Set in late 10th century France and Wales, The Viking Hostage tells the intertwining stories of three women living through turbulent times of Viking raids, Christian conversions, and struggles for power across Europe. Sigrid is a Norwegian sold into slavery in the French Limousin, stubbornly clinging to her pagan identity. Aina is a rich heiress, betrothed as a child to a man who does not offer her the adventure she craves. Adalmode is the daughter of the Viscount of Limoges, whose father has forbidden her passion for a young man imprisoned in his dungeon for a great crime. Their stories question and tangle with the nature of human nobility and of freedom in the highly stratified, unequal, and often brutal society of early medieval Europe.
The initial spark for my novel, The Viking Hostage, was a couple of sentences in a Chronicle written by a monk, Ademar of
Chabannes, in 11th century France. Ademar described the kidnap of
Emma of Segur by Vikings in the year 1000, from a monastery on the coast near
Poitiers and her return to her husband, the Viscount of Limoges, three years
later in exchange for a huge ransom paid in silver. The Viscount had to
‘appropriate’ some of the silver from the monastery where Ademar lived so I
suppose that rankled with him and his fellow monks. I immediately started
wondering what happened to Emma during those three years.
At first I thought her captors would take her to
Norway and I began researching 10th century Norway and Vikings. Then
I considered that perhaps she would be kept nearer France to enable a quick
turnaround when the Viscount managed to get together the ransom, so perhaps she
was held on the Isle of Man which was a Viking stronghold. But then I realised
that most of the islands around the coast of Pembrokeshire in Wales where I
live were also occupied by Vikings and well known to me, so why not have my
captive Viscountess on a Welsh island that is a fictional mix of the islands of
Caldey and Skomer. I’m very short-sighted and I liked the idea of writing a
medieval character with myopia and this became Emma’s husband Viscount Guy. The
story of Guy’s sister Adalmode runs parallel to Emma’s, as does that of a third
woman, the Norwegian Sigrid Thorolfsdottir.
I wanted to write a novel about Vikings from a female
perspective and to combat some of the stereotypical ideas about them. We can’t help but be impressed by the
Vikings’ adventurous spirit and their achievements as seaborne explorers. I
tried to write about them as fully rounded people, rather than two-dimensional
villains: as tender and funny, as well as fearsome pagan warriors. There is
evidence that Scandinavian women were on some of the Viking ships. The people
of the fjords, as the Welsh called them, were traders, farmers and mercenaries,
often integrating with the other cultures they encountered, as well as being raiders
and slavers. Traces of the Vikings in Wales are in place names especially islands
and coastal ports, in a few references in the Icelandic Sagas, in recent
archaeological digs at Anglesey, and in the Welsh Annals written at St David’s
Cathedral where those monks had good cause to complain about them since Vikings
raided that cathedral eleven times.
I was surprised and delighted to find The Viking Hostage topping several
bestseller lists in the Amazon Australia Kindle Store this month. I always enjoy hearing what readers have to say about
my novels because each of them imagines the story in their own slightly
different way and I’m often surprised by what my words have conjured in their
minds. There are both conscious and unconscious
processes at work in writing, and you have to trust to that. It’s easy to lose
impetus and self-confidence and start to doubt the value of what you are doing.
You are working alone so much as a writer. When I was writing my first
novel I did an MA in Creative Writing in Wales and my fellow writers on the
course were important critical friends in the writing process. Now I belong to
the Parisot Writers Group in France and continue to find it very helpful to
discuss writing with other writers when I’m in the thick of doing it. Writing a
novel is a long haul and you need all the encouragement you can find.
My novels
are a weave of researched facts and imagining in the gaps between those facts. Alongside
historical research I use maps, objects in museums and visiting places to help
me flesh out my characters’ experiences. In writing The Viking Hostage I was aiming to create a world that the reader
could step into, encountering the sights, sounds, colours and smells, joys and
anxieties of the 10th century.
Tracey Warr
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About the Author
Tracey Warr was born in London and currently lives in Wales and
France. She studied English Literature at Oxford University and holds a PhD in
Art History. She worked as an art curator and university lecturer in art
history and theory before starting to write fiction six years ago. She
undertook an MA in Creative Writing at University of Wales Trinity St Davids in
Carmarthen. Her first historical novel Almodis
(Impress, 2011) was set in early medieval France and Spain. It was shortlisted
for the Impress Prize, presented in the Rome Film Festival Book Initiative and
won a Santander Research Award. Her second novel The Viking Hostage (Impress, 2014) is currently on Amazon Australia
Kindle bestseller lists. She was recently awarded a Literature Wales Writer’s
Bursary for work on her third novel about Princess Nest and King Henry I, set
in 12th century Wales and England, which will be published next
year. She also received an Author’s Foundation Award from the Society of
Authors this year for a biography she is working on about three French
noblewomen, three sisters, who held power in 11th century Toulouse,
Carcassonne, Barcelona and the Pyrenees. Tracey is a Book Reviews Editor for Historical Novels Review and also writes
art book reviews for Times Higher
Education and New Welsh Review.
Her most recent publication on contemporary art is Remote Performances in Nature and Architecture (Ashgate, 2015).Find our more at http://traceywarrwriting.com and find Tracey on Twitter at @TraceyWarr1
Jonathan Posner is an English creative communications and marketing consultant, writer and author. As well as three full-scale musicals, several short stories and a one-act play, he is now writing a Tudor trilogy. Jonathan is married with two adult sons and lives in Windsor, Berkshire. When not writing, he skis, runs, plays squash and rows on the River Thames, and is a regular presenter on Marlow FM radio. You can find out more at Jonathan's website jonathanposnerauthor.com and find him on Facebook and Twitter @jonathanposner.
