Author Interview: Thilde Kold Holdt
By Jennifer Kyte
Read our review of Northern Wrath here
Hi Thilde! Thanks for answering our questions. First off, Northern Wrath is a tour de force – congratulations.
I’m going to divide the interview into 2 parts. One will be aimed at the general reader about the book and what inspired you to write it. The second part will be aimed at writers and will be more technical.
PART ONE: ABOUT THE BOOK
1) For those who haven’t heard about it, can you give a brief summary of the story?
Northern Wrath is the story of one village’s attempt to save their beliefs, and in turn, their gods. There are gods and giants, fights and blood. This is the end of the Vikings, told from their perspective.
2) Can you talk about what inspired you to write about Vikings?
I was given some advice by a teacher at the end of my Creative Writing Bachelor to explore my roots in my next writing project. As a Dane having lived abroad most of my life, I didn’t quite know what my roots were but I often introduced myself as a Viking, and I wondered if there was something deeper there. Searching for a piece of Denmark to which I could relate, I found the Vikings.
3) Unlike fantasies set in imaginary worlds, yours in set in history. How important is the physical land to you and this story?
Originally, I set out to write historical fiction, but I wanted to write the story from the point of view of the Norsemen. Their society was centred so closely around their belief system that if I did not fully embrace and accept the reality of their beliefs in their gods and the nine worlds it would not truly be the story of the Vikings.
As soon as I began to write about real gods and magic, I was in the realm of fantasy of course, and while I think The Hanged God trilogy has a lot to offer even for people who don’t usually read fantasy, it is very much an epic fantasy.
To me the key was that everything fit together. The world (or the nine worlds of Norse belief) was my starting point. Then came the characters who fit into that world. The conflict too was born out of the place, as was the magic. To me, it all begins with a place, and so, the physical land is central to my process as a writer.
4) Some of the language you use reads almost in a foreign (I guess Danish) rhythm or structure. Was that deliberate? It gave me a strong vibe of being there.
I’m glad you picked up on this, and yes it was very much deliberate. Where possible I kept my thoughts in Danish while writing, and in editing too I worked to make certain sentences sound more Norse. This was done to constantly remind the reader with subtle clues that this is a different culture from what they know.
This is not a Christian perspective and this is not an anglo-saxon narrative. We follow people of a pre-Christian faith, and who hence have a very different culture than we’re used to seeing from this time period.
In my writing I focused a lot on how to immerse a reader into the culture of the Vikings. I didn’t want to over-explain things in info-dumps, but I also didn’t want readers to fill in too many blanks, in case they would pull from Christian narratives, which would not fit the world of Northern Wrath. One of the ways I did this was by having the story itself use phrases and sometimes sentence structures that are more Scandinavian in nature. Equally I also tried to mostly use words of Norse origin, limiting my use of words with Latin and Greek origins.
5) During your research, you sailed on a real Viking ship – what was that like? How did your experience flavour your writing?
It was an amazing experience, and I still sail with the ship whenever I can. As to how it flavoured my writing, there are the obvious things like understanding the possible manoeuvres of a large Viking warship and knowing every part of the ship intimately, but there is also something that surprised me.
The ship I sail with has a crew of 60 sailors. That is a lot of people. There is no privacy on a ship like that. There is no bathroom door you can close to be alone. Everyone sits shoulder to shoulder, and we sleep that way too. You’re always surrounded by people and that is what truly hit me. Because this was how the Vikings lived; never alone. It takes a certain kind of person to strive in such circumstances. After my first sail, I came back to my story with a new understanding of the close bonds that form between people who live in such close proximity, and as a result, with a better understanding of my characters.
6) There are a lot of characters in the story. Do you have any favourites?
I know I’m not supposed to keep favourites, but… As a writer I have a lot of arguments with characters I write often. I know them really well too, but side characters with short appearances make my mind work a little harder and I enjoy dipping into these points of views. So, if I had to pick, then Thora, is a minor character who inspires me a lot. She is the strongest character I have met in this narrative (and there are a lot of strong characters so that’s saying a lot). In a different story she would have been the main character, but then she wouldn’t have been my favourite.
7) All the Viking characters have a fylgja (an animal version of themselves, a bit like a daemon in His Dark Materials) – what is your fylgja? And have you ever seen yours? (for those who haven’t read the book – if you see your fylgja it means your life is in danger).
Thankfully, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my fylgja. However, I do have a lot of strange animal encounters. Either I have a whole army of fylgjur watching out for me, and in that case, they have saved me from mortal danger more times than I can count, or, more likely, my fylgja is entirely out of this world. A dragon, perhaps, so that I will know for certain the danger I’m in when it finally does make its appearance.
PART TWO: ABOUT WRITING
1) How did you go about plotting the entire trilogy? Did you outline it all before you started, or has the plot developed as you wrote it? Was it a struggle to get the overall arc and the individual story arcs to fall into place satisfactorily?
I outlined the story chapter by chapter, but the story and plot also evolved a lot. New characters appeared and storylines changed, so I constantly had to adapt my chapter plan. Keeping the individual story arcs in place was less of a problem for me because a lot of the characters were born out of plot necessity. Siv, Buntrugg and Finn all appeared in the page about halfway through my first draft. Each one of them gained point of view chapters because the overall story needed their perspectives both in order to have the right scope, and in order for me to be able to tell the full story.
