Character: Agnes (official records)
?��� "an excellent intellect, and strong knowledge and understanding of Christianity." p.33
?��� only the things other men think are important to me
Character: Agnes (retrospectively and introspectively)
?��� I was two dead men. I was burning farm. I was a knife. I was blood.'' p. 35
?��� 'Already a dead woman destined for the grave' p. 35
?���'I might as well have been at one place all my life.' (p 71)
?��� 'That is how I came to be a pauper. Left to the
Character: Agnes from Blondal's perspective
?��� 'You will not find proof of innocence in Agnes's stories of her life, Reverend. She is a woman loose with her emotions, and looser with her morals. Like many older servant women she is practised in deception, and I do not doubt that she has manufactu
Character: Agnes from Toti's perspective
?��� 'She seems sincere,' Toti said. p.170
?��� She is beautiful
?��� She is different from
?��� Leprous colours... a new corpse, fresh dug from the grave.
''self contained''
Character: Agnes from Natan's perspective
?��� 'He liked the fact that I was a bastard, a pauper, a servant. 'You have had to fight for everything,' he said. 'You take life by the teeth, Agnes. You are not like Rosa.' 248
?��� 'And do you think I love you?' Natan shook his head. 'You, Agnes?' He
Character: Agnes from others' perspectives
Dagga: 'Agnes always wanted to get 'above her station' (p. 92).
'Bastard pauper with a conniving spirit like you'd never see in a proper maid.' 92
Karitas:
Messenger: ''They pick a mouse to tame a cat'' p.10
Agnes from Margret perspective
'landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty' (p. 52).
I shudder to think of what goes on in that dark head of hers
Character: Margret
?��� Are we just going to yield to this? Like a dog rolling over?
?��� old woman
?��� coughing and spitting like a crone
?��� Is is necessary to keep her bound like a lamb ripe for slaughter?
?��� I shudder to think of what goes on in that dark head of he
Character: Toti's inexperience
?��� Please guard my heart against the horror this woman inspires in me.
?��� He must not be used to the gnarled family trees that grow in this valley, where the branches rope about one another studded with thorns.
he seems too callow for his station
Character: Toti's duty
?��� We must all do our duty.
Character: Steina
?��� There was something ungainly about her.
?��� Thick crescents of dirt
?��� Next to Lauga's windrows, Steina's rows looked as crooked as a child's handwriting.
?��� "Steina's ungracious reaction to the news delivered by Blondal could affect their socia
Character: Lauga (physical)
?��� A beauty
?��� Smart as a whip
?��� Shes a terrible sulker and reminds me of little Sigga, only smarter.
?��� Runs circles around her sister
Character: Lauga (personality)
she was sick of Agnes staring at her clothes and belongings.
there was an intensity to her revulsion that seemed fired by something more than resentment. p.201
Steina! In heaven's name, must you always talk about Agnes?'
What's wrong? Am I the only person
Character: Natan's manipulations and infidelity
Agnes) 'Perhaps things would have been different if Natan had let me go to church at Tjorn. I might have made friends there. I might have met a family to turn to when it all became twisted. Other farmers I could have worked for. But he didn't let me go, a
Character: Natan
(Agnes) 'The famous Natan Ketilsson, a man who could bleed the sap of sickness from the limbs of the ill, who had been with the famous Poet-Rosa, who had heard the bells of Copenhagen, and taught himself Latin - an extraordinary man, a saga man - had chos
Character: Sigga
?��� 'young and sweet to die' 41
?��� 'too pretty for a peasant girl p.225
her clothes were too fine for her to be a servant' p.225
?��� 'She has probably changed. She's probably as pious as they come now. But at Illugastadir she had a saucy little manner
Character: Fridrik
?��� (Blondal) 'A boy raised in a household careless with morality and Christian teaching... slothfulness, greed, and rude, callow inclinations bred in him a weak spirit, and a longing for worldy gain.' 172
?��� '...his was an intransigent character. His
Character: Bl??ndal
?��� (Agnes) 'Bl??ndal likes only one thing better than religious chastisement, and that is the sound of his own voice.' p.182
?��� 'I am not a cruel man, Assistant Reverend Thorvardur. But I am God-fearing, and it is apparent to me that this District is
Character: Poet Rosa and her poetry
?��� 'He wasn't hers to love!' p.135
?��� 'Perhaps Rosa and I might have been friends if we'd met in another way. Natan always said we were as alike as a swan to a raven, but he was wrong. We both loved him, for one. And no matter what I tell the Reverend
Steina towards Agnes
?��� 'I... It's only that I remember her from years ago. And I can't stop thinking that she wasn't always like this. She was our age, once. She has a mother and father, like us.'
