The Painting

They say that art imitates life. Or is it the other way around? Books, music, paintings—all these things add to our understanding as human beings and help us make sense of the world around us. That's even true even when we're talking about really huge and really creepy paintings like the one in this story.

Paint Us A Picture

Okay, so the big piece of artwork that's featured in this novel is the painting Midwinterblood. It was created by Eric Carlsson in 1902 and the whole thing is pretty darn freaky. Check it out:

The painting.

A vast, vast painting.

Bridget was drawn to it, her feet carrying her toward it without her thinking. Her mouth hung open, she had never seen anything like it, anything so mysterious, so compelling, so terrifying.

Merle trotted over to stand next to her, looking at the painting, too […]

"What is it, Mommy?" she asked.

Bridget did not answer. How could she explain what she saw to such a young child?[…]

The thing she was looking at came from somewhere else, from another time, from another world, from another dimension even. (4.8.18-21, 24-25, 29)

Weird, right? Almost otherworldly, even. Basically, this painting depicts the sacrifice of King Eirikr; it's the moment before he's killed. The painting, then, is a shout-out to the oldest story in the book, and in its sacrificial element, it's also a reference to the repeated sacrifices we see Eric making throughout, particularly the final one in 2073 that mimics the initial sacrifice so closely.

The Real Story

Pretty creative, right? Well, our author didn't come up with this masterpiece all on his own—this is an actual painting. The real Midvinterblot was created by artist Carl Larsson around 1915. Today, it hangs over the central staircase in the Swedish National Museum, but it took quite a while to get there.

When Larsson started working on the painting in 1910, he intended for it to contrast with another piece in the staircase depicting a victorious Swedish king marching home in the middle of summer. Larsson thought it would be interesting to paint a scene from Swedish legend—the death of King Domalde, who was killed as a ritual sacrifice after the crops failed to grow for a third year in a row.

Larsson's painting shows Domalde as a willing sacrifice, but this wasn't strictly how things went down:

Domald took the heritage after his father Visbur, and ruled over the land. As in his time there was great famine and distress, the Swedes made great offerings of sacrifice at Upsal. The first autumn they sacrificed oxen, but the succeeding season was not improved thereby. The following autumn they sacrificed men, but the succeeding year was rather worse. The third autumn, when the offer of sacrifices should begin, a great multitude of Swedes came to Upsal; and now the chiefs held consultations with each other, and all agreed that the times of scarcity were on account of their king Domald, and they resolved to offer him for good seasons, and to assault and kill him, and sprinkle the stalle of the gods with his blood. And they did so. (Source.)

Oops. Better luck next time, Domald.

By the time Larsson finished the painting in 1915, he had been pretty heavily criticized for his choice of subject matter. Some folks thought that the whole scene was pretty historically inaccurate. Guess they never heard of artistic license. Other people bristled at the idea that some pagan king could die to save his people. Isn't that Jesus's domain? Was Carl Larsson trying to criticize Christianity? The horror.

In the end, the Swedish National Museum rejected the painting and refused to hang it in its intended home. One guy, named August Brunius, offered some pretty harsh criticism. Maybe you recognize it:

The whole thing is as unreal as an opera, one cannot believe what is happening, one cannot connect emotionally with what is taking place […] Midvinterblot is a creepy, scandalous scene of dubious historicity and is no more relevant to us, modern Swedes, than a scene of cannibalism from the darkest Africa. (Source.) 

Is this guy sure his name's not Tor? We're not convinced.

Anyway, Larsson was pretty dejected by Midvinterblot's rejection. He wrote in his memoirs: "The fate of Midvinterblot broke me! This I admit with subdued rage. Yet it was for the best—once again my intuition tells me that now—for this painting, with all its weaknesses, will be honored with a far better place some day after I am gone." No, he didn't die alone in his chair with his paintbrush in hand, mourning his fate, but Larsson was pretty upset nonetheless.

The funny thing is that he turned out to be right. By 1992, folks had started to change their tune about the painting, and after changing hands several times, the work finally wound up exactly where it was meant to be displayed: in the central staircase of the Swedish National Museum. You can actually see it there today in all its gruesome glory.

Sacrificial Art

Okay, so Midvinterblot is a giant and terrifying painting in real life, too. But why, exactly, is it in this book? Because Sedgwick saw it when he took a trip to the Swedish National Museum, that's why. And it made quite an impression on our author:

When I first saw it, its vast size and epic themes made me want to write a book about it, but I knew straight away that I didn't just want to re-tell the scene I imagined was happening in the painting. That scene is a story of sacrifice—it shows a moment from Swedish legend in which King Domaldr is about to be sacrificed in order to restore fertility to his stricken land.

It took me a few years to work out how I actually wanted the book to work—which is to have seven stories, all linked, which play out the scene of the painting in different times and with different characters. In that way I could better consider the subject of sacrifice in all its forms, as along with the various forms of another great human trait—love, which is the unspoken theme of the painting—only when you look more closely do you see the distraught woman in green on the ground, unable to bear the thought of the King's death. Is it his Queen? Look closer still and there's the face of a child in the gallery, looking down, concerned. Who is this child? (Source.)

Think about it: This painting works in all of the important themes from the book—sacrifice, love, fate. And it's the perfect place to create a cool backstory. The green-robed queen becomes Melle and the child in the balcony is Merle holding her apple and looking concerned. The painting, then, is sort of the glue that holds this whole story together.

In each and every life they live, Eric, Merle, and Tor are fated to keep reliving this painting. Eric will sacrifice himself (willingly or not); Merle will love him and follow him; and Tor will just be large and in charge and villainous. They just can't get off this crazy Midwinterblood hamster wheel.

And maybe that's why the end of the novel is so freeing. These three all die together (probably) and, in doing so, they finally get to escape this cycle. No more famine and death, no more doomed love, no more scheming. Now they can just be with each other (or, in the case of Tor, not be with each other… hopefully, anyway). And isn't that pretty beautiful and poetic and artistic? Yeah, we thought so.