Kristin Lavransdatter

I just finished Sigrid Undset's Nobel-winning tripartite novel, Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-22)---a gorgeously epic novel set in fourteenth-century Scandinavia. The novel traces the life of the eponymous character from her innocent childhood in rural Norway, to her passionate affair with the love of her life Erland Nikulausson, to her role as mother to seven young boys, and her life as a widow after her sons have grown and gone out into the world. The novel captures the human spirit in the attempts to do good and pious work only to succumb to the decrepit nature of the world, always falling short of the glory of God. Set in pre-Reformation Norway, the characters base their lives around the feast and saint days of the Church, often consulting the humanly flawed priests in their parishes and provinces, while making tithes and almsgiving a central part of their daily and spiritual offerings.

Although not a hero in the classical sense of the word, Kristin Lavransdatter's human failings and accomplishments make her a heroic protagonist in her ongoing attempts to serve God, remain dutiful to her impetuous husband, to guide her children toward sainthood, and to find her own path toward salvation. Upon her deathbed, Kristin finds solace in the palimpsest of her flesh when her marital ring impresses the M for the Virgin Mary on her ring finger: "The last clear thought that took shape in her mind was that she was going to die before the mark had time to fade, and it made her happy. It seemed to her a mystery that she could not comprehend, but she was certain that God had held her firmly in a pact which had been made for her---and in spite of her willfulness, in spite of her melancholy, earthbound heart, some of that love had stayed inside her, had worked on her like sun on the earth, had driven forth a crop that neither the fiercest fire of passion nor its stormiest anger could completely destroy. She had been a servant of God---a stubborn, defiant maid, most often an eye-servant in her prayers and unfaithful in her heart, indolent and neglectful, impatient toward admonishments, inconstant in her deeds. And yet He had held her firmly in His service, and under the glittering gold ring a mark had been secretly impressed upon her, showing that she was His servant, owned by the Lord and King who would now come, borne on the consecrated hands of the priest, to give her release and salvation" (1122).

The most tragically realistic portions of the novel are the realizations of missed communion and unreciprocated understanding. As much as Kristin's father guides her toward a pure heart, he is shamed by her dramatic affair with the excommunicated Erland. As much as Kristin and Erland love each other, their impassioned natures create turmoil and drama and suffering not only for their own relationship but for their seven young sons and for the political aspirations of Erland's compatriots and political advocates. As much as Kristin dotes on her children, they grow up and fail to understand the compromises of body and spirit that she has made for their health and well-being throughout her motherly adult life. Undset writes, "'After you had a child yourself, Kristin, I thought you would understand,' her mother had once said. Now she realized that her mother's heart had been deeply etched with memories of her daughter, memories of her thoughts about the child from before she was born and from all the years the child could not remember, memories of fears and hopes and dreams that children would never know had been dreamed on their behalf, before it was their own turn to fear and hope and dream in secret" (1047).

The novel is epic in its scope---not quite a bildungsroman but certainly a novel of a life. And as Undset conveys, all lives are mysterious, tragic, and deeply solitary: "Feelings of longing seemed to burst from her heart; they ran in all directions, like streams of blood, seeking out paths to all the places in the wide landscape where she had lived, to all her sons roaming through the world, to all her dead lying under the earth" (1062). "Then it occurred to Kristin Lavransdatter in a new way that the interpreters of God's words were right. Life on this earth was irredeemably tainted by strife; in this world, wherever people mingled, producing new descendants, allowing themselves to be drawn together by physical love and loving their own flesh, sorrows of the heart and broken expectations were bound to occur as surely as the frost appears in the autumn. Both life and death would separate friends in the end, as surely as the winter separates the tree from its leaves" (1056). Not one usually to read novels in translation, I found Tiina Nunnally's English translation of this realistic novel to be poignantly sweet and good and morally uplifting.

(See: Simcha Fisher's review of the book here at The National Catholic Register. As one of her commenters writes, "Have faith, Simcha, this is a Catholic novel and Kristin's worst fault becomes her salvation.")