Maren worries about the future and about the frayed relationship between her mother and sister-in-law. Maren, a young woman from the community, watches as a woman named Kirsten takes the lead. The women work hard to rebuild their community, though they have never had to do men’s work before. This was the moment the cruelty of what was done to the women truly hit me, punched me in the chest.In 1618, a small Norwegian seaside community is turned upside down when all the able-bodied men die at sea. The second time it was winter, the cold biting any exposed flesh, the sun not rising, only gleaming at the horizon, tinging the sky a deep navy. Once in the time of the midnight sun, when sea frets would roll in and diffuse the endless sunlight to a ghostly glow, the terns screaming in the harbour. But there is the memorial, and the land, and the sea and the sky. There are no quaint fishing huts or remnants of the lives the people of Vardø led in the 1600s. The town itself was razed by the Germans in the Second World War, its proximity to Russia rendering it a valuable strategic outpost. It is easy to feel close to history in Vardø. Before he took power, not a single person had been convicted of witchcraft in Norway. He is an instrument of a real villain: John Cunningham, the Lensmann of Finnmark, who brought about and oversaw the trials. I also gifted them Ursa, an outsider who breathes new life into the place and gives Maren a friendship and love she never thought possible.Ībsalom Cornet, the commissioner sent to oversee Vardø’s return to order, is also a figment of my imagination, but his views and methods are not. I could gift the women liberties I doubt they had in reality – they were left alone by the outside world, could fish and develop a matriarchy of sorts. This loosened the hold of the history enough for me to make The Mercies my own. Each one ends the same - convicted burned at the stake. It is beautiful, haunting, and a powerful testament to the victims murdered on this spot.Įach of the men and women who lost their lives in the witch trials have their testimonies on the wall, translated by Dr Liv Helene Willumsen. Ninety-one lights burn in small windows set at intervals, giving a view of sea or sky, and in winter, when the sun doesn’t rise, the memorial looks like a ship afloat in darkness. And along the walls are ninety-one names, and ninety-one testimonies, describing the charges set against the victims of the hunts. The floorboards are set apart so in summer grass and heather can grow between, filling the space with scent. Designed by architect Peter Zumthor, this tunnel-like structure is made of canvas that sways and cracks in the wind. Now this piece of land is the site of a memorial to the men and women murdered at Vardøhus. The women were burned on this spot, and would have been able to see the prison they'd been kept in. The view from the Steilneset Memorial to Vardøhus.

The mercies kiran