Under Yggdrasil (2020)

Under Yggdrasil (2020)

The year is 901, the place, Iceland, newly settled by Nordic Vikings.

Thorgerd Thorsteinsdottir gave birth to twins barely a grown-up herself, but she had to wait a long time to have the child she had most yearned for, Thorkatla. All the more tragic are the events following the Assembly, when the little girl is seven years old – events no one can understand. Thorgerd chooses to seek support from the Norns who decide the fates of men under Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, rather than from the White Christ of her grandmother, and the quest for truth leads her to setting sail from Iceland, east across the ocean, and eventually, on a seeress‘s journey into the Underworld and the Realms of the Dead.

Under Yggdrasil is a gripping novel inspired by the Icelandic Sagas, as was Vilborg Davidsdottir’s acclaimed trilogy of novels on Aud the Deep-Minded, the first of which was nominated for the Icelandic Prize for Literature. Davidsdottir’s historical novels have been tremendously popular over the last decades, especially as they throw a new and unexpected light on the lives of women in the Viking Age.