The Witch of Strandir

A Daughter of the Storm

Strandir was no place for the weak. The people who lived in its harsh embrace were carved from the same stone as the cliffs that surrounded them—hard, weathered, unyielding. Life was a cycle of hunger and survival, of cold winters and cruel seas.

Katla was born into that world. A night child, her first cries lost in the howling storm that rattled the wooden walls of her mother’s cottage. Her mother, Signy, was a healer, a woman whose knowledge of herbs and runes made her both revered and feared. She was said to speak with ravens and know the language of the waves.

The people of Drangavík tolerated her because they needed her. When a fisherman’s leg turned black with rot, it was Signy who saved him. When a child wasted away with fever, it was her hands that brought them back from the brink.

But gratitude was a fickle thing.

The first time Katla saw the true face of fear, she was ten years old. A young man had died mysteriously in his sleep, and suspicion fell upon her mother. The villagers came with torches and sharp words, demanding justice for the unnatural death.

They called Signy a witch.

Katla watched, wide-eyed, as they dragged her mother from their home, tying her wrists with iron shackles. They did not give her a trial. They did not even let her speak. They led her to the cliffs, where the sea roared hungrily below, and pushed her from the edge.

Katla hid among the rocks, frozen in terror, as her mother’s final words carried through the night.

*"The sea will remember me."*

And so, it did.

From that day forward, Katla was alone.

The Witch’s Return

Years passed, and the girl the villagers had scorned grew into a woman they feared.

Katla lived on the edges of society, in the old cottage where her mother had once worked her healing magic. She spoke little, but the land spoke to her. The wind carried whispers, the ravens watched her with knowing eyes, and the sea… the sea never stopped calling.

She learned the old ways.

She gathered herbs from the mountains and read the bones of birds for answers. The runes her mother had once carved into driftwood now rested in Katla’s hands, and the villagers, despite their hatred, still came knocking on her door when misfortune fell upon them.

A fisherman’s wife, desperate for a child.

A young boy, trembling with fever.

A husband, lost at sea, whose widow begged for news of his fate.

They spat at her shadow, but they needed her all the same.

Then, one winter night, the storm came.

The wind screamed like a dying thing, and the waves devoured the shoreline. In the morning, when the world was still and the snow fell soft as breath, the wreckage of a ship lay scattered along the coast. Among the debris and the frozen corpses, one man still clung to life.

Katla found him half-buried in the snow, his skin blue with cold, a deep wound carved into his chest. He was unconscious, his lips cracked, but when she pressed her fingers to his neck, a pulse beat weakly beneath her touch.

She should have left him.

But she did not.

The Stranger

His name was Magnus.

At least, that was what he told her when he woke, three days after she had dragged him from the shore and placed him by the fire in her home. His first breath had been a gasp, his grey eyes darting wildly around the unfamiliar space.

"Where am I?" he rasped.

"Alive," she replied.

It took weeks for him to regain his strength. In that time, Katla learned little about him. He was a trader, he claimed, a man whose ship had been caught in the storm while sailing toward Norway. His crew had not been so fortunate.

But there was something in his gaze, something that flickered too quickly when she spoke of magic and the old gods. He was hiding something.

And yet, against her better judgment, she began to trust him.

Magnus was different from the villagers. He did not recoil at the sight of her runes, nor did he cross himself when she spoke of things beyond the veil. He watched her with curiosity, with something that almost resembled admiration.

She had spent so many years alone.

And so, when he kissed her beneath the northern lights, she let herself believe.

The Betrayal

Spring came, and with it, betrayal.

Katla returned home one evening to find her cottage torn apart. Her mother’s books burned in the fire, her sacred runes shattered. The air reeked of betrayal, of cold iron and cruelty.

In the doorway stood Magnus.

But he was not alone.

Behind him, the men of Drangavík waited, their faces twisted with triumph and loathing.

"It is time the witch is dealt with," the chieftain sneered.

Magnus would not meet her eyes.

Katla did not struggle when they bound her hands in iron. She did not scream as they dragged her through the village, through the same streets where her mother had once walked to her death.

She did not beg.

They led her to the cliffs, the same cliffs where the sea had taken her mother.

And in that moment, she made them a promise.

"I curse this land," she said, her voice steady as the wind howled around them. "For every drop of my blood that falls, your crops will wither. Your fish will flee. The sea will never rest."

The chieftain struck her.

But the sky had already darkened.

The storm came with a fury none had ever seen, and as lightning split the heavens, Katla laughed.

Then, she leapt.

The Haunting of Strandir

They thought she was dead.

But the sea does not claim its own so easily.

The people of Drangavík began to suffer. Their food spoiled, their livestock fell ill. The sea, once their lifeblood, turned against them. The waves devoured boats, and the fish were nowhere to be found.

And then, they saw her.

Standing on the cliffs in the dead of night, her hair whipping in the wind. Her laughter carried through the storm, a cruel, beautiful thing.

One by one, those who had condemned her fell. The chieftain’s son was found floating in the harbor. Magnus—traitor, lover, fool—wandered the cliffs, whispering her name like a prayer.

The villagers knew what they had to do.

The Offering

On the longest night of the year, they climbed the cliffs.

They carried torches and offerings—gold, bones, whispered apologies. They called her name.

And in the darkness, she answered.

"I will not forgive," she whispered.

But she would rest.

The sea calmed. The fish returned.

But even now, when the wind howls and the waves rise high, the people of Strandir say her name.

And they remember.