The Witch's Heart

Genevieve Gornichec’s debut fantasy novel, The Witch’s Heart (2021), is a national bestseller that reimagines Norse mythology from a feminist perspective by spinning a tale about the experiences of a minor character, the giantess Angrboda. After being repeatedly burned by Odin for withholding prophecies about the worlds’ end, a witch with amnesia flees to a remote forest and takes the name Angrboda. There, she falls in love with the trickster god Loki and attempts to raise their three prophesied children in seclusion, hidden from the gods who fear their existence. As part of a literary trend of feminist retellings that includes works like Madeline Miller’s Circe, the novel focuses on a marginalized female figure from the Norse Eddas (the primary source texts for Norse mythology), elevating Angrboda to the center of the narrative. The novel explores themes such as The Fiercely Protective Nature of Motherhood, Reclaiming Identity in the Face of Imposed Roles, and The Complexities of Love and Betrayal.

Genevieve Gornichec studied Norse mythology and Icelandic sagas at university and wrote the first draft of her novel while researching Angrboda for a term paper. Her second novel, The Weaver and the Witch Queen (2023), continues her focus on mythological and historical women from the Viking Age. The Witch’s Heart was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fantasy in 2021.

This guide is based on the 2021 Ace trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, illness or death, pregnancy loss, child death, animal death, physical assault, torture, murder, and emotional abuse.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with an ancient witch, a giantess who is skilled in seid, “a magic that allowed one to travel out of body and divine the future” (3). Despite her misgivings, she agrees to teach her craft to Odin, the chief of the Aesir gods, whose rivals are the kindlier Vanir. However, when Odin wants her to bring him knowledge from a dark, primordial place that only the witch can access, she refuses to descend to that liminal space, fearing its secrets. Using her travels to the rival Vanir gods as a pretext to persecute the witch for disloyalty, Odin turns his people against her, naming her Gullveig, or “gold-lust,” because she has deigned to accept the Vanir’s offer of gold-based payments for her services. The Aesir spear her and burn her on a pyre three separate times, but each time she is reborn, she resists Odin’s renewed attempts to force her into that dark place of prophecy. When the Vanir learn of the Aesir’s persecution, Odin’s actions incite the first war between the two factions of gods. On her third rebirth, the witch flees Asgard, the home of the Aesir, leaving her charred and still-beating heart behind.

Loki is a trickster god who lives among the Aesir and is counted as Odin’s blood brother, but he is originally of the giants (many of whom, like the witch, are no larger than regular humans). He finds the witch hiding in Ironwood, a forest in the giant-realm of Jotunheim. After an exchange of sly banter, he returns her heart, which still bears a hole from the spear, and the two form an unlikely friendship. She takes the new name Angrboda and makes her home in a cave, where she magically and surgically returns her heart to its place, leaving a vertical scar on her chest. As time goes on, she struggles to survive in the near-barren woods. One day, Angrboda is nearly shot by Skadi, a giantess known as the Huntress and the daughter of Thjazi, who is searching for a legendary witch rumored to live in Ironwood. Angrboda does not reveal her background as Gullveig, nor does she tell Skadi of what the Aesir have done to her. The two giantesses form a business partnership; Angrboda creates healing salves and hunger-abating potions, which Skadi then trades throughout the realms for supplies. Gradually, Skadi furnishes Angrboda’s cave, and the trading arrangement provides the witch with a stable livelihood. Through Skadi, Angrboda learns that the war between the Aesir and the Vanir ended with a truce in which the Vanir goddess Freyja came to live with the Aesir; she is now credited with teaching Odin seid.

Loki visits Angrboda periodically, never staying long, and she begins to grow fond of him despite her annoyance at his constant chatter and self-centered behavior. One night, he arrives with his mouth crudely sewn shut by dwarfs as punishment for a lost bet. Angrboda cuts the stitches, and although she heals his lips with a magical salve, his mouth is permanently scarred. Their bond deepens, and they share a bed for the first time.

During one of Loki’s visits, Angrboda discovers the ruins of ancient stone foundations near her cave and feels an inexplicable connection to the place when she hears ghostly whispers of “Mother Witch.” She begins to wonder if she may have once been the legendary witch who lived in the Ironwood long ago. Coming upon Angrboda in her reverie, Loki identifies the site as the former home of the Jarnvidjur, the ancient giantesses who birthed the wolves that now relentlessly chase the moon and sun across the sky.

