known throughout Iceland for her poetry. Even Agnes loves Rósa’s poems; they ‘kindled’ her soul. ‘Her poetry makes lamps out of people’ (p. 248). However, we may have forgotten that Rósa is first mentioned by Agnes on page 35 as she is taken outside from her Stóra-Borg cell to be transported to Kornsá: ‘Then I saw Rósa, watching from a distance, clutching the hand of her little daughter. It was a comfort to see someone I recognised...’. Agnes’s quick smile at Rósa unlocks the crowd’s fury. The next mention of Rósa comes from Margrét’s perspective; she has heard from Ingibjörg that it was Agnes who had caused Natan to break off his affair with Poet-Rósa. Poet- Rósa’s poem to Agnes Magnúsdóttir, written in June 1828, is quoted at the start of Chapter Five. Agnes interprets the poem’s words as words of pain, grief, bitterness and love, writing her own poem in response. We later learn Rósa was Agnes’s only visitor at Stóra-Borg when she brought the poem of accusation, blaming Agnes for Natan’s death and making her life meaningless. Rósa fell in love with Natan during a two-year period when he resided with her and her husband at Vatnsendi. A reasonable assumption is that Thóranna was conceived in 1825, the year in which Natan leaves to set up home at Illugastadir. He tells Agnes that Rósa suffocated him, taking away his independence and he had told her by letter that his love for Agnes eclipsed that which he’d had for her. Thóranna is three years old when Rósa deposits her at Illugastadir in 1828. Rósa’s visit is quite possibly a deliberate ploy to upset the delicate situation there and to see Agnes and Sigga for herself. She refuses hospitality, telling Natan, ‘All your whores supping together under your roof? No, thank you’ (p. 250).
We need to remember that our view of Rósa is shaped mainly through the eyes of Agnes. Agnes knows Rósa loved Natan but angrily claims, ‘She was a married woman...He wasn’t hers to love!’ (p. 135). She also accuses Rósa of bragging about her poems but acknowledges that Natan loved how Rósa knew how to build things with words: ‘She invented her own language to say what everyone else could only feel’. Rósa also teaches Agnes, for example, telling whether a baby is a boy or girl by the way the belly protrudes, so we can assume conversations took place between them to which the reader is not privy.
Rósa is summonsed to give evidence at Agnes’s trial. The official record of her testimony starts Chapter Ten. She declines to give any information about the case, telling the court there is nothing unusual she can say about Agnes or Sigga, as she doesn’t know them well. It is revealed that Fridrik visited her in the spring of 1826, propositioning her and seeking to find money she had made Natan hide with her for safekeeping. Rósa says nothing that might incriminate Agnes.
Agnes Magnúsdóttir
Agnes, the central protagonist, is an enigmatic woman whose story drives the novel. It is important to distinguish between the historical Agnes and the fictional Agnes as re-imagined by the author. She is illegitimate, retaining fleeting memories of her mother who abandoned her at six years of age, and certain that the man named on her birth certificate is not her true father. Kornsá, in the Hunavatn District, is twice home to Agnes. It is where her mother leaves her with ‘a kiss and a stone’ aged six; at thirty-three, Agnes finds herself dragged there again ‘because of two dead men and a fire’ (p. 71). Her foster mother at Kornsá, Inga, is one of the few people who ever show her kindness. Inga, against her husband’s wishes, teaches Agnes to read and write, also gifting her a love of the Icelandic Sagas. After the devastating death of Inga in childbirth, Agnes lives and works as a servant at many other farms in the valley, suffering ill treatment and sexual advances at the hands of some masters. As a single, illegitimate woman, life is extremely hard. Agnes is subject to gossip, her aloof personality and intelligence making her an outsider in the valley. This inability to find security and love gives rise to bitterness. She simply wants to be judged for who she is rather than what has happened in the past: ‘It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself. No matter how much you try to live a godly life, if you make a mistake in this valley, it’s never forgotten. No matter if you tried to do what was best. No matter if your innermost self whispers, “I am not as you say!”—how other people think of you determines who you are’ (p. 108).
Meeting Natan while working at Geitaskard alters Agnes’s sense of self-worth immeasurably. Although her relationship with Natan is at the expense of Maria’s friendship and further isolates her from the other farm workers, Agnes falls in love with this mysterious and renowned womaniser. Natan awakens Agnes emotionally, sexually and intellectually. She experiences intense passion for the first time in her life and Natan’s offer of the housekeeping position at Illugastadir is like a dream come true. Agnes envisions love, happiness and responsibility awaiting her as she leaves the valley, a place of loneliness and heartbreak, behind her.
Agnes’s incarceration at Stóra-Borg after her trial brings her to the brink of despair. The darkness of her cell focuses all attention on her physical and psychological state, as well as her complete disempowerment—she loses her words, her freedom and soon, her life. The trial epitomised her inability to fight the rigid, patriarchal processes of the justice system. Her words are changed or thrown back at her like insults: ‘Everything I said was taken from me and altered until the story wasn’t my own’ (p. 100). Her transportation from Stóra-Borg to Kornsá is a painfully undignified experience and Agnes is astute enough to sense immediately the family’s reluctance to have her in their home.
The months spent at Kornsá see a physical transformation of Agnes as well as great variations in her psychological state. Her impending execution is ever present; however, there are moments when she briefly experiences satisfaction and even happiness. While her relationship with Jón and Lauga is tense, Steina provides some company. Agnes gradually warms to Margrét and it is the farewelling of Margrét that in the end proves most difficult for her. At first dubious about her choice of Tóti as her religious guide, Agnes gradually views him as more than a ‘child’ and it is his presence that assists her in her final hours.
