Nicola Griffith
Writers are shamen: we travel to unknown places and bring back maps. I write to find out and then to share what I've learnt.
So HILD is my answer to a question: how, fourteen hundred years ago, in a time when might was right--a culture of illiterate, petty warlords--did the second daughter of a widow, hunted and homeless, become the towering figure we know today as St Hilda of Whitby? How did she midwife English literature, train five bishops, and host and facilitate the Synod that changed the course of history?
Essentially, it's my response to the ridiculous assertion (unstated but nonetheless usually obvious and woven into the deepest fabric of our culture) that women are less than human, that in times past we allowed ourselves to be subservient chattel, or that women only make their mark through sex.
Hild never uses sex as a weapon or means of persuasion. She is extraordinary, yes, but extraordinary within the constraints of her time (or, should I say, the constraints suggested by current interpretations of what we like to call history). But she does not--nor does any person or event in the book--contravene what is known to be known. Young Hild has no special powers, she doesn't use a sword or perform miracles.
So my inspiration is changing the world: rewriting the past in order to recast the present and steer the future.
So HILD is my answer to a question: how, fourteen hundred years ago, in a time when might was right--a culture of illiterate, petty warlords--did the second daughter of a widow, hunted and homeless, become the towering figure we know today as St Hilda of Whitby? How did she midwife English literature, train five bishops, and host and facilitate the Synod that changed the course of history?
Essentially, it's my response to the ridiculous assertion (unstated but nonetheless usually obvious and woven into the deepest fabric of our culture) that women are less than human, that in times past we allowed ourselves to be subservient chattel, or that women only make their mark through sex.
Hild never uses sex as a weapon or means of persuasion. She is extraordinary, yes, but extraordinary within the constraints of her time (or, should I say, the constraints suggested by current interpretations of what we like to call history). But she does not--nor does any person or event in the book--contravene what is known to be known. Young Hild has no special powers, she doesn't use a sword or perform miracles.
So my inspiration is changing the world: rewriting the past in order to recast the present and steer the future.
More Answered Questions
jo
asked
Nicola Griffith:
hi. i am a huge fan. i mean to teach The Blue Place or Slow River in the fall. your lesbian characters come from brokenness. aud torvingen, also, gets broken quite a bit more in the course of the series. how do you see the relation between being a lesbian and having endured (and keep on enduring) terrible pain?
Ami
asked
Nicola Griffith:
In Hild, the main character is considered by many to have supernatural powers of prediction, but you make it clear that she's using her acute observations of the world around her to make these predictions. (Sort of a medieval Sherlock??) Is this a writerly invention, or is it based on something you found in your research?
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more