To sabotage a builder who is constructing a wall for Asgard, the Aesir’s home, Loki shape-shifts into a mare to lure away the builder’s magical stallion. As a result, Loki becomes pregnant with a foal and spends the winter in Angrboda’s cave, retaining his mare form. In the spring, he gives birth to an eight-legged colt named Sleipnir. Loki gifts Sleipnir to Odin but soon returns to Angrboda, feeling scorned by the Aesir, who have never truly accepted him as one of their own due to his origins as a giant and his penchant for mischief-making. Now, he and Angrboda confess their love for each other, and Loki proposes marriage.

Soon after this, Angrboda becomes pregnant, and Skadi, who bears nothing but contempt for her friend’s absentee husband, invites Angrboda to spend the winter at her father Thjazi’s hall for safety. Just before Angrboda leaves the cave, Loki appears as a falcon, and although she explains where she is going, she does not tell him about the pregnancy because she wants to wait until he is back in human form and she can see his expression.

In the mountains, the women soon learn that Thjazi has been killed by the Aesir in revenge for a plot in which Thjazi had Loki abduct the goddess Idun from Asgard in order to steal her magical golden apples. A grief-stricken Skadi vows vengeance on Loki, blaming his mischief for her father’s death. She arms herself and travels to Asgard to confront the Aesir on the matter, and Angrboda later learns that Loki helped to maneuver Skadi into accepting a husband, the Vanir sea-god Njord, in recompense for Thjazi’s death. However, because Njord loves the sea and Skadi prefers the mountains, the two rarely see each other.

After winter ends, Angrboda returns to her cave, and Loki arrives and confesses that the Aesir have forced him to marry another woman, Sigyn, who is also pregnant. Fearing that Odin will find her with his magical sight, Angrboda casts a spell to hide her home from his view.

Later, when Angrboda is alone again, she goes into premature labor and feels her baby dying. She uses seid to journey down into the nether worlds and call her daughter’s soul back to the world of the living. Although she succeeds, her act alerts a mysterious “chanter” (later confirmed to be Odin) to her existence. With the help of Skadi’s prim cousin, Gerd, Angrboda gives birth to a daughter whom she names Hel. The girl is born with legs made of dead flesh, so Angrboda uses her healing salves to preserve them and keep them from rotting, and although they grow as the baby grows, they remain lifeless.

About a year and a half later, Angrboda gives birth to a son, Fenrir, who is a wolf. Two and a half years after that, her second son, Jormungand, is born as a giant snake. For a time, the “odd” family is happy, and whenever Loki returns, he lavishes love and affection on his children—particularly Hel, whom he favors.

One day, during an argument, Loki cruelly tells Angrboda that she will only be remembered as the “mother of monsters” (150). Their argument is interrupted as Loki’s Asgardian wife, Sigyn, discovers the family. Horrified to behold Angrboda’s children, Sigyn also names them monsters. Enraged, Angrboda uses her powers to impose a prophetic vision onto Sigyn, forcing the woman to witness the brutal fate of her own sons. Suddenly, Skadi arrives and intervenes. Ordered away by Skadi, Loki leaves with Sigyn, and his heartbroken children view his departure as a final betrayal and begin to internalize his rash words, seeing themselves as monstrous. Fenrir and Jormungand adopt increasingly ferocious behavior.

Soon, Angrboda receives a vision showing her that Sigyn has revealed her children’s existence to the Aesir. She strengthens the protections around her home, changing the spell’s settings so that only Skadi and Gerd will be able to find her.

One day, Loki returns to the cave, having been led there by Gerd. He attempts to distract Angrboda by the stream while the gods Thor, Tyr, and Freyja arrive and abduct the three children; Loki is complicit in the plot. As Angrboda struggles against magical bonds that Freyja crafted specifically to hold her, Thor strikes her on the head with his hammer, Mjolnir, killing her. In the space between life and death, Odin summons Angrboda’s spirit and forces her to reveal the full prophecy of Ragnarok, the apocalyptic end of the world. After a winter that lasts for three years (“Fimbulwinter”), the bound Loki will be freed, the world-tree Yggdrasil will fall, and the pursuing wolves will devour the sun and moon. The gods and the giants will battle on the plain of Vigrid, killing each other just before the fire-giant, Surt, arrives to bathe the world in flame.