Björn Blöndal
Blöndal, the District Commissioner, is first introduced through the historical documents of Chapter One. His letters to two members of the clergy are published, including that to Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson explaining the role required of him as the spiritual advisor of the accused before her execution. The detail of his letter to Tóti establishes that Blöndal is the controlling force in arrangements for Agnes. His is the formal voice of administration and his tone towards Tóti is patronising: ‘In all things, Reverend, if you cannot construct your own counsel, seek mine’ (p. 7). Blöndal is first met in person when he dismounts from his horse at Kornsá and asks Steina: ‘Do you know who I am?’ (p. 10). Blöndal’s disdain for the crumbling croft is evident as the narrative perspective is constructed through his eyes. ‘The hovels of the peasants and farmers had begun to repel him, with their cramped rooms of turf that issued clouds of dust in the summer, irritating his lungs’ (p. 11). As we learn later, his own house is a luxurious one for the region, with glass windows and proper tiled floors. Blöndal’s arrogance towards Lauga and Steina and his refusal to eat the hard-earned food they serve him, make him an unlikeable character, as does his lack of sympathy towards the girls’ fears about having Agnes in the house.
Blöndal is also portrayed as favouring pretty, young Sigga while making an example of Agnes. He is concerned about the financial costs of the trial, imprisonment and executions of the three accused and determined that an example be made of Agnes and Fridrik through their execution. Blöndal monitors Tóti’s progress as Agnes’s spiritual advisor. Tóti’s summons to Hvammur allows the reader to view the District Commissioner’s home and gain further insights into his character traits as he questions and lectures Tóti. Blöndal’s judgement of Fridrik, based on his red hair and his view that Agnes’s reticence and secretiveness is a sign of her guilt, further alienates us from him. Blöndal’s servant also reveals that Natan healed the District Commissioner’s wife. The documents at the start of Chapter Thirteen highlight Blöndal’s painstaking organisation of the executions, as does the Epilogue; his descriptions of the executions match the man’s detachment, officiousness and formality.
Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson (Tóti)
Tóti, the son and assistant of the Reverend Jónsson of Breidabólstadur, is a young, unworldly man. His only exposure to life outside the valley has been university study in Copenhagen. The appointment as Agnes’s spiritual advisor rattles Tóti: a month after Blöndal’s visit, his stomach is ‘crowded with nerves’ and he ironically wishes he were too ill to travel to Kornsá to meet Agnes for the first time. Tóti’s father disapproves of his son’s acceptance of the task, refusing to offer any advice. The first meeting between Tóti and Agnes is viewed from her perspective; Agnes observes his red hair, physical awkwardness and youth. He has no recollection at this stage of any previous meeting with Agnes, arriving home from this first encounter feeling ‘like a wet rag wrung dry and left distorted upon the ground’ (p. 48). Interestingly, Tóti recalls her smells and the colour of the vivid bruise on her chin; this sensory relationship with Agnes continues throughout the novel. He is constantly questioning his faith and ability to provide spiritual guidance, frequently turning to prayer to help resolve his fears: ‘Please guard my heart against...the horror this woman inspires in me’ (p. 50). The first real meeting with Agnes is a test of courage for Tóti. Uncertain of how to approach his task of bringing her to absolution, Tóti’s awkwardness continues, with Agnes having to complete sentences for him. He still has no memory of helping her over a flooded river and yearns for his snuff horn. His attempts to sound paternalistic and self-assured do not fool Agnes as she tells him: ‘Perhaps I have made a mistake, Reverend’ (p. 82).
After the failure of the first meeting, Tóti intends to write to Blöndal reneging on the agreement. Surprisingly, it is his father who suggests that as a servant of God he would be disgracing himself. Tóti decides to change tack with Agnes; unsure of her religiousness, perhaps she would prefer to talk of other things. He heads to Undirfell in search of more information, hearing gossip from a local woman, Dagga, who claims Agnes was always fixed on bettering herself and wanted to get ‘above her station’ (p. 92). The local Reverend Pétur Bjarnason shows Tóti the Ministerial Book that reveals Agnes’s confirmation date and records her excellent intellect and her strong knowledge and understanding of Christianity. He tells Agnes of this discovery when they next meet but is unable to persuade her to speak of her past; however, as he goes to leave, Agnes suggests Tóti return the next day and they can talk as she works. Hannah Kent also reinforces for the reader that Tóti has other commitments besides his religious duties. He must work alongside his father harvesting the crop at Breidabólstadur. Each time he rides to Agnes, he is taken away from other duties at home. The conversation Tóti has with Agnes beside the stream (pp. 106-110) is their first of length. She speaks of her parents, Tóti’s innocence of the world apparent as he blushes when Agnes talks of pregnancy and her mother’s relationship with a married farmer. He next sees Agnes, summoned by Jón, after her hysterical reaction to the news of Sigga’s pardon. This encounter allows Tóti to become closer to Agnes, as he listens to her express her bitterness and belief that Blöndal and the court are hypocrites who follow the will of men, not God’s law. Tóti asks for the irons binding Agnes to be removed and prays with her. When Agnes reveals she is glad of his presence, Tóti squeezes her hand, their first physical contact. We sense his pride as Agnes reveals more of her background but are curious at the revelation of some of Tóti’s thoughts as he watches Agnes’s hands knitting: ‘He fought off an irrational desire to touch them’ (p. 137). This night, spent listening to Agnes’s stories, is a turning point in their relationship.
