61 pages • 2-hour read
The Witch's Heart
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Part 2, Page 270-Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of war, violence, murder, illness, and death.
Part 2, Pages 270-284 Summary
Angrboda returns to Ironwood, where Frigg, queen of the Aesir, appears and explains that Baldur can return from the underworld only if every living being weeps for him. Angrboda is reluctant to comply, but the discussion of lost children makes her shed a tear for her own, thereby fulfilling Frigg’s request. Frigg also alludes to another unnamed woman who has refused to cry for Baldur.
In her cave, Angrboda finds Loki hiding. He explains that he looked for her after the gods’ attack, but the Aesir lied to him and claimed that she was dead, and he believed them. He admits that he orchestrated Baldur’s death and then disguised himself as a hag and refused to weep, thereby sealing Baldur’s fate. Angrboda rejects his plea for shelter. Claiming that he chooses his own fate, He tells her that he sent Baldur to their lonely daughter Hel as a gift, then claims that he chooses his own fate. Angrboda tells him, “You are destined to face the consequences of your actions, Loki Laufeyjarson. And there is nothing anyone can do about it” (277). He soon leaves.
Days later, Skadi arrives. At Angrboda’s tremulous request, she recounts Loki’s fate, describing how he seated himself arrogantly among the Aesir in Asgard and proceed to insult them all. After Thor drove him out, he was later captured and bound him beneath a venom-dripping snake, with only Sigyn to catch the poison. One of Sigyn’s sons was turned into a wolf and devoured her other son.
Skadi is made aware of the fact that Angrboda was once the “Mother Witch” who lived here eons ago and birthed wolves. Suddenly, the first snows of Fimbulwinter (the prophesied three-year winter preceding Ragnarok) begin to fall, and Skadi chooses to abandon her own hall and remain with Angrboda for the duration of the unnaturally long winter season.
Part 2, Pages 284-297 Summary
When Skadi first brings her bedroll to Angrboda’s cave, Angrboda invites her old friend to share her bed, with the two bedrolls laid side by side. Fimbulwinter lasts three years. Skadi travels between realms delivering Angrboda’s hunger potions to help people endure the famine, while Angrboda remains in Ironwood and perfects a fire-shield spell. Each time Skadi returns, Angrboda longs to tell her of her true feelings for her, but her nerve keeps failing her, and she remains silent. One day, Skadi reports that the giants are gathering for the final battle, and she declares that she will die fighting with them at Ragnarok. They argue over her plan, and Skadi storms out.
Weeks later, Skadi returns to the cave and is shocked to find Angrboda standing unharmed inside the hearth fire. (Angrboda has been working on a shielding spell to protect Hel from the devastating fires of Ragnarok.) The two giantesses confess their long-held romantic love for each other and finally become lovers. Their days together are the happiest in Angrboda’s long life.
As Fimbulwinter ends, Angrboda decides that she must be the one to free Loki from his bonds, even though she knows that the breaking of Loki’s bonds is fated to trigger the beginning of Ragnarok. She believes that he is the only one who can convince Hel to shelter with her before the battle begins. Grieving at the thought that their time together has come to an end, Skadi accepts the plan and tells Angrboda where Loki is being held.
Part 2, Pages 297-317 Summary
Angrboda sends her spirit to the cave where Loki is held. She finds him scarred and bound, while an exhausted Sigyn keeps vigil. Angrboda kills the venomous snake above him and reconciles with Sigyn, who agrees with Angrboda’s assertion that the gods are the only ones to blame for the harm that has befallen both their families. Angrboda shatters Loki’s bonds, setting Ragnarok in motion. As a double eclipse begins as the primordial wolves catch up to their prey, and the walls between the worlds begin to collapse.
Jormungand and Fenrir, now colossal, break free from their prisons. They speak to Angrboda mind-to-mind, forgiving her. While they initially intend to kill Loki in punishment for his betrayal, they relent upon Angrboda’s pleading and reconcile with their father as well. They then depart to join the giants’ army. Angrboda asks Loki to carry a message to Hel, and he swears to do so. Her spirit returns to her body as the world begins to break apart.
Part 2, Pages 317-333 Summary
A half-dead, half-resurrected Baldur arrives at the cave, carrying a dying Hel. The world trembles as Skadi and the she-wolf bid a final emotional farewell to Angrboda and leave to join the giants. Angrboda discovers that Hel has a fatal heart condition; because her magic was tied to the realm of the dead, which is now empty, Hel’s magic is fading, and she can no longer suppress the effects of her heart condition. Angrboda realizes that Baldur deeply loves Hel, and she knows that she must save them both. Realizing how to help her daughter, she steps outside and resolutely cuts her own living heart from her chest.
