Images of Icefall

A little while ago, I wrote about the soundtrack I listened to while writing Icefall. I mentioned then that I would also like to talk about the images that I had in my mind when writing the book. If you haven’t read Icefall, you might want to stop here, because I think it’s important – and many readers prefer – to fill a book with their own mental imagery. But if you’ve read the book, and you want to see what I had in mind, read on. It might be interesting to see how our visions of the story compare.

Icefall takes place entirely within the confines of a small steading located in a remote fjord. As the book opens, Solveig stands at the edge of cliff looking down on the water.

But it is winter, so perhaps more like this:

Within the steading walls, the characters live in a traditional Scandinavian hall, which I always imagined to be a small, rustic outpost.

From the outside:

And from the inside:

The steading is situated between “towering mountains and a frozen sea.” In the book, I describe the mountains as being like a procession of marching trolls.

But what Solveig sees…

The hall is also surrounded by woods, dense and forbidding regardless of the season.

Above the hall looms the glacier.

While a runestone stands silently in the woods below.

And lastly, here is an image I only found recently. It didn’t inform the character of Solveig, but I love that it includes a raven.