The visit to Blöndal’s home at Hvammur is a revelation for Tóti. He gasps at the beauty of Blöndal’s study, is fascinated by the etchings, furniture and other decorations, and so taken aback at the abundance of food brought to Blöndal’s desk, he is reluctant to eat. Blöndal’s patronising and detached tone unnerves Tóti, who has revealed he provides Agnes with ‘a final audience to her life’s lonely narrative’ and chosen to pray ‘for her’ rather than with her (p. 166). Tóti is forced to sit and listen to Blöndal’s diatribe about the murders and his declaration that Agnes killed Natan because she was spurned. Blöndal is trying to re-position Tóti to see Agnes as ‘a woman loose with her emotions and looser with her morals’—a woman who as a practised liar is trying to ‘prick your sympathy’ (p. 170). Seeing Blöndal through Tóti’s eyes is a clever strategy on the author’s part. Whereas Agnes is the condemned criminal, Tóti is a young, inexperienced assistant reverend. Tóti’s desire to escape from Blöndal’s critical assessment of his performance is palpable and his subsequent encounter with Karitas, who shows sympathy for Agnes, help firm his resolve to guide her to execution on his terms, not Blöndal’s. He chooses to tell Agnes of his meeting with Blöndal and the direction that he engage her in regular prayer.
As their conversations continue, although it is mainly Agnes speaking, Tóti’s character is the means by which elements of her story are unveiled. We know because of the changing narrative perspective that Tóti is not privy to all of Agnes’s past, but Hannah Kent deliberately draws these two characters closer together. Tóti increasingly notices Agnes’s eyes, hands and body, and when Agnes finally starts to talk of Natan, ‘He felt that some invisible membrane between Agnes and him had been broken’ (p. 210). He increasingly wants to spend time at Kornsá, riding there even when the weather conditions are harsh, and against his father’s wishes. Agnes craves his presence when unbeknownst to her, Tóti falls seriously ill. His illness, first hinted at on pages 217, 224 and 236, is never named but keeps Tóti away from Kornsá for much of November and all of December. In moments of delirium he imagines Agnes has come: ‘Come here. See how our lives are entwined? God willed it so’ (p. 251). Tóti imagines Agnes kissing sweat off his skin and then, as flames lick and smoke pours, climbing on top of him, lifting her knife. It is not until January 6 when Blöndal’s messenger brings a sealed letter to the door that Tóti is able to struggle out of bed. He is deeply distressed upon reading the letter: ‘It could not be
happening. Not like this. Not with so much unsaid and undone, and him not even by her side’ (p. 314). The language chosen by the author as Tóti makes his way to the cold church to pray focuses on his terrible physical condition, as well as acting as a reminder of the Tóti’s physical awkwardness when we first met him: ‘unsteady’, ‘lurched’, ‘collapsed’, hands trembling’, ‘skin burning’, ‘ceiling swam above him’ (p. 315). He is determined to carry out his duty of delivering the letter of execution to Kornsá and being the one to tell Agnes she is to die in six days time. ‘Agnes, I will be there with you’ (p. 317), Tóti says as he feels tears at the back of his throat. All he can do is take her hand and reassure: ‘I am here for you, Agnes’ (p. 318). Tóti’s tenderness and humanity towards Agnes as she nears the end allows us to see how seriously he takes his role, a role that was thrust unwanted upon him. It is Tóti’s perspective through which we view 12 January, 1830.
Jón
Jón Jónsson, master of Kornsá, holds the position of District Officer, therefore placing him under the control of District Commissioner Blöndal. He has no choice but to accept the condemned Agnes into his home. We first meet the 55-year-old, blond haired Jón on page 19 as he and wife, Margrét, travel home about to learn of Blöndal’s visit. He is clearly shocked at his daughters’ news, trying to placate the household by immediately travelling to Hvammur to see Blöndal, but returning to say it is decided and there will be remuneration for Agnes’s custody. Jón is a farmer who ekes out a meagre existence. It is just enough to feed his household and little more. He has even had to sell the wood panelling that once covered the crumbling turf walls of the croft to pay a debt.
At first, Jón refuses to speak to Agnes. He expects her to earn her keep through farm labour but is able soon to acknowledge to others that she is good worker. There are subtle signs that Jón is not entirely comfortable with the impending execution. This is revealed in a conversation with Tóti on page 105. Margrét notices that Jón has become more watchful over his daughters since Agnes’s arrival but still feels he is more concerned about his duty to Blöndal than to his family. Steina reveals to Agnes her father’s dictum that the family not speak to her: ‘He thinks we’re better off leaving you to your chores’ (p. 124). When Agnes breaks down after hearing of Sigga’s pardon, Jón sends for Tóti, not wanting to inform Blöndal. Jón is overheard telling his daughters on page 178 that Agnes ‘must meet her God, and in an ugly way’. He says, ‘We must keep you safe from her’, also making it clear that Steina and Lauga must not pity Agnes. However, after Agnes assists with Róslín’s delivery, he starts to see her differently. When Agnes serves his meal, he looks her in the eyes for the first time quietly thanking her. Jón is not quite sure how to deal with his family’s interest in listening to Agnes’s conversations with Tóti. When he suggests the Reverend speak with Agnes away from his family, Tóti and Margrét do not agree, saying he has nothing to fear. ‘I hope that is the case’ replies Jón who then pinches his lips together and keeps quiet (p. 217).
