Tag Archives: Sigrid Undset

Reading under the Heat Dome: Sigrid Undset’s “Kristin Lavransdatter” Trilogy

“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.

A Masterpiece by a Nobel Winner: Sigrid Undset’s “Olav Audunssøn”

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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.

An old set of The Master Of Hestviken, translated by Arthur G. Chatar

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.)

A Masterpiece by a Nobel Winner: Sigrid Undset’s “Olav Audunssøn”

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Sigrid Undset

I am also a fan of Undset’s Olav Audunssøn, previously translated as The Master of Hestviken, a brilliant tetralogy set in medieval times. Somehow, this classic has been forgotten, while Kristin’s fans remain manifold. And so I was delighted to learn that the first volume, Olav Audunssøn: I Vows, will be published by The University of Minnesota Press this fall. The award-winning translator is Tina Nunnally.

I have an advance copy, and it seems appropriate to review it during Women in Translation Month. (Mark your calendars: the publication date of Olav Audunssøn is Nov. 10.) The graceful prose had me spellbound from the beginning to the end. Like The Wreath, the first volume of Kristin Lavransdatter, Undset’s Olav Audunssøn delineates a tragic love affair.

In Olav Audunssøn, 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 Undset shows us without moralizing the different standards for the sexes.

Olav Audunssøn is a masterpiece, and I hope the University of Minnesota will publish the other books soon.