(Its story of a woman's life in fourteenth-century Norway ...)
Its story of a woman's life in fourteenth-century Norway has kept its hold on generations of readers, and the heroine, Kristin—beautiful, strong-willed, and passionate—stands with the world's great literary figures. Volume 1, The Bridal Wreath, describes young Kristin's stormy romance with the dashing Erlend Nikulausson, a young man perhaps overly fond of women, of whom her father strongly disapproves.
The Son Avenger: Volume IV of The Master of Hestviken
(Powerfully written and filled with magnificent vignettes ...)
Powerfully written and filled with magnificent vignettes of the daily life of a medieval estate, 'The Son Avenger' suggests a Greek tragedy whose vision of fate coexists with a Christian sense of suffering and forgiveness. And in the somber, twilight figure of 'Olav the Bad, ' Undset has created an antihero as moving as Oedipus or Lear.
(Inspired by tales of the hero Vilmund Vidutan and his fel...)
Inspired by tales of the hero Vilmund Vidutan and his fellow knights, Sigurd Jonsson and his young friends Ivar and Helge set out to reenact these exploits on their medieval Norwegian farm. They carve swords and lances and spend hours making shields. With a little imagination, a pasture becomes a battlefield, an old boar their greatest foe, and they pass many hours jousting and dueling. But when the summer is nearly over, the three boys stumble into real trouble and must prove their courage in an adventure all their own.
(Ida Elisabeth poignantly illustrates how poor choices aff...)
Ida Elisabeth poignantly illustrates how poor choices affect the course of a person's life and how the suffering endured because of grievous mistakes can become the means by which a love is purified.
In the Wilderness: The Master of Hestviken, Vol. 3
(It is Norway in the thirteenth century, a land rent by un...)
It is Norway in the thirteenth century, a land rent by unremitting warfare and feebly lit by Christianity. Olav Audunsson was once an outlaw; now he is a man of wealth and stature. But he is haunted by the memory of crimes for which there is no easy atonement and by losses that may never be redeemed.
(Set in thirteenth-century Norway, a land racked by politi...)
Set in thirteenth-century Norway, a land racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas, The Axe is the first volume in Sigrid Undset's epic tetralogy, The Master of Hestviken. In it we meet Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, who were betrothed as children and raised as brother and sister. Now, in the heedlessness of youth, they become lovers, unaware that their ardor will forge the first link in a chain of murder, exile, and disgrace.
(Set in medieval Norway, The Snake Pit follows Olav and In...)
Set in medieval Norway, The Snake Pit follows Olav and Ingunn, who, though raised as brother sister, have become lovers in a world caught between the fading sphere of pagan worship and vendettas and the expansion of Christianity.
(Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and ...)
Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and religious history with the daily aspects of family life to create a colorful, richly detailed tapestry of Norway during the fourteenth-century.
(Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and ...)
Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and religious history with the daily aspects of family life to create a colorful, richly detailed tapestry of Norway during the fourteenth-century.
Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian writer, best-known for her novels about life in the Scandinavian countries during the Middle Ages. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Most of the praise was for her medieval novels including the trilogy about Kristin Lavransdatter.
Background
Ethnicity:
Undset's mother was Danish, and her father was Norwegian.
Sigrid Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, on May 20, 1882; the eldest of three daughters of Ingvald Martin Undset, a distinguished archaeologist, and Anna Charlotte Gyth Undset. The family lived a comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle. In 1884 the family moved to Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway. After Undset’s father died in 1893, her mother raised her daughters in more difficult conditions.
Education
While Sigrid’s father provided his daughter with an early passion for archaeology and botany, her mother tutored her in both Norwegian and Danish history from the time Sigrid was five. Undset's grounding in early history would become intrinsic to her literature about life in northern Europe in the Middle Ages.
The loss of the head of the family increased the family's financial difficulties. Sigrid and her two younger sisters, Signe and Ragnhild Undset, were able to stay at their school, run by Fru Ragna Nielsen, for free. From 1899 until 1909 Undset attended a commercial school in Kristiania (now Oslo).
Career
By the time she was 17, Sigrid worked as a secretary in an office. She would spend ten years working in an electrical engineers' bureau office, remaining until her sisters were financially stable. During this decade she began to write, and in 1907 and 1908 she published her first two books, the novel Fru marta Oulie (Mrs. Marta Oulie) and Den lykkelige alder (The Happy Age), a collection of short stories about middle-class women in contemporary Norway.
From 1909 until the outbreak of World War I, Undset studied in Italy, visiting Paris and continuing to write fiction. Jenny appeared in 1911 and made her first success.
