Burial Rites (42 page)

Actum ut supra.

B. Blöndal, R. Olsen, A. Árnason

From the Magistrate’s Book of Húnavatn District, 1830

AUTHOR’S NOTE

WHILE THIS NOVEL IS A
work of fiction, it is based on real events. Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last person to be executed in Iceland, convicted for her role in the murders of Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson on the night between the 13th and 14th of March 1828, at Illugastadir (Illugastaðir), on the Vatnsnes Peninsula, North Iceland. In 1934, Agnes and Fridrik Sigurdsson’s (Friðrik Sigurðsson’s) remains were removed from Thrístapar (Þrístapar) to the churchyard at Tjörn, where they share a grave. Natan Ketilsson’s grave in the same churchyard is no longer marked. Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir (Sigríður Guðmundsdóttir) was sent to a Copenhagen textile prison, where she is believed to have died after a few years. There was, for some time, a popular local myth that claimed she was rescued from the prison by a wealthy man and went on to live a long life. While this is untrue, it is indicative of public sympathy towards her in the years after these events.

My interpretation of the Illugastaðir murders and executions is informed by many years of research, during which I have accessed ministerial records, parish archives, censuses, local histories and publications, and have spoken with many Icelanders. While some historical characters have been invented, omitted, or had their names altered out of necessity, most, including Björn Blöndal, Assistant Reverend Thorvardur (Þorvarður) Jónsson, most members of the
family at Kornsá, and Agnes’s parents and siblings, are taken from historical records.

No offence is intended towards living relatives of any character whose name I have borrowed in the service of telling Agnes’s story.

Many of the letters, documents and extracts presented at the beginning of each chapter have been translated and adapted from original sources. The ruins of Natan’s workshop still stand at Illugastaðir today, and a stone plaque marks the site of execution at Þrístapar. All place names used in this novel are true to life, and many of the farms referenced by Agnes and other characters remain working farms to this day.

Many known and established facts about Agnes’s life and the murders have been reproduced in this novel, and events have either been drawn directly from the record, or are the result of speculation; they are fictional likelihoods. The family at the farm of Kornsá did hold Agnes in custody after she was held at Stóra-Borg, and Agnes chose Assistant Reverend Þórvarður Jónsson to act as her priest in her last days. The nature of their relationship, including their first mysterious meeting and Agnes’s dream, is drawn from local accounts and histories of the area. The high level of literacy shown by the characters is historically accurate. Icelanders have had almost universal literacy rates since the end of the eighteenth century.

I am indebted to the research of scholars such as Gísli Águst Gunnlaugsson, Ólöf Garðarsdóttir, Loftur Guttormson, Gunnar Thorvaldsen, Sören Edvinsson, Richard Tomasson, and Sigurður Magnússon, who have published extensively on subjects such as foster children and paupers, infant mortality, illegitimacy and kinship networks in nineteenth-century Iceland. I have also drawn on many nineteenth-century journals by foreign travellers to Iceland, including those of Ebenezer Henderson, John Barrow, Alexander Bryson, Arthur Dillon, William Hooker, Niels Horrebow, Sir
George Mackenzie and Uno Von Troil.
Húnavetningur
,
Sagnaþættir úr Húnaþing
, and
Hunavatnsþing Brandsstaðaannáll
also proved to be invaluable publications.

