At the same time, Maren’s mother and Diinna become more and more antagonistic toward each other, with Maren forced to intercede between them. She hires Maren to teach her and the two become extremely close, with both women harboring secret romantic and sexual feelings toward each other. As Cornet begins surveying the village, making note of the non-church attenders and local Sámi population (particularly Diinna, since she is both), Ursa realizes that she knows nothing about how to keep a house or make food, especially in the harsh Vardø landscape. Ursa and Cornet travel on a boat to Vardø, where Ursa suffers a miscarriage.
Ursa is given little choice in the matter of marriage and dreads leaving behind her father and sickly younger sister, Agnete. Cornet travels to Bergen, Norway, to find a wife before he goes to Vardø and settles on 20-year-old Ursa. The Commissioner turns out to be Scotsman Absalom Cornet, infamous for a prior witch trial where he personally oversaw and participated in the beating, torture, branding, and eventual execution of a twelve-year-old girl. A somewhat inept, middling Pastor, Pastor Kurtsson, comes to Vardø and subsequently announces that the town will soon have a new Commissioner, who will come to root out non-Christian influences, and though he does not say so explicitly, it is understood the commissioner will also be trying to root out any Sámi influences, including Diinna. Initially, the women are band together to survive, though there are clear power lines drawn between Kirsten Sørensdatter, a daring, headstrong woman who flouts gender roles, and Toril Knudsdatter, a stern, religious woman who becomes more hostile and devout as time goes on. Maren has ominous, strange dreams involving a whale.Ī storm arrives suddenly while almost all of the town’s men are on a fishing trip, killing everyone who was out to sea, including Maren’s father, brother, and fiancé. Maren is engaged to a young man named Dag Bjørnsson. When the novel opens, Maren is a 20-year-old woman living with her Mother, Father, brother Erik, and Erik’s pregnant wife, Diinna.
Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Mercies is a historical fiction novel which reimagines the real-life storm and witch trials which devastated the tiny village of Vardø, Norway, in the early 17th century. The following version of this book was used to create this guide: Hargrave, Kiran Millwood.
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