The Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset is one of my favorite novelists–to the point that I tried to teach myself Norwegian after I read Kristin Lavransdatter. Set in medieval Norway, this fascinating trilogy focuses on the struggles of willful, beautiful Kristin, who dumps her betrothed to marry Erlend Nikulaussøn, a charming but irresponsible knight with a bad reputation, whose neglected estate she must manage, along with yearly pregnancies and one handicapped child, and the consequences of Erlend’s radical politics (he goes to prison).
I am also a huge fan of Undset’s Olav Audunssøn, previously translated as The Master of Hestviken, a brilliant tetralogy set in medieval Norway. Somehow, this classic has been forgotten, while Kristin’s fans remain manifold. And so I was delighted to learn that the first three volumes have been published by The University of Minnesota Press, in new translations by the award-winning Tina Nunnally.
I personally also adore Arthur G. Chater’s original English translation of Olav Audunssøn, as The Master of Hestviken (1928-1930). He does capture the sense of an older time, using a more elaborate, archaic vocabulary and occasionally inserting a “’tis.” Nunnally’s style is plainer, more accessible to a younger generation. And that is why we need new translations, of course, so people will continue to want to read them, in language they appreciate.
Let me start by reviewing Volume I of Olav Audunssøn: Vows. (In Chatar’s version, this is called The Axe.)
The graceful prose had me spellbound from the beginning to the end. Like The Wreath, the first volume of Kristin Lavransdatter, Undset’s Vows (Volume I of Olav Audunsson) delineates a tragic love affair.
Olav and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter are betrothed when they are children by their fathers–while their fathers are drunk. Is the betrothal real, or a joke? That is the question. After Steinfinn Toresson’s death, the couple meets opposition to their match. Because they have had sex, they believe their relationship is a legal marriage. Ingunn’s relatives want her to make a better match. Eventually the Bishop finds witnesses to the betrothal and declares them married. But an act of violence during a fight ends in Olav’s killing one of Ingunn’s kinsmen, and he goes into exile.
Olav has adventures abroad, while Ingunn suffers a brutally lonely ten years taking care of her grandmother on her aunt’s isolated estate. Ingunn goes nowhere, and sees no one. She is loyal to Olav, but as an adult she suffers from his absence and wants to be married like other women. She becomes friendly with a young scribe who runs errands for a priest and has a baby. And Undset writes about it without moralizing about the different standards for the sexes.
Christianity is an important factor in Undset’s work, and I am fascinated by her descriptions of the lives of the monks and well-educated priests, the feast days and the church services, and the structure Catholicism gives to people who suffer unforgettable and unforgivable sins wrought by themselves and others.
Olav Audunssøn is a masterpiece.
I look forward to reviewing the second volume, Providence, and the third volume, Crossroads, soon. (Or, in the Chatar translation, The Snake Pit and In the Wilderness.)
Undset is an astonishing writer because she constantly reminds you that “the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” – and mediaeval Scandinavia is very foreign and different now – but the reasons they do what they do aren’t very different at all.
The first time I read Kristen Lavarandatter I identified with her so closely that I WAS Kristen for a couple of days, despite the fact that I had never lived in a convent and had rendezvous with my boyfriend at a brothel. The medieval life-style elements are fascinating. Whenever we have a bad winter, I think of Undset’s books: it’s worse in medieval Scandinavia.