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They Can’t Burn Us All
by Cathryn Kemp
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The Westfjords of Iceland, 1655. Þuríður Jónsdóttir has been raised between Lutheran authority and older beliefs, watching her father and brother preserve the forbidden practice of rune magic. When the pastor Jón Magnússon accuses the two men of sorcery during the Kirkjuból witch trials and they are condemned to burn, Þuríður loses both her family and her security within a community already inflamed by religious change, fear and private grievance.
As the accusations turn towards her, Þuríður becomes the first woman called a witch in this retelling and must decide how openly she can resist a clergyman whose authority can mobilise neighbours against her. Kemp reimagines the documented Icelandic trials through a woman caught between the old gods and Protestant orthodoxy, combining communal conflict, possible magic and the struggle to speak when church, law and custom have made silence dangerous.
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