Jón’s mouth opens in horror when Agnes tells Reverend Bjarnason her surname is Jónsdottir. We hear from Tóti that Jón has told the Reverend Agnes’s behaviour was ‘unpredictable’ and also ‘mentioned hysterics’ (p. 232). Through Margrét’s conversation with Agnes, Jón is revealed as a man who does not speak much. She knows he worries about her health and does his best to live a quiet Christian life, asking Agnes not to think him a ‘bad man’. ‘He wouldn’t wish harm to any soul, only with you here...’ (p. 270); Margrét’s words suggest Agnes’s presence has affected Jón, giving him more to worry about on top of the struggling farm and her illness. He reacts quietly when Tóti arrives with the news of the execution date but recognises Agnes’s shock, offering her brandy. Interestingly, as the convoy of horses makes its way to the execution site, Hannah Kent uses the title ‘District Officer Jón’ rather than simply ‘Jón’ as he rides alongside Tóti ‘with his mouth in a determined line’ (p. 325). When Tóti struggles to carry Agnes, Jón offers assistance and the final description of him in the novel is of a man ‘bent on his knees, his hands clasped before him, his lips muttering the Lord’s Prayer’.
Margrét
We are first introduced to Margrét as she and husband, Jón, head home to Kornsá through the Vatnsdalur valley. Margrét is wracked by fits of coughing and spitting that make her breathless. She is obviously unwell, but noticing the new cow of a local family tells Jón they could do with one as well. He says they can’t afford one, a response that allows the author to convey Margrét’s bitterness and frustration: ‘In good time I’ll be dead’ (p. 20). She too is a woman who has craved more from life. The news of Agnes’s impending arrival in her home is horrifying and Margrét struggles to understand the family’s obligation to Blöndal: ‘Are we just going to yield to this? Like a dog rolling over?’ (p. 27). Her anger increases when she learns that Jón will be at Hvammur when Agnes arrives. Margrét’s maternal instinct is to send her daughters away to safety, fearful that the family will be murdered in their beds. We view Margrét through Tóti’s eyes on the evening of Agnes’s arrival. He notes her ‘hard face’ and her comment, ‘I do not like to share my home with the Devil’s
children’ (p. 39). Her words to one of the guards are also harsh: ‘Just make sure the bitch stays away from the knives in my kitchen’ (p. 41).
More is revealed of Margrét’s hard existence through the third person narrative just before she first meets Agnes. Her despair at their unhealthy living conditions is shown as she thinks about the dust, the collapsing turf walls, the dankness in winter, mould dripping on blankets and the pervading illness: ‘The home had begun to disintegrate, a hovel that had spread its own state of collapse to its inhabitants. Last year two servants had died from diseases wrought by the damp’ (p. 43). Margrét’s own lungs are issuing ‘rot’ with increased regularity, Hannah Kent regularly drawing attention to her coughing fits to make the reader aware that Margrét, in her own way, is also facing an early death. Margrét’s reaction upon meeting Agnes is one of shock, particularly at the prisoner’s filth and wretchedness. She sees the physical signs of abuse including the large facial bruise that also shook Tóti. Margrét, ‘invigorated by [a] sudden curl of anger’, asks the guard ‘Is it necessary to keep her bound like a lamb ripe for slaughter?’ (p. 46). Forgetting her earlier fears, Margrét dismisses the guard and orders Agnes to follow her, aware of the crusted blood and stale urine. Her intention is to clean Agnes although her heart lurches when Agnes, desperate for water, falls to the ground and drinks from the kettle. She awakes early the next morning, watching the sleeping Agnes with fascination after a month’s wait of fear and anticipation. The only knowledge Margrét has about murderesses is from the sagas, reminding herself that Agnes is not a saga woman but a ‘landless work- maid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty’ (p. 52). She reflects on the washing of Agnes the previous night; a woman too weak to undress herself, flea-ridden, bony from starvation and a body that is ‘a terrain of abuse’ (p. 54). Aware of the strangeness that Agnes will soon be underground, Margrét provides clean clothes, food and an ointment to dress wounds made, ironically, by Natan. Although she speaks only briefly and harshly to Agnes, we are positioned to see that Margrét is capable of compassion and indignation at injustice. She may be appalled at Agnes’s crimes but cannot condone the ill treatment dealt to the prisoner at Stóra-Borg.
The practical Margrét quickly sets Agnes to work, wanting to know her servant skills and whether she can wield a knife to help cut hay: ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, you shall work for your keep. Yes, you shall pay for my inconvenience. I have no use for a criminal, only a servant’ (p. 61). She lays out a strict set of rules by which Agnes must abide. Margrét’s strength of character is also observed through her interactions with Róslín, a neighbour whose tendency to stickybeak and gossip she finds annoying. The sarcastic side of her personality is revealed as she defiantly tells Róslín the prisoner’s name and comments on the good eyesight Róslín must possess to draw her to Kornsá. The ensuing conversation with Róslín coupled with Margrét’s strength of character further position the reader in favour of the mistress of Kornsá. However, soon afterwards she slaps Agnes after Lauga’s accusation about the silver brooch, telling her, ‘You can prove your penitence by working like a dog’ (p. 74).
Many observations about Margrét come from Agnes’s perspective: her worn clothing, the ‘rattle of phlegm’ when she coughs, chasing the ravens away, an action that worries Agnes. Tóti also provides insights into Margrét’s personality, sensing she doesn’t like Agnes in the parlour and prefers Agnes to be working rather than talking with him. Hannah Kent also sets up a conversation between Margrét and her best
friend, Ingibjörg, as a means for the reader to hear how she actually feels about having Agnes at Kornsá. ‘She’s nothing like how I imagined a murderess’ reveals Margrét, describing how Agnes sleeps, works and eats, all in silence. ‘I often wonder what she’s thinking’ (p. 116). She tells Ingibjörg how Steina follows Agnes around, worrying that her daughter’s head might be filled with wickedness, and also complains that Jón only seems concerned about his duty to Blöndal. There is an implicit recognition at the end of the conversation that Margrét is finding the extra pair of hands rather useful. Margrét benefits from Agnes’s assistance in the kitchen and gradually relaxes as she becomes used to her presence. Guests come to eat one September morning and Róslín is appalled to see Agnes: ‘You invite us all with her here!’ Margrét appears to secretly enjoy Róslín’s discomfort and keeps Agnes mostly, but not entirely, out of sight.
