“For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7
What a book!
Kristin Lavransdatter is a remarkable novel, utterly human and deeply spiritual, with the capacity to change your life. It is the most entertaining examination of conscience you could hope to find. The book certainly changed the life of its author, Norwegian Sigrid Undset: She converted to Catholicism in 1924 (two years after the book’s completion) and for her efforts, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
You might say she wrote herself into the Church.
Undset gave the sizable laureate monetary award to support programs for mentally disabled children. She opposed the Nazi regime to the point that her works were banned in Nazi Germany; as a further insult, after she had fled Norway, Nazi officers occupied her home in Lillehammer. Undset later became a Third Order Dominican and a translator of G.K. Chesterton’s works. Her other notable literary work is the multivolume The Master of Hestviken, written a few years after Kristin Lavransdatter.
Fourteenth-Century Catholic Norway
Undset, the daughter of an archeologist, expertly weaves the political and social background of the fourteenth century in which her novel takes place; it involves knights, kings, swordsmen, peasants, the fear of a Russian invasion, and harassment by the “half-wild Finns.” Norway’s frustration with living under the shadow of neighboring Sweden brought episodes of political intrigue. The novel never strays far from central Norway, only once as far south as Oslo, so that the geography is not hard to follow.
Undset takes the reader by the hand into the fourteenth-century world; her prose is relaxed and inviting—simultaneously medieval and modern—especially in the most recent translation by Tiina Nunnally in 2000. The earlier translation is clumsy and archaic, making it even more remarkable that it was the older translation that led to the Nobel Prize. The novel has at last count been translated into eighty different languages.
Although the percentage of Catholics in Norway today is a scant 3.08 percent of the population, in the Middle Ages, everyone was Catholic. Aside from farming, hunting, building, child-rearing, and the occasional sword fight, daily life was enriched by Mass, confessions, feast days, monks, and nuns, so that Catholicism provided the framework of everyday life. It was a meaningful existence, yet one with harsh mortality rates. Over time, Kristin’s family lost three young sons and a daughter, leaving only Kristin and her younger sister, Ramborg, in addition to their father, the saintly Lavrans, and their mother, Ragnfrid, who was never able to dispel the gloom that comes with the loss of children. Even the progression of the seasons of the natural world reflect the principal events of the Gospel; in the midst of a protracted and bitter winter, Undset writes that for “those who were waiting for the redemption of spring, it seemed as if it would never come.”
The author’s love of Norway is evident in Undset’s frequent descriptions of the country’s beautiful landscape:
She was astonished to see how springlike it had become outside. The small groves of leafy trees out in the fields were shiny green, and the wood anemones were growing as thick as a carpet beneath the lustrous tree trunks. Bright fair-weather clouds came sailing above the islands in the fjord, and the water looked fresh and blue, rippled by small gusts of spring wind.
Undset is equally deft, if unsparing, in her portraits of the various individuals who populate the novel. Some are modestly beautiful, others somewhat handsome. None are flawless and all are ordinary. Their outward perfections reflect the fallen state of humanity, a prominent theme of the novel. Undset writes,
Erling Vidkunssøn was a rather short man, slight in build and yet quite plump, but he carried himself well and with ease. Handsome he was not, although he had well-formed features. But his hair had a reddish tinge, and his eyelashes and brows were white; even his eyes were a very pale blue. That people nevertheless found Sir Erling to be good-looking was perhaps due to the fact that everyone knew he was the wealthiest knight in Norway.
Undset is as capable of nuance as Bernini, but as the Italian sculpts the ideal, Undset sculpts with her pen to portray the real. Some of these depictions are subtly comical, consistent with the comedy of the human race:
Margret was still beautiful, but she had grown so big and fat that Kristin didn’t think she had ever seen such a stout woman. But there was all the more room for silver links on her belt, while a silver brooch as large as a small shield fit nicely between her enormous breasts. Her heavy body was always adorned like an altar with the costliest of fabrics and gilded metals.
Medieval—and Modern—Spirituality
The story is told from Kristin’s point of view, from age seven until her death around age fifty. Hers is a pilgrimage of the soul that travels the distance of the long novel; the brilliance of the book has to do with the vivid insight into Kristin’s inner life. Included as well are briefer, but no less astute, glimpses into the interior life of her two brothers-in-law, Gunnulf and Simon, and her husband Erlend, though Erlend’s inner life is most often opaque.