As Angrboda experiences these visions, she remains in a suspended state of consciousness and learns of her children’s fates. She discovers that before the end of the world, Jormungand will be cast into the sea, Fenrir will be bound in Asgard, and Hel will be made the queen of the dead in the underworld, Niflheim. After this liminal battle of wills, Skadi finds Angrboda’s body in the physical world and seeks to nurse her back to health. Meanwhile, guided by a mysterious inner voice, Angrboda heeds the call to return to the world of the living.

As Angrboda recovers, Skadi informs her of her children’s fates, confirming the visions that Angrboda saw in the void. Angrboda discovers that her ability to perform seid is now gone, and she assumes that it has been blocked by the trauma of Odin’s psychic assault. She leaves Ironwood on a quest to restore her magic, and after traveling and following the inner “voice” of her own intuition for many long miles, she happens upon an ancient she-wolf whom she used to know many eons and several lifetimes ago. The nameless she-wolf reveals that the inner voice Angrboda hears is “Mother Witch,” a lost part of her own identity as one of the Jarnvidjur, the giantesses who birthed wolves. Angrboda realizes that Odin does not seek to prevent Ragnarok; instead, he is trying to find a loophole in the prophecy that will help him to stave off the fated death of his son, Baldur. This realization inspires Angrboda to do the same; although she knows that her sons are doomed, she is determined to save Hel’s life by finding a way for her daughter to withstand Surt’s world-ending fire.

Her quest leads her to a meeting with Freyja, who performs a ritual that successfully restores Angrboda’s access to seid. Angrboda immediately visits Hel in Niflheim, but Hel, who is now a bitter, lonely young queen, reveals that her dead legs have rotted away in the absence of Angrboda’s salves. Furious, Hel rejects Angrboda’s offer of protection from Ragnarok and expels her from Niflheim. On the edges of Hel’s realm, a disguised Odin intercepts Angrboda’s spirit and questions her again about the prophecy, but she treats him with scorn and departs. Later, Odin’s ravens summon Angrboda to Baldur’s funeral, where she learns that Loki orchestrated the god’s death. She finds a banished Loki hiding in her cave; he confesses that he killed Baldur as revenge against the gods and as a “gift” for the lonely Hel, to whose realm Baldur is now bound. Angrboda refuses to shelter Loki and sends him away. Later, Skadi returns to Ironwood for good, and the giantesses’ long-standing friendship deepens into a true romance. They spend the three years of Fimbulwinter together, and Angrboda considers it to be the happiest time of her life. Meanwhile, as Angrboda has foreseen, the Aesir bind Loki with the entrails of his slain son by Sigyn, condemning him to languish beneath the scalding venom of a serpent; Sigyn stays with him.

As Fimbulwinter ends, Angrboda realizes that Loki is fated to be freed before the end of the world, and she decides that she must be the one to make this happen so that she can convince him to persuade Hel to accept her offer of protection. Using seid, she astral-projects her consciousness to the cave where Loki is currently bound and tortured. She and Sigyn reconcile, agreeing that their misfortunes can only be blamed on fate, not on Loki or each other. Angrboda shatters Loki’s bonds, and this act breaks all fetters in the cosmos (including those binding her sons) and triggers Ragnarok. The pursuing wolves begin to eat the sun and the moon. Fenrir and Jormungand, now colossal, appear for a brief reunion with their parents before leaving to join the giants’ army. Angrboda tasks Loki with convincing Hel to come to Ironwood to be saved. He swears that he will. Soon after, Hel arrives, brought by Baldur, who loves her. Hel’s body is failing because her heart is giving out. Angrboda realizes that Odin allowed Baldur’s death so that he could survive Ragnarok safely in Hel’s realm. Knowing that she must now save them both, Angrboda cuts out her own heart and places it in Hel’s chest to heal her, then imbues Hel’s childhood toy with a spell to complete the magic. She orders Baldur to protect Hel, then goes outside to face Surt’s world-ending fire. Drawing on her full power as Mother Witch, she creates a massive shield to protect the cave as the flames consume her.

Hel awakens in a new, green world, her body fully healed by her mother’s sacrifice. Years pass, and Baldur, now fully alive, returns. He confesses his love for Hel, and when she refuses to leave her mother’s home, he chooses to stay with her. They have children, and their descendants spread out into the world, passing down the stories of the old gods, giants, and the witch of Ironwood. The novel concludes with the legacy of Angrboda being told through the generations, a tale of a woman who was burned and reborn, then loved, lost, and sacrificed everything for her child. Some legends claim that she yet lives.