61 pages • 2-hour read
The Witch's Heart
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Part 1, Pages 78-145Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Pages 78-96 Summary
In late summer, Gerd visits Angrboda in Ironwood and announces the news of Skadi’s marriage to the Vanir god of the sea, Njord, but she is surprised to learn that Angrboda is already aware of the news. Gerd also brings rich gifts as an apology for her previous rudeness. One of the gifts is an elaborate hair covering meant for married women. Angrboda is deeply grateful for Gerd’s kindness. As the two giantesses talk, Angrboda suddenly goes into labor, and as the hours pass, the inexperienced Gerd serves as her midwife. Angrboda finally delivers a daughter and names her Hel. As the two admire the baby, Angrboda muses over how wise and serious Hel seems. Suddenly, she and Gerd notice that Hel’s legs are unnaturally pale and are turning bluish, as if the flesh is dead. Angrboda quickly uses a healing potion to stop the condition from spreading, but Hel’s legs still appear dead.
Gerd stays on in the cave to help Angrboda with the baby. Later, she fetches Skadi, who brings news that although she is still married to Njord and will always be counted as one of the gods in Asgard, she and her husband have decided to reside in their own separate realms, meeting only occasionally. (This is because Skadi cannot stand the sea, and Njord cannot sleep in the mountains with all the wolves howling in the distance.)
Time passes. Loki eventually returns, bearing the news that his Aesir wife, Sigyn, has also borne a son; he cites this event as the reason for his most recent absence from Angrboda’s side. When he meets Hel, he is immediately captivated by the infant, and when Hel sees her father, she smiles for the first time. Angrboda tells Loki of her recurring dreams of a mysterious chanter who seeks her prophetic magic; she warns him that when she uses seid, she draws Odin’s attention. They argue about Loki’s frequent absences, and he eventually admits that because he did not feel a bond with his son by Sigyn, he feared that he would disappoint Angrboda by feeling no strong emotions for her child, either. He does not want to be a failure as a father.
Part 1, Pages 96-113 Summary
Loki begins visiting more frequently but makes sure to miss Skadi’s visits; the two have never met face to face in Ironwood. To keep her family safe, Angrboda maintains a protective ward that conceals her clearing from Odin’s magical sight while allowing her friends to pass. Loki visits often, and on one visit during the winter, he brings Hel a carved wolf figurine. The teething Hel takes to chewing on the figurine, and as winter and spring pass, she develops with uncanny speed and is soon speaking in full sentences. At the end of spring, Angrboda realizes that she is pregnant again. Loki has only a “lukewarm” response to this news, and Skadi challenges Angrboda for her ongoing trust in her unreliable husband, whose identity yet remains unknown to Skadi. The “Huntress” even suggests that Angrboda’s husband may see his wife as a “plaything” rather than a proper spouse. The comment infuriates Angrboda and causes a rift between the two friends, who do not speak to one another again until mid-autumn.
In midwinter, Loki returns, and the unnaturally precocious Hel gains the ability to speak in full sentences. Over Angrboda’s protests, Loki spoils his daughter with honey-laced treats. Later, as Angrboda cleans a squalling Hel, the girl begins to turn blue from her exertions: something that happens whenever she grows agitated.
Soon, Angrboda goes into premature labor, and Loki helps her to deliver the child. The two are surprised to realize that he is a wolf pup, and Angrboda names him Fenrir. When Loki asks why his son is a wolf, Angrboda replies, “We’re odd. He’s odd. Does this displease you?” (105). Loki accepts his “odd” son, and Loki mischievously suggests that he and Angrboda train the boy to eat the people the family dislikes; Angrboda scolds him.
Fenrir grows rapidly and speaks mind-to-mind with the family. Loki becomes more ferocious, although he tries to curb these instincts around his family. Skadi bonds with the pup and takes him hunting, and he catches food for himself in the forest. Angrboda shows the children the boundaries of her protective wards and insists that Hel and Fenrir never go past this point. As time goes on, Hel continues to turn blue whenever she exerts herself, and Angrboda diligently applies healing salve to Hel’s legs to keep the dead flesh growing with Hel’s body rather than rotting away. Wanting no more children, Angrboda begins to take a contraceptive potion. She also begins to wonder “how her husband’s behavior in Asgard differed from his behavior in Ironwood” (112).