Chapter Eight, sees Margrét and Agnes talking more openly together; they both feel a sense of foreboding in the grey sky as the coldness of autumn arrives. They both list people they know who have died on the mountains. Margrét finds some comfort in talking about death aloud ‘as though in naming things, you could prevent them from happening’ (p. 199). She wonders if that is the reason why Agnes speaks more to the Reverend than to her. Agnes’s role in the birth of Róslín’s baby provides a shared moment with Margrét. She admires the way Agnes stays calm, taking control of the breech birth, stroking Róslín ‘with those slender palms of hers, soothing her...’ (p. 200). This event marks a turning point in their relationship. Margrét starts to ask Agnes about herbal medicine and dyes. She recalls Agnes’s arrival, now feeling that it had unified the family and brought them closer together. But Margrét also worries that she is getting too used to Agnes’s presence and her usefulness. Her back pain has eased and cough is less troublesome. ‘She avoided thinking about what would happen when the day of execution was announced’ (p. 202). When Agnes suffers a panic attack on the meat-salting day, Margrét finds her outside and sits by her side. Her gesture of taking Agnes’s hand is touching: ‘Come Agnes. You’ll catch your death’ (p. 207). Steina has noticed the changing nature of the relationship between her mother and Agnes, telling Lauga; ‘For all she says, I think Mamma holds a fondness for her now’ (p. 208).
Margrét, increasingly troubled by her hacking cough that brings up clots of blood, agrees to try Agnes’s lichen jelly despite Lauga’s protestations. One night she awakens to hear Agnes crying in her sleep and goes to soothe her. She sits on the edge of Agnes’s bed coughing blood, seeing the truth of Agnes’s murmured words, ‘Two dying women’ (p. 269). Margrét suggests they go to the kitchen where she builds up the fire and makes them warm milk. This is a pivotal conversation between the two women as they progress from discussing day-to-day practicalities to Agnes recalling more stories from her past. Tóti’s absence, the reason as yet unknown to both women, has brought Agnes’s tale to a halt but now the reader can appreciate why Hannah Kent makes this authorial decision. Margrét, who feels an impulse to put her arm around Agnes, can now become the audience as Agnes tells of her life at Illugastadir and the events leading up to the murders. Margrét’s shock is palpable when Tóti arrives with the execution letter; however, she instinctively knows Agnes will want to hear the news from Tóti. ‘It’s not right...It wasn’t her fault’ mutters Margrét who is desperate to help Agnes.
Margrét’s gesture of providing Agnes with respectable clothing and the silver brooch is poignant. ‘It’s the least we can do’, she tells her daughters. The reader’s final image of Margrét is of her entwining her fingers in Agnes’s and telling her, ‘You are not a monster’ (p. 323). Agnes also hears Margrét’s other words: ‘We’ll remember you, Agnes...I am right here, Agnes. You’ll be all right, my girl. My girl’ (p. 324).
Steina
‘Steina Jónsdóttir was piling dried dung in the yard...’ (p. 10). Life is not easy for Steina, the elder daughter of Jón and Margrét. Her life extends little further than the family’s turf croft at Kornsá where she is expected to work hard. Blöndal observes her ungainliness and dirty fingernails when he first arrives to inform the family about Agnes’s placement with them. Even though her sister, Lauga, is younger, Steina appears to defer to her—a tense sisterly relationship is depicted in the novel. Her reaction to Blöndal’s news is one of shock, ‘one hand over her mouth and the other clutching the letter’ (p. 17). However, she astutely sees through his scheme: ‘You’re putting them here? With us? Because the court in Reykjavik wants to avoid the cost of sending them abroad?’ (p. 17). Steina recoils with anger as Blöndal patronisingly places his hand on her shoulder. We learn when her parents arrive home that Steina has thrown Blöndal’s letter into the fire after arguing with Lauga and is further upset when Lauga is the one to break the news of Agnes.
She is sickened by the thought of the murders but when Agnes arrives, Steina’s character allows the reader a contrasting view of the prisoner from the rest of the Kornsá family. She recognises Agnes: ‘I think I know you...You were a servant here in this valley before, weren’t you?’ (p. 77). Steina remembers, as a young girl, meeting Agnes on the road as the family moved to Kornsá in May 1819. She recollects how Agnes plaited Lauga’s hair and gave them an egg each. Although the rest of the family seem concerned about Steina’s efforts to be friendly towards Agnes, her curiosity, intuitive humanity and memory of the small kindness shown ten years earlier, draw Steina to this condemned woman living amidst them. She asks Agnes if she is hurt when Gudmundur’s deliberately clumsy handling of the scythe makes her stumble, is inquisitive about Agnes’s medicinal and cooking skills, and apart from Tóti, is the only person to openly communicate with Agnes. Margrét believes Steina makes up stories, the smiles she witnesses her daughter direct at Agnes worrying her that Steina will be influenced like Sigga: ‘What if Agnes has the same effect on Steina? Makes her go to the bad. Fills her head with wickedness’ (p. 118). Lauga complains that Steina talks about Agnes all the time: ‘You treat her like a sister more than you do me’ (p. 210). Steina’s response shows her capacity for compassion and empathy: ‘And I can’t stop thinking that she wasn’t always like this. She was our age once...’ (p. 210).
