Behind the Pages: Lisa Hannett on 'Yet She Lives'

For my first book about Viking women, my aim was to retell the stories of incredible figures from the Sagas of Icelanders  —  regular, mortal characters like Hallgerd, Bergthora, Unn and Gudrun — who lived in early medieval Iceland and whose existence was tethered to that period, ruled by its politics, and bound by its limitations. As I wrote that book, I set strict parameters: the carefully researched retellings and accompanying historical context in each chapter would all focus on real people who may have lived in ‘real world’ Scandinavia (as far as we know it to have been at that time). I wanted to showcase these women’s astounding personalities and achievements on their own terms: they are unforgettable despite being ‘normal’ everyday people.

But in Old Norse cosmology, there are nine realms that make up the universe — from the gods’ domain in Asgard to the giants’ kingdom of Jötunheim to the cold depths of Hel and back up to Midgard, our own human plane of existence — and the women in my first book would’ve known about all of these different worlds. Their daily lives were shaped by this conception of reality and by the many fantastical figures within it. 

So, after being very cautious not to focus on the mythical and magical characters from Norse myth and legend in that book, I was chomping at the bit to delve into the stories of legendary Viking Age women — shieldmaidens and Valkyries, Norwegian queens, goddesses and female giants — who are too often turned into caricatures in modern interpretations or treated as supporting characters for heroic men. Yet She Lives aims to make these spectacular women three-dimensional, with their own motivations and inner worlds, without diminishing the sense of awe we feel in their presence.

Gudvangen Viking Village in Norway, photo taken by Lisa Hannett.

Did you learn anything unexpected in the writing of your book? 

So much! I had many ideas (and/or preconceptions) about the women of Norse myth before I began drafting this book, and some of these turned out to be misconceptions I’d absorbed by cultural osmosis. (Spoiler: 19th century creative artists have a lot to answer for when it comes to romanticising the Viking Age…) I was delighted throughout writing Yet She Lives to learn that — just to give a couple of examples — the three Norns weren’t exactly the fate-spinners I’d always imagined them to be, and that Aslaug was much fiercer and more impressive in writing than she appears in television shows like Vikings. But I was also surprised to realise how, up to this point in my life, I’d been pretty blind to the pervasive misogyny in these stories. Don’t get me wrong: I knew that they echoed the patriarchal and hierarchical structures of Viking Age society, but even so… I suppose I must have naively assumed that powerful goddesses and queens would somehow be above all that? That they, out of all female characters, might have avoided the sort of sexist discrimination that their real-world counterparts endured? But, of course, they didn’t. And once I noticed it, I couldn’t unnotice it, and it profoundly changed my thinking about these myths and how I wanted to retell the mythical women’s narratives. 

What are you reading at the moment? 

When it comes to reading, I’m an omnivore and a glutton. I always have several books on the go at the same time, across genres and for all ages. I’ve recently read a short novella by Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots, which is a marvellous retelling of the ‘Twa Sisters’ folktale (which fans of Loreena McKennitt will recognise in her song ‘The Bonny Swans’). Last night, I finished Eggshell by Olivia de Zilva, a young-adult novella about a Chinese Australian teenager in Adelaide in the early 2000s, dealing with themes of racism, identity, sexuality and adolescence. I had the great luck of reading an advance copy of Kirstyn McDermott’s What the Bones Know — a brilliant and thrilling contemporary ghost story due out early next year — and I’m partway through Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings, a rich and beautiful Australian Gothic novel set in Brisbane, and one of the most striking works of fiction I’ve encountered in ages! At a friend’s recommendation, I’m gobbling up the wonderfully strange short stories in Moïra Fowley’s Eyes Guts Throats Bones. At bedtime, my daughter and I have been reading The Hobbit together, and it’s one of my favourite re-reading experiences ever. And I’m also re-reading (for the umpteenth time) Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and it is magical, as always. 

Viking Age helmet at Historisk Museet (History Museum) in Oslo, photo taken by Lisa Hannett.

Do you have a favourite writing spot? 

To borrow Virginia Woolf’s term, I’m incredibly lucky to have ‘a room of my own’ at home in which I can write, research, daydream, and gaze at the plump kookaburras that often park themselves in the tree right outside my window. I don’t write in coffee shops (too distracting! and you have to pack up all your things each time nature calls…) and I’m self-aware enough to know that writing groups aren’t for me (I’m way too chatty!). I am happiest (and most productive) at my own little desk with only the birds and my computer for company. 

What would you like readers to take away from your book? 

Partly, I want to share my obsessions with other people. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by all things medieval — not just the Viking Age, though this has been a huge focus of my work for the past two decades — and I have always desperately wished I could time travel. To understand what it was really like to live 500, 800, 1000+ years ago. Although I truly believe that literature is a great portal to the past, historical sources can be impersonal, impenetrable, or simply inaccessible. And they don’t always cover what I want to learn or even feature the sorts of people I want to meet. (Women, children, the poor and the elderly, just to name a few.) More than encountering bare and biased “facts” about which powerful man did what and when he did it, I yearn to experience early medieval life as a woman might have (temporarily, of course. My fantasies about this definitely include my safe return to the present with its hospitals and vaccines and indoor plumbing and voting rights). I want to smell and taste and feel that distant, lost world. 

So, to answer the question, more than simply share my love of history, I hope to transport readers back in time for a while. I hope this book will feed their curiosity about mythological and legendary Viking women by adding depth, colour, and emotion to the characters they might already be familiar with — and, of course, introduce them to new ones. And after they’ve finished this book, I would love readers to not only know about these women, but to also feel like they know them. 

Yet She Lives is available now.