Part 1, Pages 113-131 Summary
When Hel is four and Fenrir is two and a half years old, Angrboda forgets to take the contraceptive one night. She lies awake beneath the sleeping Loki, realizing that a third child may be on the way and finding herself fearful at the prospect. Loki stays away for a full season, and in his absence, Hel grows withdrawn and Fenrir skittish. Skadi and Angrboda once again quarrel about Angrboda’s absentee husband, whom Skadi swears she will “kill.”
One day in autumn, during a tense moment, Fenrir bites Hel’s arm, giving her a serious wound that Angrboda must tend. That night, when Loki finally returns, he and Angrboda argue bitterly over his egregiously long absence. Loki explains that Sigyn gave birth to a second son, and he couldn’t get away from Asgard. Angrboda insists that he is neglecting his responsibilities toward Fenrir and Hel. Loki eventually admits, “I don’t know why I do the things I do. I can’t stop myself” (120). Angrboda says that these things are “in his nature” (120), and she accepts them. He expresses amazement that both Angrboda and Sigyn are still loyal to him, and Angrboda reminds him that he was the one who returned her heart to her.
That night, the chanter from Angrboda’s dreams pulls her spirit into a seid-vision, where she sees the entirety of the future laid out before her. She wakes in terror and tells Loki of her new certainty that the chanter is Odin. She then admits:
I saw the Aesir, the giants, and shades and dwarfs and men. […] I saw a wolf so big that his jaws could swallow armies whole, and a great serpent rearing out of the water, and I saw the sun and moon go dark as the wolves who chase them finally swallow their prey, and I saw a ship crewed by dead souls (122).
However, she withholds her visions of Loki’s future and their children’s fates, and she states that she did not tell Odin any of what she saw.
Later, Angrboda privately ponders her prophetic visions of an imprisoned Loki bound beneath the acidic, dripping venom of a snake, Sigyn by his side. She also reflects on her visions of the monstrous wolf, likely Fenrir, and the giant serpent at the end of the world. Soon, Skadi and Gerd arrive and react with anger upon finally learning that Loki is Angrboda’s absentee husband. Skadi is shocked to realize that Angrboda knows about Loki’s other life with Sigyn. As Skadi confronts Loki, the stress causes Angrboda to collapse in premature labor. Loki coldly insists that Skadi set aside her quarrel and help him to care for Angrboda.
Part 1, Pages 131-145 Summary
Angrboda delivers her third child, a small snake with green eyes. Loki wryly comments, “First a half-dead baby girl, then a wolf, now a snake. […] It seems as though our children are getting progressively less normal. The next one will just be a quivering blob with eyes at this rate” (132). Angrboda is privately distressed when she realizes that this third child must be the giant serpent in her vision of the end of the world. Loki names the little snake Jormungand and stays through the winter to help as Angrboda manages the isolated homestead. By summer, Jormungand has grown as long as Loki is tall. One evening, Loki wonders if the serpent will grow large enough to eat people. When Angrboda scoffs, he says, “I have a lot of enemies. Which is why I think it would be convenient to have sons who can swallow them whole” (135).
Loki stays most of the winter, and Angrboda cherishes the small, mundane pleasures of family life. Gerd visits and teaches Hel to do nalbinding (a form of knitting) to occupy her hands and her mind.
On another occasion, as Gerd and Angrboda discuss Loki’s peculiarities, and Loki suddenly appears with the children in tow; he is wearing a woman’s dress and veil. Gerd stares in disbelief, but Angrboda is unfazed. Loki asks Gerd to watch the children so that he can speak privately with Angrboda.
Part 1, Pages 78-145 Analysis
The births of Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungand anchor the novel’s focus on the domestic sphere, and Gornichec persists in retelling the classic Norse myths through a distinctly feminist lens, further establishing Angrboda as an avatar of The Fiercely Protective Nature of Motherhood. This theme soon takes on ominous, world-altering implications as each new child is stranger than the last, but despite her children’s oddities, Angrboda’s immediate acceptance of them suggests that in her mind, their only role in the world is to grow strong and healthy, free from the Aesir’s interference. Her matter-of-fact remedies for Hel’s half-dead state normalize the strange condition, and Hel and her brothers are never raised to see themselves as strange. Even Skadi and Gerd accept Fenrir and Jormungand without judgment, and their nonhuman shapes are described as an innate aspect of their being, and despite Loki’s initial confusion, the children are never given an inkling that people might see them as monstrous aberrations from an arbitrary definition of normalcy.
