Wolf Winter

I have rarely read a book where the style of writing so closely mirrored the physical environment of the story. Wolf Winter is set in the bitter cold of a winter in northern Sweden in the 18th century. The spare, biting prose perfectly matches the bleakness of the surroundings. Not a word is wasted, dialogue is minimal and terse. It is the literary experience of stepping outside into a freezing wind, a wonderful piece of writing. Ostensibly the story concerns a murder, the body of a man is found torn open as if by wolves, but it is soon determined that he been killed by human, not animal agency. Finnish immigrant Maija almost inadvertently finds herself tasked with solving the murder. Already burdened by the suspicions of the insular show more locals towards an outsider, as well as the absence of her wastrel husband and the problem of feeding her two daughters, Maija struggles against the unforgiving climate and the murdered man's family, whose behaviour is distinctly odd, to solve the crime before she herself is condemned by the locals for witchcraft. In addition she has to deal with a priest who has a secret, a bishop with an even bigger secret, and an exiled noble couple with the biggest secret of all. The story is almost incidental to Maija's struggle to survive the hostile environment and the equally hostile locals, this is primarily a story about how people placed under extreme environmental and social pressure cope and survive. It is a gripping read, following Hannah Kent's wonderful Burial Rites, one wonders if there is a new movement in Scandinavian crime fiction brewing, not so much Nordic noir, as something like Nordic climate crime fiction, where the environment is as much as an enemy as the criminals. A great read, highly recommended. show less

The setting for this book - Swedish Lapland - really intrigued me. How people can live there NOW, never mind the early 18th century boggles the mind. Billed as a thriller, it’s got plenty of murder and treachery, but the pace is slow and the menace of a more psychological bent. There’s also a supernatural aspect that irritated me whenever it came up. I mean, living at the end of the earth in the arctic circle isn’t hard enough?

That’s an aspect of the novel that never let up - the realistic portrayal of subsistence living in the extreme north. The details about blizzards, farming, hunting, butchering, starving, frostbite, religious persecution, political scheming and weighing up sacrifices were all sharply rendered. There is no show more village per se, but the people, known to each other as settlers, almost always bond together and do their best to help each other out when the worst happens. That doesn’t mean all is rosy. No, there’s a worm in the heart of this withered blossom and it’s murder. The killing breeds suspicion and superstition and of course most of it falls on the newcomer and healer, Maija. Fear is a terrible thing for us humans. It makes us do the stupidest things.

The way the novel is told is pretty oblique and much of the insight comes from Maija, not that her fellow settlers thank her for it. Every time she comes into their crosshairs she raises reasonable doubt that sets them on the path to the truth. Of course nothing is as it seems and events that appear connected turn out not to be and more than one villain is hiding among them. Many of the main characters are women and the shortage of men (death, desertion and conscription) means that though they are still treated as 2nd class citizens, most of them speak their minds and deal with the harshness of life head on. Dorotea’s fate is particularly heartbreaking.

Majia’s daughter Frederika is also trying to solve the mystery of Erikson’s death. She has a more direct and dangerous reason though; Erikson himself. His ghost follows her and torments her with cryptic remarks and even manages to cut her severely with a knife. I just love how the resident Lapps tell her not to mess with the spirits etc, when she has no choice. And Erikson isn’t the only threat, both Frederika and her mother encounter wolves who aren’t the only ones starving on Blackåsen mountain.

A bit meandering, but written with real bite and an affinity for the darkness that rules Swedish Lapland half the year. show less

Gripping!! Started out as a murder mystery set in 1717 Swedish Lapland. Among a small group of homesteaders, an unpleasant man is murdered. Enter Maija and her family emigrating from Finland; she and an uncle have exchanged properties. Besides the death, there are a mysterious forest fire, disappearance of several folks, including children. The people interact with the local Sami[Lapps]. A mountain seems to exert some kind of sinister pull on the people. Supernatural incidences pile up as the novel progresses, becoming more chilling. Both Maija and daughter Frederika try to solve the mystery. After an unexplained appearance, the girl is gradually drawn into the shamanistic belief system of the Sami. Ostensibly Christian, they still show more cling to some of their old folkways. Maija, her family, and the whole settlement fight the cruelest winter in living memory upon them.

There are red herrings aplenty and twists and turns. When you think you have the story figured out, the author throws something completely unexpected your way. Secrets abound and things are not always what they seem at first glance.

The writing was absolutely gorgeous; I was amazed how the author could project such a dark, mysterious atmosphere full of foreboding and sense of dread; I felt the bleakness of the landscape reflecting the bleakness of the characters was especially well done. I really liked her writing of Maija's coping with the harsh winter and also, the final coming of Spring.

"On the river and lake the snow begins to open. A spruce tree lets fall on the white below the seeds she has hidden in her cones.
Underneath the snow, on the ground, there are things, things long thought dead: flowers in knots, whole branches held in tight buds. They start to tingle and stir....
In a clearing on the mountain's west side the snow moves. It's being torn away from below. A paw breaks through, and a litter of bear cubs peer out from their den. There's a fluttering in the air. It's the small creatures that dare to return: tits and starlings. They dart through the air, hoping to find last year's nests still intact....
The snow is leaving. The mounds sink and settle, pour out and down. It's already down to its first layers: coarse and grainy, so transparent, the ground is almost visible right through.
The river tries to break through her lock. She groans. Down by her outflow she begins to gnaw at the lake ice. Then she pushes through with a scream. Her whole center starts slipping downward, slowly at first, then tearing down....