It is Steina who inadvertently triggers Agnes’s emotional collapse when suggesting she help mount a petition or appeal: ‘You know, like the one they’ve got up for Sigga’. Steina sees Agnes’s grief and begs her parents for help. She is curious about the conversations between Agnes and the Reverend, listening with fascination to Agnes’s unfolding tale being told to Tóti at night. Unlike Lauga, Steina is not interested in Róslín’s gossipy stories of Agnes, suggesting an independence of thought and a desire to reach her own conclusions about Agnes. This is another reason Steina’s character is so important to the novel; she listens to Agnes, appreciating answers to her questions. Steina values Agnes’s words and can (ironically) also see how skilled Agnes is at housekeeping. She is full of admiration for the way Agnes salts the meat and makes the lichen jelly that eases Margrét’s cough. Steina is depicted at times as clumsy, careless with her clothes, a poor cook and an unskilled knitter but she is an intelligent girl who feels frustration at her family’s lack of power. As observed by Agnes, Steina is not a happy girl but is unlikely to escape her destiny of living a hard life like her mother. She is ‘tear streaked’ the night before the execution and wraps her arms around Agnes’s neck upon their parting, loudly sobbing, ‘I’m so sorry’ (p. 324). Perhaps Steina could have been the friend Agnes never had.
Lauga
Many readers will not warm to Lauga. She is a contrast to her sister’s more reasoned and compassionate approach to Agnes. Lauga, although younger than Steina, is portrayed as possessing greater confidence and skill at household chores. She is more interested than Steina in making a good impression on Blöndal, providing him with food, speaking politely and seemingly aware of his position of power. After Blöndal’s departure, an angry, anxious Lauga tells her sister off for putting their social standing at risk by challenging him and furthers the sisterly tensions by ensuring she is the one to tell her parents. She has heard about the trial and is fearful of Agnes’s presence at Kornsá from the very start, viewing it as a punishment for the family: ‘But why, Pabbi?...What did we do wrong?’ (p. 26). Lauga is influenced by superstition, asking her mother if Agnes will show some outward hint of evil or evidence of the Devil; ‘a harelip, a snaggle tooth, a birthmark; some small outer defect’ (p. 52). She listens to the gossip of Róslín and is quick to jump to conclusions; for example, when she accuses Agnes of trying to steal her brooch. Lauga refuses to sleep in the bed next to Agnes, watches her like a hawk all the time and does not work co-operatively with her on the chores. She is angry at her sister’s familiarity with Agnes, jealously complaining that Steina has more time for the prisoner than for her own sister. Agnes notes Lauga as a ‘tremendous sulker’ who reminds her a little ‘of Sigga, only smarter’ (p. 178).
As her mother starts communicating more openly with Agnes, Lauga’s anger and jealousy build further. She complains to Margrét that she’s sick of Agnes staring at her clothes and belongings. Margrét wonders how Lauga could be jealous ‘of a woman who would be dead before the weather turned again’ but does notice a change in her daughter: ‘Yet, there was an intensity to her revulsion that seemed fired by something more than resentment’ (p. 201). Even the day spent preparing the meat brings out the worst in Lauga, who claims Agnes has probably poisoned the whole barrel. She angrily tells Steina: ‘Am I the only person who sees her for who she is?’ Lauga had expected Agnes to be locked up, not to live freely in their home. She claims ‘everyone in the valley gives us strange looks now’ and worries that because they are ‘all marked now’, she and Steina will ‘never be married’ (p. 209). Perhaps it is Lauga’s concerns about the repercussions for the family’s social status in the valley that drive her behaviour, whereas Steina is more focused on the present rather than the future. Ironically, the reader also remembers Agnes’s concerns about how she was perceived by the people of the valley. As Agnes tells her story to Tóti, Lauga interrupts to say she knows about Natan’s dreams from Róslín. When her father reprimands her, Lauga reacts angrily: ‘My interference! How about her interference! She’s in our home!’ (p. 214). She also responds when Agnes declares herself to be ‘Agnes Jónsdottir’ to Reverend Bjarnason: ‘What? She isn’t our—‘ before being cut off by Tóti (p. 230). The suggestion of a jelly to ease Margrét’s cough is also treated with loud derision but her mother silences her daughter: ‘Enough, Lauga...Enough’ (p. 254). Surprisingly, Lauga gasps with shock when the letter of execution arrives and that night is found by Margrét crying in the pantry ‘I only wanted a minute to myself’ (p. 320). The next morning, blinking away tears, she hands over her brooch for Margrét to pin to Agnes’s bodice, and when bidding farewell, Lauga collapses in tears when Agnes says to her: ‘That is the first time you have called me by my name’ (p. 324)
Natan Ketilsson Natan’s name is known throughout the valley and beyond, almost like a celebrity of the times, those not having met him personally hearing of him through gossip, rumour and stories. Some choose to greatly admire his skills at healing while others view him as a womaniser, sorcerer or dangerous atheist who got his name from Satan. Natan is clearly a cruel, complicated and manipulative man who may be interpreted by some readers as amoral. The manner in which he manoeuvres Agnes and Sigga, and his antagonism towards Fridrik, helps drive the plot to its ultimate conclusion. Yet, he is also a charismatic and intelligent man with a great penchant for the natural world. Natan tells Agnes: ‘Do not think nature is not watchful of us...She is as awake as you and I...And as secretive’ (p. 119). He is described as ‘not handsome’: ‘I thought he looked like a fox with his chestnut hair and beady little eyes...’ (p. 192) says Agnes, also noticing that Natan’s hands are like those of a woman.
