Í Tokuni by Eivør
While writing this book, I listened to many musicians from far northern places, and Faroese artist Eivør became my favorite. Her music is atmospheric, mysterious, witchy and amazing. Whenever I listen to this song, I feel a sense of a wild, inhabited landscape – maybe not inhabited by humans, but certainly by spirits. In the world of The Gyre, spirits and folkloric beings play a significant role, and this song, with its chants and invocations, helped me deepen those themes. Recently I looked up the English translation, and I couldn’t believe what I found: The title translates to “In the Mist” and the lyrics recount a childhood experience Eivør had getting lost alone in the Faroese mountains. Perfect!
Dirt in the Ground by Tom Waits
I love Tom Waits’ music so much that I created a character in my first novel, Among the Wonderful, in homage to him! (Thomas Willoughby, the scrappy, improvising pianist.) In The Gyre, I didn’t go that far, but in one of the book’s most crucial scenes, the protagonist – a Russian Orthodox monk - explores the same Biblical passage that Waits does in “Dirt in the Ground”: Ezekiel 37:3, also known as the vision of the valley of dry bones. I had so much fun writing this scene, with Tom Waits playing in the background, of course. As the protagonist of my book, Arkady, struggles alone, on the brink of starvation in a high arctic landscape, he stumbles across a beach covered in walrus bones. Just as in the Tom Waits lyric and in the Bible passage, Arkady cries out, “Can these dry bones live?” referring simultaneously to the bones underfoot, his own mortality, and the possibility of a spiritual rebirth. And just like the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, Arkady soon encounters an answer to his question that invigorates him enough to keep going on his quest.
Krigsgaldr by Heilung
This powerful song was my “Eye of the Tiger” as I wrote the book. I listened to it to get my nerve up, when the empty page and blinking cursor felt like too much to overcome. I hear “Krigsgaldr” (which roughly translates from Old Norse to “Battle Spell”) and I imagine the centuries of people who sailed from different countries and continents to Spitsbergen, where my novel is set – for whaling, for hunting, for resource extraction, to bring the first seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and now scientists from all over the world coming together to address climate change. I conjured these figures with this anthem, and they gave me courage as I wrote a book that imagines and honors Spitsbergen’s multi-faceted history.
Keep the Streets Empty For Me by Fever Ray
I love songs that preserve a healthy dose of mystery in their lyrics…songs that I listen to repeatedly while gently wondering, “what does she mean by that?” What’s funny is I don’t actually want to figure anything out; I chew on some songs for years, simply out of fascination, and this is one of them! Fever Ray maintains a dreamy, deceptive simplicity throughout – deceptive because within the lyrics lie a deep wellspring of poetic possibility. There’s a verse that I associate with one of the book’s most important characters, Saskia, who has a mysterious backstory and is a bit of a shapeshifter herself:
“I’m laying down, eating snow
My fur is hot, my tongue is cold
On a bed of spider web
I think of how to change myself.”
I consider this song Saskia’s theme, and I returned to it many times while I wrote a character for whom mystery is a central character trait.
An atmospheric journey into the far northern wilds, The Gyre spins one man’s search for meaning into an astonishing saga where adventure, folklore, and the Arctic converge.
Arkady Afanasyev is a nineteenth-century Russian monk who aims to be the northernmost holy man in the world when he hitches a ride to Spitsbergen, a remote island considered by most to be a no man’s land. As he struggles across the tundra, he’s haunted by regret, a long-lost family, and a chorus of Orthodox saints and Slavic pagan tricksters including hearth spirits, sea demons, and the Twelve Sisters of Scurvy. Amid their uncanny influence and the great, turning, harsh natural world, Arkady is brutally and deeply transformed.
Fiction Literary | Fantasy Historical | Fiction Adventure [ Alternating Current Press, On Sale: May 19, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781946580627 / ]
STACY CARLSON is a novelist, naturalist, and educator. Her most recent novel, The Gyre, won the Electric Book Award, and Publishers Weekly called her debut novel, Among the Wonderful, “Intelligent, engrossing, and utterly unique.” Stacy’s essays and fiction have appeared in Tin House, Post Road, Inkwell, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships and residencies from the Mesa Refuge, The Arctic Circle, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Signal Fire. Her background includes work as a historical ecologist, fish cannery worker, hot springs caretaker, and hiking guide in Big Sur. She grew up between mountains and sea in the Pacific Northwest and has lived in New England, New York, Northern California, and the Upper Midwest.
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