2) Please describe your journey to publication.
It required a lot of waiting. It took me a while to find an agent, and after that, my agent and I worked on the manuscript for over a year before I finally signed a three-book deal with my publisher, Solaris. In fact, it took so long that about a month after I signed the deal, I finished writing the last book in the trilogy.
I’d love to go into more details but we would still be here tomorrow, so I’m going to refer those interested to two blog posts I wrote when I could still remember everything vividly. The first details my journey to getting an agent (https://www.thildekoldholdt.com/post/the-path-to-get-a-literary-agent). The second details my journey to getting published (https://www.thildekoldholdt.com/post/my-path-to-get-published).
The blog posts explain everything I did; how long the process took, how many people I contacted, what kind of responses I received, and some advice too. So, for any writers who are approaching the querying part of the process, I would recommend a read through of those to be better equipped for what’s waiting out there.
3) Did you experience any hesitation from prospective publishers about the 600 page length, or even find it rejected because of it? Unpublished writers are often warned to keep debuts under a certain word count. Even for a fantasy Northern Wrath is longer than the average debut.
Oh yes, definitely. A smarter debut author would have submitted a shorter story, but I was always too ambitious for my own good.
I’ve had both agents and publishers tell me that it was too long. During the first round of submissions to publishers, it was also longer than it currently is. 100 000 words longer to be exact. I talked a lot about the length of it with my agent, and he assured me of two things. (1) quality is what really matters, for length can be fixed but lack of quality can’t. (2) past a certain point it doesn’t matter.
For reference, I would tell a debut epic fantasy author to aim between 110 000 and 130 000 words. Shorter and you might have to add words (I know writers who have been in this situation, and it’s tough to make the added words matter and not just be fillers). Longer and it may scare both agents and editors.
4) Do you have any advice for aspiring writers, particularly those tackling large books or trilogies?
Knowing where you’re going is crucial. I think this is especially true for larger works because there is a lot of room to be blown off-course.
About a month into my first draft I began to write one of the last chapters of the entire trilogy. I kept writing on it, on and off. Having a solid ending meant that no matter how much the story changed, I always knew exactly where I needed to end up and how my characters had to evolve too. It kept me grounded and allowed room for things to change and be fluid.
5) How important was studying on the MA at Bath Spa to your progression as a writer? Would you recommend formally studying writing?
For me, personally, the academic formula has always been a good fit, so it made sense to learn writing in an academic setting. This is why I decided to study Creative Writing already at the Bachelor level. I couldn’t write, I wanted to learn, and academia suited me. By the end of the Bachelor I had seen huge improvements, but I still didn’t feel like I was done learning, so I went on to do an MA. For me, the MA was a time during which I really honed the skills I had built during the Bachelor and a time for me to expand my toolbox and start to use the learned tools on a project, which eventually turned into Northern Wrath.
I can say with no embellishments required, that I learned to write entirely in University by studying Creative Writing. I had written very little beforehand and honestly, I didn’t know where to start.
For the readers out there considering the academic path to learn writing… If the academic structure suits you then I think an MA can be hugely beneficial. Being surrounded by fellow writers, both published and unpublished and being able to discuss writing techniques was certainly a big help for me in my development as a writer. Ultimately it depends on what kind of person you are and how you learn things.
6) Was there anything you found particularly difficult when writing Northern Wrath? If so, how did you overcome those difficulties?
There was one thing that stopped me from being able to write anything at all. It nearly ended my whole writing career, before it had truly begun, and that… was my quest to find an agent.
At the time I was writing the second book in the series (which was later merged with the first to make Northern Wrath), but the process of searching for an agent was so dire that it made it impossible for me to continue to write. I lost hope.
After being in direct contact with some agents, I had these dark moments, where I contemplated whether I even wanted to be in business with these people, even though I love writing and editing. I thought hard about what the business side of things was doing to me and seriously considered switching career paths because it was tearing me down. I kept going, and I’m glad I did, for I eventually met my agent, Jamie Cowen, who helped me better my novel.
I think when writers talk difficulties in writing, we tend to focus on the actual craft of writing, and sure I had bumps there too, but what truly hindered my writing, was everything outside of the craft itself. The business side of things nearly made me want to give up the dream career, and that was not something for which I was prepared. I had assumed that since I knew I could write, I should of course be able to get an agent and get published, but there was a whole world out there for which I was poorly prepared.
7) Have you ever received any tough criticism that has helped (or hindered) you in the long-run?
From publishers my agent and I originally submitted, came some criticism. My story was too slow, and needed to be sped up, which would effectively change the entire pace.
It was after this advice that my agent and I decided to cut out over 100 000 words from the story (more than one third of it). It was not a fun task initially, but once I started to take things out, the prose became a lot tighter and the story flowed much better. Even I could see the improvements, and the final pace in Northern Wrath is one that I have tried to emulate since. It’s a pace that both retains some of the melancholy that I originally had, and also pushes events to the front.
That’s it!
