Serafina Pekkala is a witch queen from a tribe in Inari, Finland, who first appears in Northern Lights and last appears in The Amber Spyglass. She rules over certain clans in the Lake Enara district. Serafina appears throughout the fantasy trilogy and is closely associated with Lyra Belacqua's and her companions' journey. Serafina Pekkala's dæmon is Kaisa, a large grey goose. In The Golden Compass, the movie adaptation of the first book in the trilogy, Northern Lights (The Golden Compass was the American title of the book), the role Serafina Pekkala is played by Eva Green.
She once had a child by the Gyptian Farder Coram, who saved her life when she was attacked by another witch's dæmon. For witches to fall in love with men appears common. There are men within the witch society who serve the witches, or who can be taken for lovers or husbands. Witches are said to be capable of appreciating men for their beauty, intelligence, and bravery; but due to the witches' long life-span, the men appear to grow old and die almost at once. This is said to cause the witches great emotional pain. When witches give birth, their female children inherit magical powers and an extensive life-span, while male children do not and are therefore soon sent to live with their fathers.
According to Serafina, witches live for many hundreds of years. Serafina claims to be three hundred years old or more, and states that her clan's "oldest witch mother" is nearly a thousand. Witches own nothing, and so have no means of barter save mutual aid. They have no notions of honor, and therefore insults mean nothing to them. Temperature extremes appear not to harm witches: although they feel the cold, wrapping up against it would prevent them from experiencing other things that the humans of the text may not feel, such as "the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the Aurora". Witches fly on branches of Cloud-Pine and equate flying to living; as Serafina states, "A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves". Witches see themselves as subject to fate, yet argue that they, and all people, must act as if they possess free will. They believe that when they die Yambe-Akka, the goddess of the dead, comes to collect them.
Pullman claims Serafina's name came from a Finnish telephone directory; however, in a speech made in Dundee, he claimed that it came from a list of politicians living in Copenhagen. (In any case, it is an actual Finnish family name - see Vilho Pekkala; Miss Finland reference to Marita Pekkala).
Read more about this topic: List Of His Dark Materials Characters, Other Characters