“You’ve got to read this!” I told a fellow burnt-out T.A.
I had retired to the coffeehouse to read Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter before I graded 100 papers on Mircea Eliade’s Myth and Reality. You will understand my procrastination if you’ve ever graded undergraduate gibberish about a book they could not, and perhaps should not be expected to understand. In my own long-ago undergrad Classical Mythology class, the professor assigned an excellent book on the influence of Greek and Roman myth on Western culture. And even the popularizer Edith Hamilton’s Mythology would have been a prelude to Eliade.
These students were not graduates of Choate or Exeter. They were intelligent, but still a bit raw.. There was a frat boy from Terre Haute, Indiana, a business major from Dubuque, Iowa, an English major from Omaha, Nebraska, and a pre-med major from Detroit. (The pre-med student did more or less understand it. There is a pre-med success gene.)
Can you blame me for losing myself in Kristin Lavrandstter?
Can you blame me now for losing myself in Kristin Lavransdatter under the heat dome?
Sigrid Undset, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1928, is best-known for the Kristin Lavrandatter trilogy. Set in medieval Norway, these spellbinding novels are elegantly-written and historically fascinating. Undset interweaves the threads of Kristin’s happy childhood, difficult marriage, near-death from numerous pregnancies, and nursing of victims of the Plague. We follow Kristin’s emotional, physical, and psychological experiences from childhood to death. She is a fascinating heroine, who learns from the mistakes that determine her fate.
That’s just the outline, of course: the language is elegant, the details religion resonate, and we are utterly transported to medieval Norway.
There are two translations of Kristin Lavransdatter, both excellent. Charles Archer’s 1920s translation holds up very well: the style is formal, and the word choices suggest the Middle Ages. Archer’s translation is available in paperback in three volumes: The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby, and The Cross.
Tina Nunnally’s prize-winning 1990s translation (Penguin) is also stunning. It is available in a one-volume Penguin Deluxe edition, or as three individual Penguin paperbacks, The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross.
Which translator do I prefer? I love both of them.
I’ve been “thinking of” reading this for years & years, but put it off — it’s long AND intimidating. Your review, however, has reawakened the fire — I’m actually going to get a copy, even if it’s ages before I get around to it (I just read your post on “too many books” and totally agree — one cannot have too many books; the book must be instantly available when the reader is ready for it! side note: I also read the NYT article on the poor guy who was evicted because of the size of his book collection. For shame, landlord! You may have already found this, but today’s The Atlantic has an Andi Zeisler article on the same topic) I checked out Undset’s masterpiece in one of my recent acquisitions, “The 100 Best Novels In Translation,” which goes with the newer Penguin translation. (I’m not sure about that — sometimes the older translations fit the spirit of the work better)
Query on a somewhat related topic: Did you ever read Jane Smiley’s “The Greenlanders”? I’m not suggesting it’s in the same league as Undset’s work, but it IS a magnificent novel, which, for a contemporary work, really captures the essence of a historical period.