07/10/2024
Signum Press welcomes Mary Dockray-Miller and her novel Freyja's Garden to the Collaboratory!
One third of the way through the Old English poem Beowulf (lines 1063-1159), the main characters listen to a bard tell a cryptic tale of a feud between two tribes, the Danes and the Frisians. An enigmatic figure in the story is the Danish princess Hildeburh, who marries the Frisian prince Finn to "pledge peace" between the tribes. The Beowulf version of the story focuses on the men and the battles and elides the crucial figure of Hildeburh, who eventually loses her brother, husband, and son in the fighting that erupts after her marriage. This novel is the fictional story of her life. There is no precedent in Beowulf for most of the action of the novel, although it is accurate in its historical detail and nothing in the novel contradicts the information included in the Old English poem. Set in fifth century northern Europe in a culture of Viking ships, named swords, and subsistence-level agriculture, Hildeburh is here the heroine of her own story. Freyja's Garden is similar in concept to Madeline Miller's Circe (2019) or Clare North's Ithaca (2022) in that it is a fictional expansion of a small section of a canonical text that re-centers the plot around a female character.
The Signum Collaboratory brings you a new and immersive creative experience. As a member of our community, not only will you discover fascinating analysis and original stories as they emerge, but you will get the chance to participate in their development.
