Girls Against God
GIRLS AGAINST GOD
GIRLS AGAINST GOD
Translated
by Marjam Idriss
This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA
This English-language edition first published by Verso 2020
First published as Å hate Gud © Forlaget Oktober 2018
Translation © Marjam Idriss 2020
The publisher and author would like to thank the following for quotations appearing in the text: Darkthrone mini-documentary, bonus material from the CD compilation Preparing for War (2000); Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger (translated by Montague Summers), Malleus Mallificarum (1928); Darkthrone, ‘Over Fjell Og Gjennom Torner’, Transylvanian Hunger (1994).
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
versobooks.com
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-895-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-897-2 (US EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-896-5 (UK EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hval, Jenny, 1980– author. | Idriss, Marjam, translator.
Title: Girls against God / [Jenny Hval] ; translated by Marjam Idriss.
Other titles: Å hate Gud. English
Description: English language edition. | London ; New York : Verso, 2020. | Summary: “Ellinor, a jaded PR consultant, is landed with an unusual brief when a colleague commits suicide. She finds herself working with the Norwegian Post and Communications Union, focused on a strange, inspiring story of one undelivered letter. What follows is a story of mundane lives raised to the pitch of heroism”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020016886 (print) | LCCN 2020016887 (ebook) | ISBN 9781788738958 (paperback) | ISBN 9781788738972 (ebk)
Classification: LCC PT8952.18.V35 A7413 2020 (print) | LCC PT8952.18.V35 (ebook) | DDC 839.823/8--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016886
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016887
Typeset in Electra by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Contents
1. THE WITCHCRAFT
2. THE FOREST
3. THE EGG
Girls Against
God
A NOVEL
Jenny Hval
1
THE WITCHCRAFT
It’s 1990, and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen.
I hate God.
It feels primitive and pitiful to say it, but I’m a primitive and pitiful person.
The screen in front of me shows images from 1990: images of pine trees; the tops, grey sky. The video flickers and the camera sways across a pixelated digital universe. A boy, possibly Nocturno Culto, walks through the forest to the sound of brutal guitar riffs. The camera lens follows him lazily. The image jerks at each footstep as the camera operator tramples the boy’s trail. Is this a kind of genesis? In my film notes I jot down: ‘Home video, in line with the lo-fi aesthetic of the genre. Short, enigmatic and ugly video riffs on details from boring Norwegian landscape.’
I also note: ‘I hate God.’ What a smug thing to say, but I’m pretty smug. (Isn’t ‘me’ just a different word for ‘God’?)
In 1990, I hate God.
That year, while Nocturno Culto and his band still play thrash and haven’t really figured out black metal, I hate my way through every primary school classroom, and the teachers’ thick southern Norwegian accent. I refuse to adopt it. I hate its sombre tone, fit only for sermons and admonitions, and southern Norwegians hardly ever utter anything else. Their accent is so formulaic and repetitive, it won’t allow them to say anything new. I can’t imagine it used for anything but preaching. When they say ‘I’m a pRacticing chRistian’ their guttural Rs make it sound as though the consonants have gone through purgatory. My ears are ringing with stigmata.
I especially hate Gøud, as people from Aust-Agder pronounce it, as my teacher recites it in early morning prayer. As I’ve come to understand it, God is a theoretical concept that only exists in books, while Gøud’s presence pulls southerners’ hair back into tight knots and twists their throats into nooses. It’s Gøud that records written warnings in my diary when I don’t memorise the third verse of our set psalm, ‘Moon and Sun’. It’s Gøud who decides that we’re not taught anything about other religions or philosophies. I hate chuRch seRvices, chRistenings, weddings, and funeRals; and I hate the way southerners pronounce them. I hate the Christian Democratic Party and the Protestant creed, I hate it off by heart, I hate it backwards and upside-down. Our Father, who art in hell.
Saying that now still makes me warm and happy inside. I’m still blasphemous. I enjoy the burning sensation of shame, when your cheeks swell and glow in the hot fire of exclusion. Even now, I identify with the little match girl from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. Sitting in a freezing alley, she’s warmed by images of everyone else’s Merry Christmas, and just like her, I steal heat from other people’s creed to warm my cold demon soul. The little match girl shivers through visions of glittering Christmas trees and angelic holograms. She tries to warm up on the ghosts of holiness, the mirage of Protestantism, and freezes to death in the attempt.
Hatred makes me so happy. My hatred is radioactive, and as a child in