The medieval Norwegians in the novel call upon “Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Mary, and Saint Olav” in equal measure. St. Olav, now the patron saint of Norway, was the king of Norway in the eleventh century. After his conversion to Christianity, he endeavored to bring the Christian faith to his home country. That said, those in the fourteenth century did not easily discard their superstitions, so that they feared elf maidens, ghosts, phantoms, and changelings.
It is through Kristin’s eyes that we also understand the melancholy contours of Christian life, including the unavoidable hardships that fall upon the just and the unjust.
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.
Kristin’s is a lifelong adventure in understanding herself before God, a pilgrimage of her soul, which travels the distance of the novel—and her life—to learn the price of redemption. At one waypoint, “Kristin realized how hideous sin was. Again, she felt the pain in her breast, as if her heart were breaking with remorse and shame at the undeserved mercy.”
Several of the spiritually and morally astute priests—at times confessors—may remind the reader of Hebrews 4:12:
The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Indeed, Kristin Lavransdatter illustrates the crucial role that a competent spiritual director may play in the life of the believer. Throughout the novel, and most dramatically through the clergy, Undset offers remarkable insight into the human psyche, such that would put a modern-day psychologist or psychiatrist to shame.
For the conscientious reader, Kristin Lavransdatter may serve as a literary examination of conscience. The transgressions among the Norwegians are believable; the consequences are not without mercy, but neither are they without cost. Perhaps most profoundly, sin is understood as multileveled. Rather than describing the fight against a particular vice as a continuous, unending struggle, in this novel it is characterized as successful skirmishes that bring a period of respite and peace until the believer realizes that a deeper level of the same sin lies waiting.
The novel teaches that life unavoidably involves suffering—some of it provoked by sin, some of it undeserved. A young man enduring a degenerative disease that renders him blind by adulthood reflects on the spiritual dimension of his misery:
I’ve known for a long time . . . that this was what I was destined to endure. . . . Brother Aslak spoke to me about it and said that if things should go in such a way, “The way our Lord Jesus was tempted in the wilderness,” he said. He told me that the true wilderness for a Christian man’s soul was when his sight and senses were blocked—then he would follow the footsteps of the Lord out of the wilderness, even if his body was still with his brothers or kinsmen. He read to me from the books of Saint Bernard about such things.
This insight, however, does not protect him from episodes of excruciating spiritual agony.
The medieval Norwegians live with a keen awareness of evil. Brother Edvin explains to the seven-year-old Kristin,
dragons and all other creatures that serve the Devil only seem big as long as we harbor fear within ourselves. But if a person seeks God with such earnestness and desire that he enters into His power, then the power of the Devil at once suffers such a great defeat that his instruments become small and impotent. Dragons and evil spirits shrink until they are no bigger than goblins and cats and crows.
Practical Considerations and Southern Rock
Kristin Lavransdatter clocks in at over 1,100 pages—but it is a page-turner. If you’ve not read the novel, be sure to read the 2000 translation. Likewise, don’t read any kind of summary from Wikipedia or elsewhere before reading the novel or else you will cheat yourself. There is a measure of suspense throughout the book that maintains the novel’s momentum. And dare I say it? The novel is even more compelling the second time through.
The Norwegian names will prove difficult (unless one is Norwegian); reading with a pen and notebook alongside is an aid to remembering the novel’s characters, their roles, and their rather complicated relations: Kinship holds family and social life together in medieval Norway. Of course, if a name ends with “datter,” she is the daughter of the first part of the name; likewise, if the name ends in “son,” he is the offspring of the first part of his name. So, we have Kristin Lavransdatter, the daughter of Lavrans, and Erlend Nikulausson, the son of Nikulaus.
A principal theme in the novel is the tendency to blame others for our dissatisfaction and misfortunes rather than using the opportunity to take a deep dive into one’s own soul. To conclude, it may be useful to jump a millennium and shift to a different genre entirely: contemporary Southern rock. Taking up this theme is the band Larkin Poe, hailing from Georgia and fronted by two talented sisters, Rebecca and Megan Lovell. The song is “Crown of Fire” and the lyrics are below.
I’ve been striking that flint and steel
I’ve been stirring up the flames
I punish you for all the pain I feel
When I’m the one to blameGonna cut you down to size
Overlook the pain in your eyes
Diggin’ in, stubborn as a mule
Losing love lonely as a fool
I’m gonna burn at my own stake…
Gotta make a sacrifice
On the altar of always right
And if the sacrifice is you
I gotta do what I gotta do
You’re gonna burn at my own stake
