Kristin Lavransdatter (Penguin Classics) (Rough Cut) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I read this as a book-club selection, and I'm so glad I did. Under different circumstances, I might have avoided the title, because of its size and the seemingly dry first page (it starts with a lineage and a history of the family's geographical locations).

Well. Thank heavens for book clubs. Because this is a book I will read again, and I rank it right up there with Marquez's Hundred Years of Solitude.

Undset follows the life of one woman, Kristin Lavransdatter, from childhood to death. The handling of the various season's of Kristin's life are pure genius. Undset captures the qualities of each stage, without being trite or predictable. I think this is why I often felt as if I were inside the mind and heart of Kristin, even though our surface circumstances are wildly different.

Here's an example of a scene that absolutely made me weep, because I could relate to that fearful time of life when one looks at one's parents and realizes they won't always be here. The poignant moment takes place in a "hollow between small hills," as Kristin departs from her father.

"Kristin...ran her fingers over his clothing and his hand and his saddle, and along the neck and flank of his horse; she pressed her head here and there..." (p.544)

The desperation, the sense of wanting to touch and touch again that which is about to slip through one's fingers... how beautifully Undset captures that.

And, how beautifully she also captures so many other moments--of passion and betrayal, of forgiveness and unforgiveness, of acceptance and denial, of longing and loss.

I wish I had a few weeks to hide away in my room... I would pick this up again without pause. Nevertheless, the characters are still with me, calling me to a reflection and deep feeling I haven't experienced in quite some time.

Kristin Lavransdatter is the biggest literary surprise that ever engulfed me, as I read its 1,168 pages in three weeks on the subway, airplanes, theater auditoriums, nature trails, and anywhere else I could sneak in a few pages, the better to channel my way into Kristin's compelling, meticulously created and true-to-life world.

This story starts slowly, like a locomotive, but by the end it builds a staggering, devastating momentum that still swirls in my mind, months after finishing the novel for the second time.

If you like treason, torture, betrayal, drunken assaults, bar fights, sword fights, political intrigue, charging bears, brothels, plague, poison, suicide, damsels in distress, black magic, and human sacrifice, you'll find it in these pages.

And if you like stories of spiritual quests, coming of age and reflections from age, the bonds between fathers and daughters, and of mothers and sons, platonic love, unrequited love, doomed love, the joys of children, the inextinguishable anguish of burying children, the circle of life that never stops turning, and the most tender, heartbreaking passages I've ever read of the love between a mother and her child, you'll find even more of it in Kristin's life story.

And to all the smug reviewers who chastise Kristin and wish they could have just slapped some sense into her, I say this: can you really imagine that Kristin could have led her life any other way? My answer is this:

"All that happened and would happen was meant to be. Everything happens as it is meant to be." (p. 289, "The Cross")

Kristin is not a saint, but neither is she a cautionary tale. As long as we humans can love and live, we will love well, love madly and sometimes love foolishly, and we'll tell stories about it. And this story of Kristin is for me the truest love story ever told, and I will never forget her.

"Kristin Lavrandatter", Sigrid Undset's Nobel-prize winning trilogy from the 1920s, doesn't appear on any college reading list that I have ever seen, despite its beauty, depth of observations about love, marriage, and family psychology, tour de force representation of life in medieval Norway, and the critical praise heaped upon it. It's length (1,000 pages plus in most translations) is probably one factor, and, some might say, another factor was the "medievalist" style of archaic English used in the Charles Archer translation that until recently was the one available. A very recent translation by Tina Nunnally is done in more modern, colloquial English. I should state here that I am probably in a minority in adoring the Archer translation - I did not, as others report below, find the language a chore at all: on the contrary, I found it enhanced the feel of having stepped into the past. I found the newer translation to be less satisfying, stylistically. Unless one speaks fluent Norwegian and can read the original without the veil of translation between reader and author, the matter is somewhat moot. So far as I could tell, Nunnally did not offer anything in her modernist translation that was substantially different from the story and characters presented in the Archer translation.