During the 1920s Undset published a trilogy of historical novels, Kristin Lavransdatter (1920–1922). The other work in addition to the monumental Kristin Lavransdatter was her tale of Olav Audunsson. This was originally published in two parts: Olav Audunsson i Hestviken and Olav Audunsson og Hans Børn.
Approaching age 50, Undset lived in her farm house at Lillehammer. She moved again to modern novels, producing such works as The Wild Orchid, The Burning Bush, and The Faithful Wife, as well as autobiographical essays. Madame Dorthea (1939), intended to be the first book of a trilogy, was instead her last novel.
Undset fled Norway after the Germans invaded in 1940, having recently lost both her mother and her daughter, and spent the war first in Sweden, where she learned that her son Anders had been shot and killed defending a bridge outside Lillehammer, and then the United States. Her second son, Hans, escaped to Stockholm and flew with his mother. Undset traveled the United States indefatigably, lecturing and writing articles in support of Norway's resistance movement, gathering news items for the Norwegian Information Service and reviewing books for The New York Times. She returned home in 1945. Her last creative effort, a biography of Catherine of Siena, was rejected by Doubleday; it would be published posthumously.
Norwegian writer of novels, short stories and essays Sigrid Undset was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928 and honored by her country with the Norwegian Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Olav in 1945.
Undset’s works, including accounts of life in Scandinavia from the Middle Ages to the 1930s—often with feminist themes—are still widely read in many languages. Her best-known work, Kristin Lavransdatter, has been translated into more than 80 languages and is among the world's most read novels.
In 1924 Undset converted to Catholicism. Her faith plays an important role in the historical and contemporary novels she wrote during the 1920s and later.
Politics
By 1935, with Adolf Hitler coming to power, Undset's voice carried considerable weight when she became among the first to speak out against the regime in Germany, with a direct attack on Nazism. Declaring that lack of freedom was worse than "death and extinction," she confronted both Marxism and Nazism on moral grounds, alleging that they had sprung from the pride of Lucifer. Totalitarianism she opposed as self-worship and a path towards dissolution and death. In response, her books were banned in Germany, and the Norwegian Nazi newspaper denounced her as not only "foreign and offensive to us" but "hostile."
As Europe became embroiled in World War II, Undset fought against Germany's invasion of Norway with the powers she had at her disposal. She housed refugees and her writings during this period reflect her willingness to sacrifice the best she had, her art, on behalf of Norway.
Views
Undset spent decades writing and exploring questions of morality, loyalty, sexuality, and spirituality with particular focus on the relationship between wife and husband. Her childhood exposure to history, and later meticulous research, made possible the powerful Middle Ages settings in which her most lauded works often found expression.
Undset’s early fiction is a window into the experiences of middle-class Norwegians at the turn of the century. Her contemporary novels published before Kristin Lavransdatter were censured for their frank portrayals of female sexuality, demonstrating that a woman's need for sexual satisfaction, and right to it, is as justifiable as a man's.
But the author also viewed women's responsibilities as different from men's. Sexual equality, she maintained, was guaranteed in the marriage vows, which, if they were taken seriously by both parties, secured the roles of husband and wife. These roles remained unchanged even if the male sought physical release outside the marriage.
But a mother must be faithful; with her own chastity, she protected the welfare and continuance of the clan, which was her primary duty. For life to have meaning, wrote Undset, humans needed to uphold the "threadbare truths" of duty and responsibility, and women were especially obliged to preserve the day-today routines of life. Only a few—with demonstrably special gifts and as much physical energy as the author herself—would be able to sustain that responsibility and simultaneously fulfill their own needs, artistically or otherwise.
Membership
Sigrid Undset joined the Norwegian Authors' Union in 1907 and from 1933 through 1935 headed its Literary Council, eventually serving as the union's chairman from 1936 until 1940.
Connections
While studying abroad, Undset met her future husband, Anders Svarstad, whom she married in 1912, after he left his first wife and children.
Undset wanted their first child to be born in Rome, where she had initially fallen in love, and there she gave birth to a son, Anders, in January 1913. Their living conditions were not good, however, so she and her son returned to Norway; her husband later joined them.
In 1915, their daughter Maren Charlotte (called Mosse) was born, and by the time the family relocated to Sinsen she was found to be severely retarded.
They separated in 1919, when she was pregnant with their third child, Hans. Undset and her children settled in Lillehammer, Norway, where they lived until 1940.
Father:
Ingvald Martin Undset
Ingvald Martin Undset (1853–1893) was a Norwegian archaeologist.
Mother:
Anna Charlotte Gyth Undset
Spouse:
Anders Cactus Svarstad
Anders Castus Svarstad (22 May 1869 – 22 August 1943) was a Norwegian painter, most frequently associated with his urban landscapes.
