Freyja

Margrét Ann Thors

FOR decades, single mother Unnur has been hiding from all memories of the disappearance of her long-ago friend Freyja at the notoriously remote and forbidding Dark Valley on the coast of Iceland.

But the past has a way of catching up and faced now with the threat of losing her own precious daughter, Unnur is desperately trying to recall those nightmarish last days of her blighted childhood to work out whether her doubts and fears stem for complicity in the mystery of missing Freyja.

If your overheated summer needs the cool vibes of a bone-chilling mystery set against black-sand beaches, silver skies and frigid air full of ‘ice and salt and bite’, then treat yourself to this brilliant chiller-thriller debut novel from Margrét Ann Thors (pictured below), an Icelandic-American writer based in Reykjavík who teaches English courses at the University of Iceland. Steeped in all the atmospherics of Icelandic folklore and myth, Freyja is the gripping and suspense-filled story of a young girl’s disappearance, an enthralling, haunting and lyrical tale of redemption and forgiveness, and a powerful reminder of the sheer power of a mother’s love.

Unnur Stelludóttir works at a bakery in Reykjavík under an assumed name. She is a single mother to her beloved seven-year-old daughter, Lilja, and lives a deliberately ‘unremarkable’ life. Her past is kept ‘bound and gagged in a basement, accessible only by trapdoor’ and the key is lost, even to herself.

But her constant battle to ‘lie low, keep Lilja safe’ and blot out traumatic visions from the last summer of her childhood in Iceland’s Dark Valley where eleven-year-old Unnur’s close friend Freyja mysteriously disappeared, is thrown into disarray with the imminent arrival of Lilja’s father Nói who is returning to Iceland for a custody meeting after a two-year absence.

Even more disturbing for Unnur’s life spent under the radar is the discovery of an unsigned note in her letterbox with just four words on it ‘Hae Unna. Remember me?’ 

Only one person knows that deliberately playful misspelling of her name… her long lost, otherworldly friend Freyja whose white-blonde hair and ice-coloured eyes made her look like she was made of ‘snow and nature and mist.’

And when ex-husband Nói returns and unexpectedly brings with him his new girlfriend Lóa, and her own seven-year-old daughter who, unnervingly for Unnur, is called Freyja, she may finally have to face what happened long ago on a black sand beach in the remote Dark Valley… and the possibility that she might be responsible for Freyja’s disappearance. As a series of disturbing events unfolds, a cold case investigation is reopened and the intricate threads of past and present start to tangle. Unnur must race to recover the broken memory of what happened all those years ago… or risk losing her own daughter.

Thors puts heart, soul and her powerful gift for mesmeric lyricism into this myth-coated, time-travelling Icelandic stunner which explores the fickleness of memory and a mother’s willingness to do almost anything to protect her child.  As the remnants of buried memories are reignited by disturbing events in the present, we witness Unnur’s battle with guilt, her complex, compromised relationships, and the price she has paid for failing to unravel the secrets of her past. ‘If our lives are stories,’ she says, ‘mine was missing the first hundred pages.’

It’s a haunting, thrilling and atmospheric tale played out against an unforgettable Nordic backdrop where fantastical folklore and mythology have impacted on families for centuries, winter chills are cruel, grass is ice-crystalled, northern lights shoot ‘neon arrows of purple and green’ and even autumn  holds ’an ever-darker darkness.’

Slipping seamlessly between two timelines, tingling with malice and mystery, and all penned in Thors’ incisive and almost poetic prose, Freyja must surely be just the impressive starting point for an exciting new Icelandic talent.
(Zaffre, paperback, £9.99)