?��� 'Not like us. She's nothing like us. She's come here and no one even se
Theme: Patriarchal society
?��� You need more than one man to say I do. 240
?��� Just the privilege of giving your life away. 240
?��� Everyone looks to the master for the final word. 240
?��� Bjorn: Books written by man, not God, are faithless friends and not for your kind. 70
?��
Theme: Death
?��� "Pocket me into the earth like a stone" p. 36
?��� "It seems everyone I love is taken from me and buried in the ground, while I remain alone." p.150
?��� 'I am barren ... I am the dead fish drying in the cold air. I am the dead bird on the shore. I a
Theme: Storytelling
?��� "I can turn to that day as though it were a page in a book." p.138
?��� 'Sometimes, after talking to the Reverend, my mouth aches. My tongue feels so tired; it slumps in my mouth like a dead bird, all damp feathers, in between the stones of my teeth.
Theme: Names, identity
?��� "They will say "Agnes" and see the spider. The witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother, but they will not see me." p.29
?��� "Criminal. The word hangs in the air. H
Theme: Retrospection
?��� "Agnes Jonsdottir would not have been so foolish as to love a man who spent his life opening veins, mouths, legs. A man who was paid to draw blood. She would have been a grandmother. She would have had a host of faces to gather round her bed as she l
Theme: Evading painful past, identity
?��� 'Over a month has passed at Kornsa and already I have forgotten what will become of me. The days of work have soothed me, have given my body cause for rest, so that I've slept deeply, below the surface of dreams stricken with portent.' p.120
?��� 'Si
Theme: Friendship
?��� 'Maria took me by the hand then, and told me to be careful.' p.216
?��� 'I told her that I was a grown woman, with a head of my own. Maria said that that was what worried her.' 216
?��� 'The truth is that Natan and I became friends because we were fo
Theme: Belonging
?��� 'It's true that I'm not one of them.' p.120
?��� 'I never had many friends.' p.187
?��� 'For the first time in my life, someone saw me, and I loved him because he made me feel I was enough.' p.221
?��� 'Margret wondered at how, even for an hour, Agne
Theme: Waiting
?��� 'I have been in the killing pen for months.' 203
?��� 'It must be Blondal. He means to cripple me with waiting before stretching my neck out. He wants me to break; he takes away the only comfort I have left in this world because he is a barbarian. He
Theme: LOVE (Natan and Agnes)
?��� 'I cannot remember not knowing Natan. I cannot think of what it was not to love him. To look at him and realise I had found what I had not known I was hungering for. A hunger so deep, so capable of driving me into the night, that it terrified me.' (p
Theme: GRIEF
?��� "Natan is dead. I wake up every morning with a blow of grief to my heart.'' p.59
?��� "The only person who would understand how I feel is Natan. He knew me as one knows the seasons, knows the tide. Knew me like the smell of smoke, knew what I was, an
Theme: LOVE (family)
?��� I had convinced myself I no longer loved them.
?��� My girl.
