Nicola Griffith makes a lot of maps.

It’s an interest she discovered out of necessity while envisioning the 7th-century lands in which Hilda of Whitby — the real-life medieval figure at the center of Griffith’s 2013 novel “Hild” and its just-published follow-up, “Menewood” — once roamed.

“I love making maps,” the Seattle-based author says with a laugh during a recent video call where one of her maps hangs within view. “It’s this vision of a whole career that I could have had, sort of a path not taken.”

Prior to “Hild,” maps weren’t something the author, who is originally from Yorkshire, England, considered often.

“Before I was in a wheelchair, I used to love going hiking,” says Griffith, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1993. “So the only time I ever used a map was an Ordnance Survey map if I was going for a hike across the moors. It’s just good to have a map with you. But generally speaking, everything is so well-marked that you don’t need it.”

Author Nicola Griffith.

(Courtesy of Jennifer Durham )

It turns out, though, that maps are quite useful in discovering how Hild interacts with her surroundings. “When Hild is approaching a place, not knowing it, I need to know it so that she can discover it in a nice, plotty, emotional kind of way,” Griffith explains. “It really helps to be able to envisage the landscape, whether we’re talking about the hilliness or the water or the trees.”

Griffith made a name for herself in science fiction in the 1990s with her award-winning debut novel, “Ammonite.” With “Hild,” which is historical fiction, Griffith set out to learn as much as possible about the so-called Dark Ages.

She soon realized that there was scant information about her intended protagonist beyond the little that was written by 8th-century monk Bede. Much of that, Griffith notes, had to do with miracles. “A miracle doesn’t help me figure out how she became who she did in this time when … we’re taught that women didn’t have any power or influence.”

“To figure out how she could become the woman that we know today as Hilda Whitby, I had to recreate the seventh century,” says Griffith of her protagonist, who founded the Whitby monastery and was later made a saint. “I had to make a whole world and then grow this child inside it to see how she could become who she became. To grow the world, you need to know what’s in it.”

That required a lot of research, plenty of which has been documented on Griffith’s blog, Gemæcce. “I love blogs. I truly don’t understand why more writers don’t use them,” she says. “You own your own platform. No crazy billionaire can come and break it for you. It’s yours. All the words on it are yours.” The website is also a great reference tool for readers.

Recreating Hild’s world, though, is about more than understanding the culture of the times. The land and climate also differed.

Although Griffith did live in the north of England for roughly the first half of her life, she hasn’t seen all the places that Hild might have encountered. And the ones that she has seen, like Whitby Abbey, had changed dramatically by the 20th century.

“For one thing, there’s maybe a couple hundred meters of cliff missing now from erosion, so the Abbey would not have been right at the edge of the cliff the way that the much-later ruins are now,” Griffith explains. “There would have been, I think, more trees up there. And the weather would have been slightly different. She was born in a time where it was a bit wetter and colder, I think, than it is now. And the sheep around there and the cows around there would have been really different sheep and cows.”

Griffith’s attentiveness to nature is crucial in bringing the 7th-century saga to life, with vivid descriptions that touch all the readers’ senses.

“Nature is how I learn my characters,” says Griffith. “If I put my character in a forest, for example, what they notice about the forest will tell me a lot about them.”

She continues, “It’s not like this person takes on a life of their own and they’re separate from me, this character. It’s more that I can’t really access this creation I have made unless it’s through their physical world. That’s how I learn. Nature is my teacher and my home in a particular way. It’s my companion. It’s the thing that walks through life with me.”

The abundance of research that has gone into “Hild” and “Menewood” also resulted in Griffith’s recent, award-winning Arthurian fantasy novel “Spear.” The idea came to her while she was making a map.

“I put ‘Menewood’ aside for two or three weeks and wrote ‘Spear,’ and ‘Spear’ was such an astonishing thing to write. It was so thrilling. I loved writing that book,” she says. “But when I came back to ‘Menewood,’ I was on fire. You know how big ‘Menewood’ is. It is a big book. I was probably about 60 percent of the way through the first draft when I wrote ‘Spear’ and then I wrote the last 40 percent in six months. Bang. The words just poured out. It was great.”

Last summer, Griffith was finally able to attend the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, something that she had wanted to do since beginning work on “Hild.” While there, she did hear from people who took up medieval studies as a result of reading her book. “It was a wonderful moment,” she says.

After years dedicated to understanding and recreating the 7th century as a novelist, there are some things that Griffith wants people to understand about the age.

“People 1,400 years ago were just like us. They might have believed different things, but they felt the same and they suffered and enjoyed the same things,” she says. “The world back then was full of real people. They didn’t know they were in history and they weren’t all straight White and non-disabled noble people. Anybody who is here now today, whether we’re talking about queer people, disabled people, people of color, they were there then, too.”

Book jacket for “Menewood: A Novel (The Hild Sequence).”

(Courtesy of MCD Publishing)

“Menewood: A Novel (The Hild Sequence)” by Nicola Griffith (MCD, 2023; 720 pages)

Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore presents Nicola Griffith

Virtual book discussion with Karen Joy Fowler: 6 p.m. Thursday

Admission: Free (books with autographed bookplates can be purchased online)

Registration required at: mystgalaxy.com/event/102623griffith

Ohanesian writes for the Southern California News Group.