Several noteworthy books and articles have been written about the Illugastaðir murders, and the life (and death) of Natan Ketilsson, including
Enginn Má Undan Líta
by Guðlaugur Guðmundsson,
Yfirvaldið
by Þorgeir Þorgeirsson,
Dauði Natans Ketilssonar
by Gunnar S. Þorleifsson,
Dauði Natans Ketilssonar
by Guðbrandur Jónsson,
Dauði Natans Ketilssonar
by Eline Hoffman (translated into Icelandic by Halldór Friðjónsson),
Friðþæging
by Tómas Guðmundsson and
Agnes of Friðrik fyrir og eftir dauðann
by Sigrún Huld Þorgrímsdóttir. While wonderfully useful, some of these publications contradict one another, and some hold a common view of Agnes as ‘an inhumane witch, stirring up murder’. This novel has been written to supply a more ambiguous portrayal of this woman.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I AM INDEBTED TO MANY
people who have assisted me with the research and writing of this book. My sincere thanks to Knútur Óskarsson and his mother for your generosity and coffee, assistance with translation and all the late night conversations at Ósar. Meeting you both remains a singular moment of synchronicity and good fortune. Thank you to Jón Torfason and your fellow archivists at Þjóðskjalasafn Íslands for your assistance and enthusiasm, and for finding me the original letters from the trial. Thank you to Guðmundur Jóhannsson for your vastly useful letter. To the librarians and staff at the Þjóðminjasafn, Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Kringlan Library, Árbæjarsafn and Glumbær, thank you for your patience and assistance.

To my ‘Icelandic family’ –
þakka þér kærlega fyrir
. Without you this novel could never have been written. My love and gratitude to dear Pétur Björnsson, Regína Gunnarsdóttir, Hera Birgisdóttir, Halldór Sigurðsson, Sylvía Dögg Gunnarsdóttir and María Reynisdóttir, for your kindness, spare beds and generosity. I am also grateful to the many other Icelanders I have met who have contributed to this novel in strange and various ways. I hope you see this novel as the dark love letter to Iceland I intend it to be.

Thanks to those at Flinders University, especially Ruth Starke, who has supported me since the very beginning. Thank you to
my early readers, Kylie Cardell and Kalinda Ashton, and to Kate Douglas, David Sornig and Bec Starford for your friendship and the opportunities you have given me.

To Geraldine Brooks, for your sage observations and mentorship – thank you so much. To the Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award, the SA Writers’ Centre and to Peter Bishop, Valerie Parv, Patrick Allington and Mark Macleod for your generous comments: thank you.

I’m ever so grateful to the marvellous Pippa Masson and dear Annabel Blay at Curtis Brown Australia. Thank you to Gordon Wise, Kate Cooper and colleagues at Curtis Brown UK, and to Dan Lazar at Writers House. To Emma Rafferty, Sophie Jonathan, Amanda Brower and Jo Jarrah for your keen eyes and considered suggestions – thank you. To my wonderful publishers, Alex Craig and Paul Baggaley at Picador, and Judy Clain at Little, Brown, thank you for believing in this book.

Finally, my most heartfelt thanks go to Pam, Alan and Briony for your love and constancy, and for caring about Agnes Magnúsdóttir as much as I do. And last, but never least: thank you to Angharad, for never doubting, and for fortifying me every day, every hour.

About Hannah Kent

Hannah Kent was born in Adelaide in 1985. As a teenager she travelled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange, where she first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. Hannah is the co-founder and deputy editor of Australian literary journal
Kill Your Darlings
, and is completing her PhD at Flinders University. In 2011 she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award.
Burial Rites
is her first novel.

First published 2013 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

Copyright © Hannah Kent 2013

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Kent, Hannah.

Burial rites / Hannah Kent.

9781742612829 (pbk.)

Magnúsdóttir, Agnes—Fiction.

Murder—Iceland—Fiction.

A823.4

EPUB format: 9781743287910

Quotations from
The Icelandic Burial Hymn
and
The Way of the Cross
sourced from the English translation originally published in 1913 in
The Passion-Hymns of Iceland
by Charles V. Pilcher, London: Robert Scott, Roxburghe House. The hymns were originally written by Hallgrimur Petursson.

Quotations from the
Laxdæla Saga
sourced from the translation by Magnús Magnússon, first published in 1969 by Penguin Classics, London, and reproduced with the kind permission of the publisher. The original author of the saga is unknown – it was written in 1245.

The line from the
Laxdæla Saga
, ‘I was worst to the one I loved best’, translated by the author.

Typeset by Midland Typesetters Australia

Cover design by Sandy Cull

Cartographic art by Laurie Whiddon, Map Illustrations

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