Theme: Neglect, isolation
?��� "I haven't eaten or had a sip of water all day; my lips are as split as firewood. I feel the same as when I was little and hungry, as though bones are growing larger in my body, as if my skeleton is about to shiver out of me.'' p.42
?��� 'But talking
Theme: Justice
?��� Victory for justice
?��� I mean to deliver God's justice here on earth - Blondal
?��� It is a political and spiritual embarrassment
?��� They said I must die. They said that I stole the breath from men, and now they must steal mine." p.1
?��� 'It's n
Theme: Fate
?��� "I pronounced it like a prayer. I hope I die. Did I author my own fate, then?" p.150
?��� 84 'God has had His chance to free me, and for reasons known to him alone, He has pinned me to ill fortune, and although I have struggled, I am run through and
Theme: Bureaucracy
?��� "You, Agnes Magn??sd??ttir, have been found guilty of accessory to murder. You, Agnes Magn??sd??ttir have been found guilty of arson, and conspiracy to murder. You, Agnes Magn??sd??ttir, have been sentenced to death. You, Agnes. Agnes.'' p.29
?��� 'H
Theme: Truth
?��� 'Every time I said something they would change my words and throw it back to me like an insult, or an accusation.' p.98
?��� 'You might have seen their names in that book of yours, Reverend, but I may as well have been listed as an orphan.' p.99
?���
Theme: Sagas
?��� 29 '...the sagas i know by heart'
?��� 51 'What sort of woman kills men? The only women Margret had known were the women in the sagas, and even then, it was with words that they had killed men...'
?��� 175 'The treachery of a friend is worse than tha
Theme: Religion and piety
?��� 'Then Blondal and the rest are going against God. They're hypocrites. They say they're carrying out God's law, but they're only doing the will of men!'...'I try to love God, Reverend. I do. But I cannot love these men. I... I hate them.' p.132
?��� '
Theme: Misfortune
?��� "God has had His chance to free me, and for reasons known to Him alone, He has pinned me to ill fortune, and although I have struggled, I am run through and through with disaster; I am knifed to the hilt with fate." p.84
?��� "Her mother's mistakes:
Theme: Superstition
?��� 'It was snowing a little,' Steina said, after they had heard about Roslin's childbirth. She glanced over at Agnes. 'It must have been a good sign.' 200
?��� 176 "I have heard very little to trust from anyone besides superstitious talk of him being na
Theme: Revenge, retribution
?��� "They said I must die. They said that I stole the breath from men, and now they must steal mine." p.1
?��� Somedays, i think that I haven't really slept since the fire, and that maybe sleeplessness is punishment from God. Or Blondal even: my dreams t
Theme: Who you are vs. who people think you are
?��� "It won't be any good for the Reverend to read ministerial books, or any book for that matter - what will he learn of me there? Only the things other men think important about me. p.110
?��� "When the Reverend saw my name and birth in the church book
Themes: Memories
?��� 'I have few clear memories of her... It's a silent memory, and one, like the others, I can't quite trust. Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real
Theme: Possessions
?��� 'I am determined to close myself to the world, to tighten my heart and hold onto what has not yet been stolen from me. I cannot let myself slip away.' p 29
?��� That dress was my last possession. There is nothing in the world I now own; even the heat
Symbol: Ravens
?��� "Cruel birds, ravens, but wise." p.37
?��� "And creatures should be loved for wisdom if they can't be loved for kindness." p.37
?��� "Three ravens flying in a line. A good omen." p.77
?��� They looked like ashes, whorling in the sky.
?��� Do you know
Symbol: Stones
?��� The stone Mamma gave me before she left. It will bring you good luck, Agnes. It is a magic stone. Put it under your tongue and you will be able to talk to the birds. That stone sat in my mouth for days. If the birds understood my questions, they neve
Weather: when halcyon
?��� 193 - signals love springing for agnes and natan
"it was a fine delicate sort of twilight, and all the servants sat outside to watch the night fall down.
Weather: when unpleasant, severe
?��� 123 "A mass of low grey clouds was surging in from the north." then ultimate events - Agnes finds about repeal for Sigga - omen for the maelstrom of emotions and cataclysm of feelings that follow.
?��� 142 "This means there will be a storm. the north
Pathetic fallacy
At that moment the dark clouds opened up, and the two women were engulfed in a sudden, freezing downpour.
Inculcate
Dissimulation
Perpetrate
surmise
'drudgery of her days'
inculcate (teach) values into the young generation
Deception
carry out/commit
suppose something is true w/o evidence to confirm it
dull work
itinerant
moving from place to place
Symbols
Brooch
?��� Changes from being a source of contention that highlights family's resentment to her
?��� Becomes a gift offered to her before her execution to show family's regard and it will be buried with her - akin (similar) to unlocking her soul
Ravens
?