Skip to main content

Burial Rites: Hannah Kent's meticulously researched historical novel tells of the final months of the last woman executed in Iceland

Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent
Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent
The last case of capital punishment in Iceland was on 12 January 1830 with the double execution of supposed partners in crime Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Fridrik Sigurdsson. They were found guilty of murdering two men, Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson, whose bodies – each with wounds of a deliberate nature – were found in the burnt-out ruins of Ketilsson's farm. Magnúsdóttir was a workmaid at the farm along with Sigurdsson's intended, Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir, the third guilty party. She was the only one of the trio to escape the death penalty, seeing out her days in a Copenhagen textile prison.

The murders took place on the night between 13 and 14 March 1828, at Illugastadir, on the Vatnsnes peninsula in northern Iceland. Four months later, Magnúsdóttir, Sigurdsson and Gudmundsdóttir were found guilty in a district court and sentenced to be beheaded, with Gudmundsdóttir's sentence later commuted.

The Húnavatn district, in which they resided, was ill-prepared to hold the prisoners, so as the case progressed – first through the land court in Reykjavík, then the supreme court in Copenhagen for the king of Denmark's approval – it was decided that they would be "placed in farms, homes of upright Christians, who would inspire repentance by good example, and who would benefit from the work these prisoners do as they wait their judgment". So it was that Magnúsdóttir spent her final days with a family of dutiful Icelanders at a farm of Kornsá. This much is fact, a single gory interlude from the expanse of history, but Hannah Kent has turned Magnúsdóttir's story into fiction – her interpretation of the Illugastadir murders and Magnúsdóttir's fate informed by significant research.

She scoured ministerial records, parish archives and censuses – translated extracts of which appear at the beginning of each chapter. She read local histories and publications about the case, and spoke with Icelanders. All this research has paid off in spades: the end result is a novel so steeped in period detail that the extracts lifted from original sources sit eloquently alongside the fictionalised account, the transition between the two being effortlessly smooth.

Kent begins her novel with Magnúsdóttir's arrival at Kornsá, the "turf croft" home of Jón and Margrét and their daughters Steina and Lauga. Her hosts are resentful of the duty heaped on them and suspicious of their charge; the wait for her arrival is a "month of fear", tight "like a fishing line, hooked upon something that must inevitably, be dragged from the depths". Murderesses belong in the sagas, Margrét thinks, expecting Agnes to be beautiful but deadly, yet the woman dragged into her home looks more "like a new corpse, fresh dug from the grave. Wild black hair strung with grease, and the brown-grey of dirt sitting in the pores of her skin." No siren, just a "landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty", who was too free with her affection and undone by her jealousy.

A young preacher, Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson, is given the responsibility of preparing Magnúsdóttir to meet her maker, but rather than preach, he encourages her to speak about her past, providing her with "a final audience to her life's lonely narrative". At first she is reticent, but during the long winter nights, she begins to unburden herself, the real story of the murders eventually "boiling over", the telling of which leaves her tongue so tired "it slumps in my mouth like a dead bird, all damp feathers, in between the stones of my teeth". Burial Rites is a debut of rare sophistication and beauty – a simple but moving story, meticulously researched and hauntingly told.

Burial Rites
by Hannah Kent. 
Hardcover: 336 pages.
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (September 10, 2013). 
Language: English. 
ISBN-10: 0316243914. ISBN-13: 978-0316243919.

Source: The Guardian, August 27, 2013

Most viewed (Last 7 days)

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.  The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

Grissom used some of his last words on Earth to apologize to everyone he hurt and said that he prays they can find forgiveness for their own sake. As for his execution, he said it was a mercy. Oklahoma executed Wendell Arden Grissom on Thursday for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend’s two young daughters in 2005.  Grissom, 56, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. local time, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in 2025 and the ninth in the United States this year. 

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.