She briefly falls into a vision of Ragnarok, seeing the deaths of Loki, her sons, Skadi, and the she-wolf, along with all the gods. Returning from the vision, she places her disembodied heart into Hel’s chest, saving her. She carves a final spell into a small wolf figurine and instructs Baldur to protect Hel, stating that he must not wake her before the spell does its work, no matter how long that may take. Heading outside, she raises a magical shield over the cave and draws on the deepest recesses of her magical power as Surt, the fire giant, unleashes the prophesied flames that end the world. Angrboda’s power holds the shield steady over the cave as the fire consumes her.
Part 3 Summary
After an unspecified length of time, Hel awakens to find herself alone in a rejuvenated Ironwood. She is shocked to find that she now has legs of living flesh, and her heart condition has also been healed. She finds the wolf figurine with her mother’s final spell. For over a year, she tends the land alone, taking pleasure in the mundane act of growing vegetables. Baldur eventually returns and explains that Angrboda sacrificed her life to save them both. He reports that other survivors are now building a new world where Asgard once stood. He asks Hel to be their queen, but she refuses this offer and accepts only his love, choosing to remain in Ironwood. Baldur elects to remain there with her.
They have children, and their descendants spread across the new world, passing down the stories of the old gods, the giants, and the witch of Ironwood. The legend of Angrboda endures, with some saying that she still watches over them from the trees.
Part 2, Page 270-Part 3 Analysis
In this final, tumultuous section, the resolution of Angrboda’s primary relationships with Loki and Skadi offers a nuanced exploration of The Complexities of Love and Betrayal. Her choice to free Loki is a strategic act, for she has no interest in renewing her bond with him; in her mind, his only remaining purpose is to deliver her urgent message to Hel. She also recognizes him as a necessary piece in the machinery of fate, and their final spiritual encounter is therefore one of mutual recognition as they platonically acknowledge their intertwined histories. This mature detachment contrasts sharply with the deep, abiding love that she has found with Skadi, who sustains her during Fimbulwinter and delights her with the development of a long-delayed romance. Unlike the chaotic, destiny-driven passion that she shared with Loki, her love with Skadi is a conscious choice that provides stability and genuine companionship. The novel thus presents a sophisticated spectrum of love, suggesting that the most resilient connections are those forged in quiet loyalty and mutual care.
While Angrboda’s visions foretell an unalterable apocalypse, her actions demonstrate that agency can exist within the confines of destiny. She learns to navigate Ragnarok, finding the “loopholes” that will allow her to save her daughter. She accepts that Loki must be freed and that the dead will march, but she co-opts these fated events for her own ends. By ensuring Hel and Baldur survive to populate a new world, Angrboda redefines the outcome of the prophecy, even if she cannot avert the world’s doom entirely.
In the climactic scenes, Angrboda’s final transformation serves as the resolution of the novel’s focus on Reclaiming Identity in the Face of Imposed Roles. Throughout the narrative, she has allowed herself to be defined by others, whether she was the reviled Gullveig, Loki’s “Angrboda Iron-witch,” or the perceived “mother of monsters” (150). Throughout the novel, she has gradually shed these imposed identities, and her journey toward self-realization culminates in her confrontation with Surt’s fire, where she consciously accesses the primordial power of the void and wields the deepest form of her magic in a last-ditch effort to protect her daughter. In this moment, she realizes that as “Mother Witch,” she has always possessed this power, which she now blends with her maternal devotion to forge an identity that is wholly her own. In her final protective act, she is a primordial being wielding the forces of destruction for a purely creative purpose.
This final section also explains the significance of the novel’s title, for Angrboda’s heart is central to every aspect of the prophesied actions that govern the ultimate fate of the world. Just as Loki’s decision to return her heart kick-starts the events that lead to the creation of her highly unusual family, her decision to give up that same heart to protect Hel and Baldur serves as the means by which the new world comes to be. When she cuts her heart from her own chest and places it in Hel’s, this act transforms the symbol of her own scarred survival into the engine of her daughter’s future, and her sacrifice frames motherhood as a world-shaping, life-giving power. In her final stand against Surt’s inferno, she defies the world-ending conflagration and creates a sanctuary that guarantees the continuation of the world itself in some form.
With this pointed focus on Angrboda’s actions, the author deliberately subverts the conventions of epic mythology by decentering the climactic battle of Ragnarok and honoring Angrboda’s personal sacrifice. The famous details of the gods’ final war is presented only as a vision: a detached summary of the fated events, and this approach strips the battle of its traditionally heroic grandeur. While Angrboda does catch a glimpse of Fenrir devouring Odin and Thor slaying Jormungand, the novel’s most intimate, climactic moment occurs when Angrboda cuts out her own heart to save Hel. This authorial choice focuses the narrative on an act of creation and preservation, even amidst the prophesied destruction, and the epilogue reinforces this reorientation as the restored Hel and her descendants tend the now-flourishing Ironwood.
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