So just who is Natan Ketilsson, who introduces himself to Agnes on their first meeting as Natan Lyngdal? This man with a ‘knack for discovering beauty’ (p. 52), who has ‘spent more time in beds of married women than in his Illugastadir workshop’ (p. 66), who has been whipped for stealing when younger, who is ‘never without money’ (p. 90), who ‘laughed at the word of God but trusted in dreams’ (p. 119), didn’t believe in sin but believed everything came in threes, had a lot of enemies, ‘liked to keep people guessing’ (p. 191) and whose ‘bastards litter this valley’ (p. 170). Natan makes Agnes the happiest she has ever been in her life but also treats her appallingly. He makes love to Agnes in a way she has never before experienced, teaches her much about science, healing and nature, trusts her in his workshop, reads to her from the sagas and provides good food, clothing, shoes and other gifts. But Natan also misrepresented Agnes’s role at Illugastadir, provokes arguments, leaves bruises on her body (p. 221) and slaps her hard after the ‘death waves’ incident. He tells of breaking the front legs of a fox kit in order to make it cry so he can kill its mother, is frequently away for long periods of time, reprimands Agnes and treats her with scornful amusement when she speaks of his relationship with Sigga. The throwing of Agnes out into the winter snow can be seen as the action of a man who is ‘off-balance’. She talks of his moods and dark thoughts, recognising his contradictory nature: ‘He always knew what to say to people; what would make them feel good. And what would cut the deepest’ (p. 193).
When we reflect upon Natan, there is not a great deal to admire, a reaction that perhaps positions us to feel somewhat unsympathetic when he is murdered. Agnes’s narrative, or dual narrative if you wish (the one she tells to Tóti and Margrét and the additional parts she provides only to the reader), spends more time describing Natan’s darker character traits than his positive ones. The official narrative provided by the historical documents placed at the start of each chapter naturally portrays Natan Ketilsson as a victim of a brutal and unwarranted murder for which justice must be meted out to the perpetrators.
Sigga
The character of Sigga can only be constructed from court records and the views of others including Blöndal and Agnes. Sigga is first mentioned on page 37. Agnes refers to her as ‘unschooled in nightmares and ghosts’ remembering how she warned Sigga about ravens. We learn she was imprisoned with Agnes but taken elsewhere, ‘away from you’ (p. 38). Before Agnes fully reveals her story of Sigga, rumours about her are heard at Kornsá. One of the guards tells Tóti on his first visit ‘A lot of people Vatnsnes way hope Sigga will receive a pardon from the King. Too young and sweet to die’ (p. 41). This man also claims that Blöndal is behind Sigga, as she reminds him of his wife. Agnes, as she tries to understand why she herself is unable to appeal her sentence, tells Tóti that Sigga is ‘dumb and pretty and young...’. Tóti’s meeting with Blöndal reveals more information about sixteen-year- old Sigga. She burst into tears when summoned and according to Blöndal, did not even attempt to lie: ‘She is too simple-minded, too young to know how. She told me everything’ (p. 169). Sigga told him how Agnes hated Natan and was jealous of the attention he paid Sigga. She also testified in court that Natan preferred her attentions.
These observations about Sigga do not appear to match Agnes’s recollections of her in the first half of the novel. Agnes remembers the dresses they make together, food they liked to eat and Sigga’s propensity to giggle. There is an implication at times that she misses Sigga. However, our view of Sigga is shifted when Agnes starts to tell her story of Natan: ‘And all that while, there was Sigga’ (p. 222). Sigga believes she is the housekeeper at Illugastadir, enthusiastically welcoming Agnes as an experienced servant who can help her. She had grown up at Stóra-Borg and hoped Agnes could both teach her and provide companionship at the isolated farm. Sigga’s infatuation with Fridrik and hopes of marrying him create tensions at Illugastadir. Again, Hannah Kent’s use of Agnes’s narrative perspective intertwined with the information about Sigga presented from Tóti arouses the reader’s curiosity. Is Sigga really as naïve as she is portrayed? Why does she sleep with both Fridrik and Natan? Has she been honest with Blöndal and her court testimony? Sigga’s character is also used to make the reader ask questions about Agnes’s version of events. Does it really take Agnes until page 264, when she hears Natan and Sigga making love, to understand how Natan is toying with them both? After Yuletide, Sigga talks less to Agnes, becoming moody and constantly watching out the window, an action Agnes interprets as desperation to keep Natan and Fridrik apart. Sigga shows kindness when she brings Agnes her clothing to the cowshed but is later depicted as seeming resistant towards Fridrik when he and Agnes return to Illugastadir. She claims Natan has changed his mind and won’t allow the marriage: ‘He says he will be the one to marry me if anyone does’ (p. 295). The last image of Sigga in the novel is of her crouched whimpering against a wall holding Rósa’s little girl.
Fridrik
Fridrik is only seventeen when he is charged with Natan’s murder. This seems very young to the contemporary reader but needs to be seen in context of 1820s Icelandic society. He has been brought up in a poverty stricken household and is represented as being extremely focused on money, particularly through gaining access to Natan’s hidden savings. The first mention of Fridrik is in the account from the Supreme Court Trials of 1829 that starts Chapter Three. One sentence in the report says ‘Fridrik came to commit this evil through hatred of Natan, and a desire to steal’ (p. 57). The testimony of Reverend Tómasson at the start of Chapter Seven focuses on Fridrik. He describes Fridrik as having a good intellect but reports a history of bad behaviour and disobedience such that his parents complained about Fridrik to the Reverend in autumn 1825 (Fridrik would have been fourteen). Blöndal reveals his view of Fridrik to Tóti during their meeting at Hvammur. Apart from the fact Blöndal doesn’t trust anyone with red hair (Fridrik is red-haired), he believes Fridrik ‘was a boy raised in a household careless with morality and Christian teaching...Slothfulness, greed, and rude, callow inclinations bred in him a weak spirit, and a longing for worldly gain (p. 171). Fridrik confessed to murdering the two men with the aid of Agnes and Sigga and showed no remorse or repentance at the time of his arrest. However, several mentions are made later in the novel of Reverend Tómasson’s success in encouraging Fridrik to repent and in ‘bringing him to God’ as his execution approaches. ‘Fridrik has come to repent of his crime and see the error of his ways...acknowledges that his impending execution is right... He recognises it as “God’s justice” ’ (p. 172). Fridrik’s family also suffer because of the Illugastadir murders. Agnes mentions that they were whipped and the younger brother tells the court of Fridrik’s stealing of Natan’s sheep even though his mother has told him not to mention the theft. His mother, Thórbjörg, who already has a criminal record, is sent to prison in Copenhagen.
