Geata Póeg na Déanainn

Pressing on boundaries June 2, 2018

I normally avoid reading historical fiction (whether told straight, or with fantasy elements added) set in early medieval Britain or Ireland. It’s too hard to switch off my medievalist brain and nitpick every inaccuracy or tired cliché. Although there are some works set in this time I enjoy, it’s generally a time period and genre I approach with caution. This may explain why it took me so long to get to Hild, Nicola Griffith’s astonishing, complex, and beautifully crafted novel about Hild, a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon princess who became the founding abbess of Whitby and was later made a saint (if a school, college, or church in the UK is named St Hilda’s, it’s likely named after her). As with many figures living in this time of history, contemporary written records about Hild are lacking, but Griffith has done a wonderful job of filling in the blanks in a way that is both plausible and engaging.

The Britain of Griffith’s novel is a tumultuous place of shifting allegiances, diplomatic marriages of convenience, fluid boundaries, and fast-paced political, religious and cultural change that is leaving its inhabitants disoriented and uncertain. Amidst all this turmoil is Hild — a child at the novel’s beginning, an older teenager by its close — whose early life is spent in exile, followed by a period with her mother and sister at her uncle’s court. Her mother’s ambition is to be a powerbroker behind the throne, and she uses all the tools at her disposal, including roping her daughters into her schemes, teaching them to see the connections, tensions and patterns between the powerful people around them, and to subtly influence the political direction of their kingdom without the men in power perceiving it. Hild finds this at once a talent that comes naturally to her, and a frightening, sometimes crushing burden. Without being able to command and control people directly, she is essentially unable to put a halt to actions and choices she feels will cause harm and destruction, while at the same time she feels responsible for decisions she has influenced indirectly. Ever since her birth, Hild’s mother has encouraged an air of supernatural power around her daughter, creating a legend that turns Hild into a seer who can predict the future, and it’s this visionary role that allows her to speak freely in contexts where women’s voices would normally be unwelcome, hiding her political manoeuvring in a cloud of prophetic symbolism. The problem with being a prophet is that people expect your predictions to come true, which is an additional weight on Hild’s shoulders.

Where Griffith really succeeds is in her depiction of women’s lives — particularly the parts of those lives that happen out of the view of men. Hild abounds with such scenes: women discussing pregnancy, abortion and childbirth in whispers in a bedroom, women spinning and weaving in a corner of the hall, women out herding animals, women subtly directing the political events of their day. It’s a particular breath of fresh air to see the smaller, quieter moments treated with as much seriousness and granted as much importance as the sorts of things that are normally perceived to have had real historical impact. Thus, a small girl wearing heavy, ornate jewellery and carrying a cup of mead around the hall is shown to have as much, if not more, political significance as a battle, and is carried out with a similar level of tactical planning.

The world of Hild is visceral, and Griffith revels in the muck and dirt of it, bringing readers with her into muddy fields, smelly cowsheds, rooms where women’s hands are soft with lanolin as they spin wool, and halls sharp with the tang of strong mead. One of the most striking and memorable scenes to me involves a group of farm workers constructing a hedgerow, piling mounds of earth between stones, and weaving bushes fragrant with the scent of hawthorn into the hedge, so that the whole construction is a living, breathing thing. The sheer effort involved, the cooperative labour, and the sense of work well done are all conveyed with clarity and strength. It’s just one of many such moments in the book — bringing things back down to earth, and imbuing the ordinary work of everyday life with a luminous sense of mystery and power. This quality reminded me of other books that have been formative and important to me — Ursula Le Guin’s fantasy novels, the work of Monica Furlong (set in a very similar time period, and with a similar focus on ‘women’s work’), and, more recently, the epic fantasy of Kate Elliott. It’s something I’m always glad to see in fiction, and I can only hope that Griffith’s follow up to Hild continues to retain this same element.