The Mercies

When a storm kills forty fishermen off Vardø in 1617, Maren Magnusdatter loses her father and brother, and the surviving women must keep their community alive. The independence they develop soon attracts dangerous scrutiny. A commissioner arrives with experience of witch trials and a determination to impose his religious authority. His young wife, Ursa, encounters a way of living she has never known, and her growing connection with Maren becomes a source of both possibility and risk. As suspicion tightens around the island, ordinary acts of survival take on threatening meanings. The women's private attachment unfolds within a community increasingly vulnerable to a man's certainty that he has discovered evil.