“The third time she was reborn, Gullveig fled, though she left something behind: her speared heart, still smoking on the pyre.” pg 4
Angrboda, the Norse witch formerly known as ‘Gullveig’, is hiding from the Aesir when the trickster god Loki finds her. And changes her life (or in her case: lives) forever.
“Although her memories as Gullveig were vague enough, she recalled feeling like she didn’t belong – and the moment they’d turned on her, burned her, she’d felt a lot of things. But the emotion she could recall most distinctly was not fear or anger, but the feeling of being used.” pg 43
The gods kill Angrboda because of her refusal to share the secret of her scrying power, called ‘seid’. She will not look into the future and give Odin the mysteries that reside at the end of all things.
Odin does not take no for an answer.
Genevieve Gornichec reimagines the shadowy character of Angrboda in this Norse myth-filled retelling. Maybe it’s because I’m a classics major and gravitate towards mythology, but it seems to me that it has become somewhat popular to do so – think The Song of Achilles or Circe.
In this case, I feel like Gornichec didn’t go far enough in her imagining. She gave Angrboda a voice, a rare talent, and a fierce love for her children, but, beyond that, the witch remains a fairly passive character.
Part of this could be due to the fact that the Aesir are such powerhouses in the old myths. They hog the spotlight and the action. But still, I believe there’s enough room around the stories to give a figure whose mythology has been largely forgotten a new legacy.
I think the biggest missed opportunity for this is in Angrboda’s relationship with Loki.
“She would do anything for him, she realized then… And for some reason, this scared her, as if the thought itself were a promise she knew that she couldn’t hope to keep.” pg 74
Like the other major players in the mythology, readers will be familiar with many of Loki’s hijinks. He is constantly in action, tricking people or becoming the victim of his own cleverness. What readers have never really gotten to see is his interior world. What is he thinking when he pulls his legendary stunts? What are his secret motivations?
One would think this is something he might share with a lover. But the storytelling never quite got there and I found The Witch’s Heart to be rather a disappointment in that way.
That being said, if you’re a reader who enjoys mythological retellings, there is still much to enjoy in this story. It is well-written if fairly limited in scope.
Thanks for reading!
- The Ballad of a Small Player: a Metaphysical Movie Review
- Otherwhere: A Field Guide to Nonphysical Reality for the Out-Of-Body Traveler by Kurt Leland
- Psychic Dreamwalking: Explorations at the Edge of Self by Michelle Belanger
- Archetypes on the Tree of Life: The Tarot as Pathwork by Madonna Compton
- The Goddess and the Shaman: The Art & Science of Magical Healing by J.A. Kent
The Help Desk Book Blog 