This great epic of Undset's is divided into three books: The Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby, and The Cross. Set in the 1300s, in feudal Norway, the novel's central character is Kristin Lavransdatter (literally, "daughter of Lavrans"), the eldest child of well-to-do, upright, respected, landowners. Pretty, intelligent, sheltered yet strong-willed, and the light of her deeply religious father's life, the novel opens during Kristin's childhood and ends with her death in old age. In the many pages between, Undset observes a life teeming with conflict, religious struggle, sexual awakening, marriage, and motherhood. And, through these stages of Kristin's life, Undset opens a window onto life in medieval Norway, of the powerful role of the church in everyday life, the restricted roles of women, the custom of arranged marriages, child-rearing, farming, and politics (Norway's monarchy had passed to Sweden at the time).

Undset's achievement at weaving together this enormous tapestry, of presenting so many characters, in addition to Kristin, with all their varied human foibles, is monumental. You will feel as if you have stepped into an alternative, yet quite real universe. Whether you read and prefer the newer translation or (as this reviewer does) the older translation, Undset's knowledge of the poignant, and apparently eternal, realities of relationship and family life should be equally rewarding. Undset had a strong interest in family psychology, women's issues, and was a convert to Catholicism - these interests, together with the painstaking research she undertook, combine to give us this living, breathing picture of life in the Middle Ages.

Book I, The Wreath (the title refers to the golden wreath of maidenhood worn by young girls before marriage) covers Kristin's life from childhood to her wedding; Book II, The Mistress of Husaby, covers Kristin's life from her marriage to her widowhood; Book III, The Cross, covers her life from the death of her husband through her death.

The central conflict of the novel is Kristin's marriage to Erlend Nikulauson. Erlend, although of a noble family and even more well-born than Kristin, has lived in adultery with another man's wife and has two children with her. After Kristin falls in love with Erlend and refuses to marry Simon Darre, the good man that her father has selected for her husband, and who has fallen deeply in love with her despite the arranged character of the marriage, the relationship between Kristin and her father undergoes tremendous strain. A series of tragic circumstances weakens Lavrans's resolve never to wed his daughter to an adulterer, and at last Kristin and Erlend are married, concluding the first book.

Husaby is Erlend's great estate, thus, Book II, The Mistress of Husaby, takes us through Kristin's married life, the complexities of her relationship with her husband, and years of childbearing. Erlend, at heart an adventurer who prefers the open sea to caring for his lands, flocks, and household, chafes under married life and exhibits an undisciplined, weak character except in matters of warfare. Kristin finds she must provide the strengths that he lacks at home and resents Erlend for it. Simon, meanwhile, eventually marries Kristin's youngest sister, although he never ceases to love Kristin, which opens up a breach between the two sisters.

Erlend also becomes embroiled in a failed political coup that eventually deprives him of his lands, forcing him and Kristin and their sons to return to Jorundgaard, Kristin's childhood estate, which is now hers by right after her father's death. Thus, the last book, The Cross, takes us through the hardest years of Kristin's life, with an embittered husband who is killed in a dispute not long after the return to Jorundgaard. Kristin's years as a widow, providing hard-won wisdom and comfort to her brood of headstrong sons, and the spiritual peace she finds at last after her tumultuous life, make up the final section of the book.

Throughout all three books, the role of Catholicism plays a very strong role not only in daily life, but in the psyches particularly of Kristin and her father and mother. The struggle to accommodate the high standards of Christian practice and goodness that conflict with human feelings and weaknesses is a connecting theme in the work, as is the immutable nature of character. One cannot help wondering as one reads what would have happened had Kristin done her father's bidding and married Simon, much the stronger and more sensible man, and one who loves Kristin in his way as much as Erlend does. And yet, Undset makes it clear that the love between Kristin and Erlend, despite all the trials it endures, is one that neither could have lived without.

I cannot recommend this unique and brilliant work highly enough. It will stay with you for the rest of your life.