However, Angrboda who has endured the persecution of the Aesir in the past, never forgets the threat that the outside worlds represents to her strange little family, and her decision to brew a contraceptive potion after Fenrir’s birth reflects her determination to seize control of her own fertility, asserting authority over her body and the future of her family. With this quiet act, she engages in an invisible rebellion against the chaotic influence of Loki and the pressures of fate. Even so, Jormungand’s unplanned birth suggests that fate will still hold sway over her future, however she might try to avoid its grasp.
As Angrboda’s children grow, their very existence dismantles the binary between the “civilized” forms of the gods and the “monstrous” forms of the giants and beasts. Fenrir and Jormungand are not giants who choose to become animals; they are inherently both. This concept is mirrored and reinforced by Loki, whose chaotic comings and goings have a dramatic effect upon his children’s dispositions even as his wry references to his sons’ potential for eating people foreshadows their dire roles during the apocalyptic moments of Ragnarok. Together, he and Angrboda determinedly create their own unique brand of normalcy, and within the sanctuary of the cave, Loki’s nontraditional gender expression is met with wry acceptance from his wife. Her equanimity starkly contrasts with the scorn that his shape-shifting earned him in Asgard after the birth of Sleipnir, and with these differing social landscapes, the author establishes Angrboda’s home as a space in which identity does not have to be policed by external norms. Here, a children’s nonhuman nature and Loki’s fluid transformations are intrinsically linked, representing a mode of existence that is fundamentally at odds with the rigid, patriarchal order of Asgard.
Through the complex characterization of Loki, the author also investigates The Complexities of Love and Betrayal, as the trickster’s erratic presence in Ironwood reveals a figure who has genuine affection for his children despite his inherent unreliability as a father. Within the relative safety of the domestic setting of Ironwood, Loki is stripped of the performative mischief that he displays among the Aesir. He is awestruck at the first sight of his daughter, Hel, viewing her as a chance for redemption, and he sees her as the “living proof” that perhaps “[some] good truly can come of [him] (96). However, this sincerity is consistently undercut by his prolonged absences and his defensive reactions to Angrboda’s criticism. The couple’s resulting arguments expose the fundamental instability of their relationship, which is built upon a love that cannot fully overcome Loki’s fickle nature. As a witness to the family dysfunction, Skadi functions as an essential external voice, articulating a more level-headed interpretation of Loki’s actions over the years. When she asks Angrboda, “Is he truly your husband, or are you just his plaything?” (99), her tone of blunt confrontation forces the reluctant Angrboda to adopt a more critical perspective of Loki’s behavior. These episodes establish that Loki’s character is a nexus of contradictions. He is a loving father who abandons his children for seasons at a time, and although he is, in his way, a devoted husband, he also maintains a second family in his enemy’s very stronghold.
Parallel to the external threat posed by Loki’s instability, an internal, psychic danger manifests through the motif of seid and prophecy. As Angrboda’s prophetic abilities evolve from a latent power into a contested psychic space, the “chanter”—Odin—aggressively seeks to violate her mind for knowledge. This ever-present yet intangible threat frames her prophetic gift of insight as a heavy, dangerous burden that makes her a target of the Aesir. Additionally, her deep familial obligations to her unusual children recasts her visionary experience of as a personal trauma, for she is essentially forced to witness her own children’s destinies as world-ending forces. From her point of view, the prophecy of Ragnarok becomes a disorienting nightmare that threatens her immediate family, and matters are further complicated when she withholds this knowledge from Loki, thereby introducing a critical element of secrecy into their relationship as she becomes a reluctant but silent guardian of a terrible future.
Because Angrboda takes steps to protect herself from the outside world, the narrative’s tight focus on her limited third-person perspective reframes the epic scale of Norse mythology through a far more intimate lens. By confining the narrative largely to the warded clearing, the author constructs an insular world in which the primary conflicts are emotional and relational, as is evidenced by Angrboda’s perception of Loki’s frequent absences as a form of emotional abandonment. In this light, the eventual intrusion of the outside world represents an ominous violation of Angrboda’s sacred, private home. By decentering the traditional patriarchal and heroic concerns of the source myths, Gornichec suggests that the most significant events in these stories can be found in the tender, mundane drama of a mother who is trying to protect her family from a hostile world.
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