Sigrid Undset(1882-1949) was born in Denmark, the eldest daughter
of a Norwegian father and a Danish mother. Two years after her
birth, the family moved to Oslo, where her father, a distinguished
archaeologist, taught at the university. Her father's interest in
the past had a tremendous influence on Undset. She was particularly
entranced by the dramatic Old Norse sagas she read as a child,
later declaring that her exposure to them marked "the most
important turning point in my life."
Undset's first published works-the novelMrs. Marta Oulie(1907) and
a short-story collection,The Happy Age(1908)-were set in
contemporary times and achieved both critical and popular success.
With her reputation as a writer well-established, Undset had the
freedom to explore the world that had first fired her imagination,
and inGunnar's Daughter(1909) she drew upon her knowledge of
Norway's history and legends, including the Icelandic Sagas, to
recreate medieval life with compelling immediacy. In 1912, Undset
married the painter Anders Castus Svarstad and over the next ten
years faced the formidable challenge of raising three stepchildren
and her own three off-spring with little financial or emotional
support from her husband. Eventually, she and her children moved
from Oslo to Lillehammer, and her marriage was annulled in 1924,
when Undset converted to Catholicism.
Although Undset wrote more modern novels, a collection of essays on
feminism, as well as numerous book reviews and newspaper articles,
her fascination with the Middle Ages never ebbed, and in 1920 she
publishedThe Wreath, the first volume of her most famous
work,Kristin Lavransdatter. The next two volumes quickly
followed-The Wifein 1921, andThe Crossin 1922. The trilogy earned
Undset worldwide acclaim, and her second great medieval epic-the
four-volumeThe Master of Hestviken(1925-1927)-confirmed her place
as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. In 1928, at the
age of 46, she received the Nobel Prize in Literature, only the
third woman to be so honored.
Undset went on to publish more novels-including the
autobiographicalThe Longest Years-and several collections of essays
during the 1930s. As the Germans advanced through Norway in 1940,
Undset, an outspoken critic of Nazism, fled the country and
eventually settled in Brooklyn, New York. She returned to her
homeland in 1945, and two years later she was awarded Norway's
highest honor for her "distinguished literary work and for service
to her country." The years of exile, however, had taken a great
toll on her, and she died of a stroke on June 10, 1949.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante . . . whose huge
commercial success suggests there is a market for series in
translation about fierce, complicated women navigating their
culturally conservative European milieu. . . . If HBO is looking
for its next miniseries, it should give Kristin
Lavransdatter the proper adaptation it deserves. Rereading the
trilogy this fall, I kept thinking of Olive
Kitteridge, another powerful novel about a prickly mother
turned into a worthy HBO miniseries. This trilogy includes
illicit sex, affairs, a church fire, an attempted rape, ocean
voyages, rebellious virgins cooped up in a convent, predatory
priests, an attempted human sacrifice, floods, fights, murders,
violent suicide, a gay king, drunken revelry, the Bubonic Plague,
deathbed confessions, and sex that makes its heroine ache ‘with
astonishment—that this was the iniquity that all the songs were
about.’ ” —Ruth Graham, Slate
“[My favorite fictional hero or heroine is] probably Sigrid
Undset’s strong-willed, sensual, self-destructive and ultimately
rock-solid Kristin Lavransdatter. . . . Kristin’s eponymous trilogy
bears many rereadings. Right away one somehow identifies with this
daughter of medieval Norway; soon one compassionates her in her
sufferings. . . . For all her faults [she] inspires love in many
around her, including this reader. Her faith and loyalty make her
quite beautiful to me. Like Murasaki and Dos Passos, Undset tells
the story of a whole life.” —William T. Vollman, The New York
Times Book Review
“We consider it the best book our judges have ever selected and it
has been better received by our subscribers than any other
book.” —Book-of-the-Month Club
“The finest historical novel our 20th century has yet produced;
indeed it dwarfs most of the fiction of any kind that Europe has
produced in the last twenty years.” —Contemporary Movements in
European Literature
“As a novel it must be ranked with the greatest the world knows
today.” —Montreal Star
“Sigrid Undset’s trilogy embodies more of life, seen
understandingly and seriously . . . than any novel since
Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. It is also very probably
the noblest work of fiction ever to have been inspired by the
Catholic art of life.” —Commonweal
“The first great story founded upon the normal events of a normal
woman’s existence. It is as great and as rich, as simple and as
profound, as such a story should be.” —Des Moines Register
“No other novelist, past or present, has bodied forth the medieval
world with such richness and fullness of indisputable genius. . . .
One of the finest minds in European literature.” —New York Herald
Tribune
“A master . . . writing in a prose as vigorous, articulate and
naturalistic as the novel it re-creates, Tiina Nunnally brilliantly
captures a world both remote and strangely familiar.” —Judges’
citation, PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize
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