This story takes place in the first half of the tenth century AD. It opens in Limfjord, Jutland, in Denmark. A scattering of Old Norse words flavor the text and are gathered in a glossary at the end. Old Norse used some letters English does not use. The sound at the beginning of thigh, for example, is represented by þ, so the word þing (“assembly”) was pronounced much like the English word thing. The sound at the beginning of thy, on the other hand, is represented by ð, and in this story you see it in the name of the god Óðinn. I am inconsistent about using these other letters, though; I prefer to spell Thor and all names that start with Thor with an initial th to make sure they are easily recognized.
Many vowels of Old Norse were written with diacritics over a letter familiar to us, such as ø, á, å. Some of these vowels don’t occur in English. Further, even some letters we easily recognize are not always pronounced as we might expect (so written f can sound like [f] or [v]). I encourage you, then, to relax about the pronunciations and simply enjoy the sight of the words, allowing them to play in your mind as you wish. Alternatively, you could Google “recordings Old Norse” and visit a few sites—whose authority I cannot vouch for, however. And if you are a (budding) linguist, you could consult one of several fine books, such as The Nordic Languages: An International History of the North Germanic Languages, Volume 2.
Further, in Old Norse there was a case system, so nouns had endings that told their role in a sentence. For example, the root of the word for Norway was Nóreg, but if it was the subject of the sentence, it would be said Nóregr. In this book, however, I use the root form throughout, because I feared the reader would find it strange that most proper nouns ended in r.
Finally, Brigid calls her language Gaelic, even though Irish people today call it Irish. I do this with apology (since I wrote much of this novel in Ireland), because I believe it is more likely to be true to her time.