Apart from Blöndal and the court documents, our interpretation of Fridrik is shaped by Agnes’s perspective. Fridrik unsettles her as soon as she meets him: ‘There was something off-balance in Fridrik’ (p. 235). Agnes believes he is desperate to prove himself a man, is easily offended and sees the world as against him. ‘I did not like that in him, the way he looked for a reason to anger. He liked to fight’ (p. 236). Fridrik talks constantly of fighting and money, Natan believing he only visited with the goal of stealing. Agnes portrays Fridrik’s relationship with Natan as fraught with tension, particularly over Fridrik’s hopes to marry Sigga. He is banned from visiting Illugastadir although does come when Natan is absent, on one occasion helping with the birthing of lambs, a task Agnes and Sigga are unable to manage alone. The symbolism of money is again associated with Fridrik when he offers Natan three silver coins in return for permission to marry Sigga. Tensions rise again at this time as Fridrik claims Natan has been taking advantage of Sigga: ‘He’s been raping her! I’m going to kill him’ (p. 282). This, plus Fridrik’s killing of Natan’s sheep, is part of the precipitous events leading to the murders. Agnes provides further insights into Fridrik’s family when she seeks refuge at Katadalur after Natan throws her out into the snow. She tells Margrét that Fridrik’s mother told him ‘ “You will not have Sigga while Natan is alive.” ’ Agnes’s account of the actual murders paints a picture of a cowardly Fridrik crumbled sobbing on the floor, unable to finish what he had begun. However, he has wit enough to implicate Agnes, telling her, ‘You’ll be hanged for this’ (p. 303).
Rósa Gudmundsdóttir
Rósa, although classifiable in literary terms as a minor character, has a presence that permeates Agnes’s story. She is another historical character who has been re- imagined by the author for the purposes of the novel. The real life Rósa Gudmundsdóttir, also known as Vatnsenda-Rósa, was a writer of well-known poems and songs in Iceland, and she did appear as a witness at the trial of Agnes Magnúsdóttir.
By the end of the novel, we are well aware that Rósa is Natan’s ex-lover, mother of his child and jealous of Agnes. She is also Poet-Rósa, known throughout Iceland for her poetry. Even Agnes loves Rósa’s poems; they ‘kindled’ her soul. ‘Her poetry makes lamps out of people’ (p. 248). However, we may have forgotten that Rósa is first mentioned by Agnes on page 35 as she is taken outside from her Stóra-Borg cell to be transported to Kornsá: ‘Then I saw Rósa, watching from a distance, clutching the hand of her little daughter. It was a comfort to see someone I recognised...’. Agnes’s quick smile at Rósa unlocks the crowd’s fury. The next mention of Rósa comes from Margrét’s perspective; she has heard from Ingibjörg that it was Agnes who had caused Natan to break off his affair with Poet-Rósa. Poet- Rósa’s poem to Agnes Magnúsdóttir, written in June 1828, is quoted at the start of Chapter Five. Agnes interprets the poem’s words as words of pain, grief, bitterness and love, writing her own poem in response. We later learn Rósa was Agnes’s only visitor at Stóra-Borg when she brought the poem of accusation, blaming Agnes for Natan’s death and making her life meaningless. Rósa fell in love with Natan during a two-year period when he resided with her and her husband at Vatnsendi. A reasonable assumption is that Thóranna was conceived in 1825, the year in which Natan leaves to set up home at Illugastadir. He tells Agnes that Rósa suffocated him, taking away his independence and he had told her by letter that his love for Agnes eclipsed that which he’d had for her. Thóranna is three years old when Rósa deposits her at Illugastadir in 1828. Rósa’s visit is quite possibly a deliberate ploy to upset the delicate situation there and to see Agnes and Sigga for herself. She refuses hospitality, telling Natan, ‘All your whores supping together under your roof? No, thank you’ (p. 250).
We need to remember that our view of Rósa is shaped mainly through the eyes of Agnes. Agnes knows Rósa loved Natan but angrily claims, ‘She was a married woman...He wasn’t hers to love!’ (p. 135). She also accuses Rósa of bragging about her poems but acknowledges that Natan loved how Rósa knew how to build things with words: ‘She invented her own language to say what everyone else could only feel’. Rósa also teaches Agnes, for example, telling whether a baby is a boy or girl by the way the belly protrudes, so we can assume conversations took place between them to which the reader is not privy.
Rósa is summonsed to give evidence at Agnes’s trial. The official record of her testimony starts Chapter Ten. She declines to give any information about the case, telling the court there is nothing unusual she can say about Agnes or Sigga, as she doesn’t know them well. It is revealed that Fridrik visited her in the spring of 1826, propositioning her and seeking to find money she had made Natan hide with her for safekeeping. Rósa says nothing that might incriminate Agnes.