First Comes Summer

The spellbinding story of a young woman’s dangerous passion as it plays out over the course of an eerie summer

In their remote Viking settlement, Folkví and her brother, Áslakr, have always been close--unnaturally close. They’ve grown more intimate still as Folkví learns her shaman mother’s craft, as men regard her with newly devouring eyes. Then illness carries off their parents, and the nest of home is shattered. Áslakr sets off on his first expedition, abandoning Folkví to the dark of an endless winter. When he returns, he’s done the unthinkable: He’s found someone else to love.

Sick with grief, Folkví rages to the gods where they sit at the foot of an ancient tree, contemplating the twisted passions of humans that play out in the face of an ever-approaching end of days. Will none of them save her now? Very well, Folkví will save herself. The wedding date is set. But first comes a fateful summer. . .

Deeply unsettling and brilliantly imagined, First Comes Summer captures the terror of losing the world you’ve always known--and the uncanny extremes to which you might go to hold on to it.

Maria Hesselager has won and been shortlisted for several Scandinavian prizes. First Comes Summer is her first novel. She lives in Copenhagen.

Martin Aitken has translated numerous novels from Danish and Norwegian. He received the 2019 PEN America Translation Prize, among many other honors.