61 pages • 2-hour read
The Witch's Heart
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Symbols & Motifs
Angrboda’s Heart
Angrboda’s heart is a complex symbol that represents her journey to reclaim her identity, and it also reflects her capacity for love and her ultimate maternal sacrifice. Throughout the novel, its physical state serves as a metaphor for her emotional and psychological condition. After being burned as Gullveig, she suffers her heart to be cut from her chest, and this image suggests that the ordeal has left her scoured of all emotion or interest in life. When Loki returns her damaged heart, this act of kindness reignites her capacity for passion, resulting in their fraught relationship.
When she places the damaged heart back in her chest, the lingering hole from the gods’ attack symbolizes the ongoing pain of her past trauma and suggests that she is yet incomplete. This condition is exacerbated by Loki’s inconstant love, for as she tells him, “You’re going to break my heart with this business with the gods” (46). With this statement, she presciently links the organ to the inevitable pain that their connection will cause. Her warning shows her understanding that her heart is the vessel for her love and, therefore, for her vulnerability.
The heart’s symbolic meaning evolves as Angrboda’s identity shifts toward motherhood. Initially, the hole in her heart represents a missing part of herself, a void left by trauma and unstable love. However, the birth of her first child marks a significant turning point for after gazing at her newborn daughter, “Angrboda realized then that maybe her heart was healed after all” (83). Motherhood has filled the emptiness within her, providing a purpose and a love more steadfast than any she has known. This transformation culminates in the novel’s final act, when she carves out her healed heart and places it in Hel’s chest to save her. In this ultimate sacrifice, the heart completes its journey, becoming a testament to the life-giving, world-shaping power of a mother’s love.
Seid and Prophecy
The motif of seid, a form of Norse magic focused on divination, drives the narrative and explores the profound tension between fate and free will. Angrboda’s skill with seid is both the source of her power and the cause of her persecution, making it central to the theme of reclaiming one’s identity in the face of others’ fear. Her practice of this magic is what first draws Odin’s attention, eventually leading him to brand her as Gullveig and burn her three times in an attempt to gain control of her knowledge. In the aftermath, she attempts to reject this crucial part of her identity, vowing, “No more seid, no more prophecies, no more getting into trouble” (10). She seeks a life of peace, free from the burdens and dangers that come with knowing the future, but this self-imposed exile from her own power proves impossible to maintain.
Angrboda’s journey is defined by her reluctant but necessary reclamation of seid and self. She is first compelled to use this power to save her unborn daughter from dying, an act of maternal protection that reaffirms her power even as it alerts Odin to her survival. Later, she unleashes her seid in a moment of vindictive fury, punishing Sigyn for calling her children “monsters.” This act suggests that her prophetic ability is inextricably linked to her protective instincts. Ultimately, Odin forces her to perform seid for his benefit, making her witness and report the full prophecy of Ragnarok. This traumatic use of her gift solidifies the motif’s central argument: that knowledge of the future is a terrible burden. In short, seid, as the engine of the plot, frames the story within a grand, tragic cycle where characters struggle against a fate they can see but cannot prevent.
Fire
Fire operates as a recurring symbol that charts Angrboda’s transformation from a target of persecution to an agent of sacrificial love. The novel introduces her as a survivor of fire, for the Aesir burn her three times in their attempt to control her power. This initial violence is the catalyst for her rebirth as Angrboda, but the trauma lingers. When Loki asks her if the fire frightens her now, she insists that it does not, and this fact suggests that she refuses to be defined by the instrument of her torture. The hearth fire in her cave thus becomes a symbol of domesticity and survival, a controlled version of the element that once nearly destroyed her. By containing fire within her home, she begins the long process of reclaiming it as a symbol of comfort and stability.
The symbolic arc of fire is completed in the novel’s climax, when Angrboda redefines its meaning through her act of maternal sacrifice, which connects directly to The Fiercely Protective Nature of Motherhood. In this moment, she harnesses the same element that the gods employed to unmake her, wielding it to save her child from the world-ending flames of Ragnarok. In this final, selfless act, Angrboda fully reclaims the symbol of her trauma. By sacrificing herself to the flames on her own terms, she transforms fire from a weapon of patriarchal violence into a testament to the enduring, life-giving power of a mother’s love, ensuring her daughter’s survival and the world’s rebirth.
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