Highly recommended for that frisson of fear! show less

"Like a silent fall of snow; suddenly, the reader is enveloped... visually acute, skilfully written; it won't easily erase its tracks in the reader's mind." So writes Hilary Mantel in the scare quote on the front cover of this edition.

Cecilia Ekbäck has created a remarkable world in this strange and haunting novel. Part whodunnit, part coming-of-age story, part morality play, set in 1717 Swedish Lapland. Six homesteads are dotted around the looming Blackåsen Mountain. Settlers tell tales of the mountain: it was sacred to the indigenous Lapps before the Swedish Church demanded they renounce their "old ways". People have gone missing. And now two girls have found one of the settlers dead upon it. The other settlers say it must have been show more a wolf.

The girls' family has only just arrived from Ostrobothnia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia. They are Finns. Paavo was a fisherman. Maija has a past too. Their daughters' grisly find launches Maija on a quest for the truth. What wolf wields a rapier?

Secrets reveal themselves like snowdrops. Something unspeakable is happening around Blackåsen. And there are people who want it to stay hidden... show less

When I think of Lappland images of tipis, the mystical, ethereal lights of Aurora Borealis, a landscape covered with snow, a sky painted with all gradients of pink and purple, clothes in vivid hues of blue and red come to my mind. A place where the tales come alive to mingle with the lives of its people. This is Wolf Winter. A tale that is beautiful in its darkness and haunting in its bleakness. Folktales of witchcraft and ghosts emerge with everyday life becoming the blanket upon which one can forge plans of revenge and redemption.
At the heart of the story we find Maija - one of the most fascinating characters in recent literature - her eldest daughter Federika, and the Priest who has more secrets than any. Cecilia Ekbäck's show more protagonists are fleshed out and her beautiful prose leads us into an unforgettable reading experience. Although each character is interesting and extremely well - written, I admit I have a soft spot for our Priest whose name becomes known towards the end of the novel.
I don't consider myself a slow reader, but I deliberately read this novel as slowly as I could to savour each page. This is one of the rare cases where I hope for a novel to become a film. A dark, beautiful masterpiece in the hands of a Scandinavian director. Somehow, while I was reading, I kept picturing Finland's Peter Franzén as the Priest.
Such novels are hard to find these days. Do yourself a favour and dive right into it. It will not disappoint you. show less

Sensational!

From previous reviews I mentally girded my loins for the read saying to myself, 'really do I have the staying power this?' Wow!
Ekbäck's word smithing builds a wonderful pictography of Sweden's forests and marshes of 1717, alive with all sorts of smells and sounds and colours, from the starkness of winter to the full light of the sun.
The people are real and palpable, with just that touch of distance, that aloneness, that reflects the hugeness of their physical surroundings. Yet intimacy comes from their stories, Those of Maija, Frederika, the priest, all of them as various revelations are made. Maija and her family, the last to come to Blackåsen Mountain are the catalysts, pivotal to the action that follows.
Murder, death, show more the priest, the fear of the Laplanders, the harsh winter, all escalate towards a culminating spiral of intrigue. Part mystery, part mystique encompassing political turmoil and the demands of the King.
The spirit of Ericksson the murdered man communicates with Frederika. Her dead grandmother seems to give her advice, or is it the memory of her grandmother. Sometimes the lines blur. Ericksson tells her to find her path. Frederika is an old woman in a child's body. She see hears and partly understands. Frederika, coming into her womanly body, coming into her gifts.
And then there's the wolves.
...and the secrets pile up and draw you further into this web of intrigue.
I needn't have worried. Wolf Winter grabbed me from the opening paragraph and never let me go until the end. Secrets and surprises, plots within plots, evil allowed to flourish--for the greater good...and a woman who is drawn to ask the questions and cannot let it be!
A remarkable novel.

A NetGalley ARC show less

1717, Northern Sweden is a harsh place to live, almost on the edge of civilisation. Maija and her family have moved across from Finland to take over the homestead of her uncle close to Blackasen mountain. However on their first day Maija's daughters find the murdered corpse of one of their neighbours and the family hears tales of strange happenings on the mountain which leaves all the people in fear. The harvest fails and the winter is harsh so the settlers, Swedish, Finn and Lapp, all move to Settler Town for protection. It seems that their fears have followed them.

Maija's husband has to move away for work so Maija is left with her two daughters, Frederika and Dorotea. Maija has powers that could be interpreted as dangerous and her show more daughter has inherited them but the family wants to lay bare the secrets of the community. Despite its isolation Settler Town could also be very influential in the politics of Sweden and there are many secrets that need to remain hidden.

Apparently this book was subject to a serious bidding war from publishers and it is easy to see why. The story is very clever and the characters are well-drawn but are not defined as good or bad. Whilst Maija is the central character there are aspects of her that are not made clear until the very end and ask questions. The link between life and dream swirls around and the reader almost gets lost in the beauty of the writing and the harshness of reality intrudes. This is a magical book which draws the reader in and envelops them. show less