Sigrid Undset was, by all accounts, an incredible woman. She was a mother, a war dissenter, a lay Dominican, and a self-educated student who dedicated her free time to learning and writing while working full-time as a secretary at an engineering company, a position she took at 16 after her father's death and which she held for ten years. All during this period she was writing and learning and began submitting manuscripts to various publishers in Norway. She made her mark at 25 by publishing a scandalous novel whose opening line was "I have been unfaithful to my husband." Fru Marta Oulie caused such a stir in the literary world that it was refused twice by publishers; once when she was 22 and the second time when she was 24. After reducing the manuscript to a mere 80 pages and resetting it from medieval Norway to contemporary Kristiana, she was finally published, and now she was in the public eye as a promising young Norwegian author. Her writing career started in earnest and she wrote and was published for several decades after.
So prodigious were her writing skills that she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 for Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy that covered the life of the title character from her childhood in medieval Norway to her death, and it is about this book that I want to write. Beginning in 1306 and spanning approximately 45 years, Undset captures the life and death of a devoutly Catholic woman who lives on the very edge of pagan Norway's past and its Christian future. Priests, convents and nuns, mass, pilgrimages, folk medicine, elves, and visions of fairies all share the pages as one world fades and another comes to power. The church's imposing centrality acts as a tool to help us feel what it was like for an old world to pass away, while a new one moved in. Undset is not nostalgic for a pagan past, on the contrary, she is quite clear that the violence and intolerance of the old ways are even harsher than the intolerance of the Christianity that replaces it. Still, one can feel a wistfulness to the people who are turning to look back over their shoulders at what they are leaving behind as they move forward into the new Christian Norway.
Her descriptive powers are staggering; her ability to recreate the stark and resonant beauty of Norway's inner countryside as well as the craggy coasts and fjords is unparalleled in the feeling it imbues. In one scene she writes of Kristin traveling from one farm to another during a winter's day and the visions of deeply muscled horses plowing through drifts of sun-dazzled snow, ridden by women dressed in sky blue felt robes with tiny red flowers embroidered on them, blond braids circling their heads like crowns, silver bells attached to their thickly padded, felted woolen boots and dangling at their waists is one that I will never forget. It created an image of power and majesty that is still shining in my mind.
Her ability to capture the depth of a woman's experience at that time and in that place is quite astonishing. Kristin is a complex character; one who defies all of her familial, social, and cultural norms by marrying a man she loves, rather than the man who has been chosen for her. Still, it's not that simple a thing to decide for one's self, then or now, and this is one of the general themes of the story. How much of our lives belong to us, really? How much are we in control of our choices and their outcomes? It is a deeply explored question that Kristin herself is asking and we are with her every step of the way as she tries to determine the answer.
Another running thematic element deals with the question of whether Kristin's love is one that she experiences as her own or one that was impressed upon her by the external force of his seduction at a very tender age. Does Kristin have agency in the relationship or not? As her love expands to include the seven children that she bears in her decades-long marriage, she begins to understand that love is more than just brute, animalistic attraction, but what is it, exactly? This is a central question throughout the trilogy, this question of love and all of its different forms. Undset writes so truthfully of the issues of the heart; Kristin's love and devotion to her father which is, nonetheless, not strong enough to withstand a seduction, her complicated relationship with her mother, the defiance of refusing the husband set for her since she was a young child, her relationships with her siblings, her total dedication to her children, and finally her dedication and love for the church, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all of its priests are all handled with a tender yet honest care that makes you feel as if you know and understand each character and their strengths and foibles.
The setting of Norway with its rough, untamed countryside, deep snows, and harsh weather makes for a perfect winter's read and I can't give enough praise to this story. I encourage you to read it for yourself and come to know and love the characters.
