Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.  

“KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER” by Sigrid Undset (trilogy first published 1920 – 1922; two different English language translations, the better being the translation by Tina Nunnally) 

            About six months ago I posted on this blog a piece called Book Awards, in which I made comments on how the Nobel Prize for literature was decided. In passing I wrote that in the early years of the awards, there was an over-representation of Scandinavian authors, many of whom are now forgotten. But I mentioned two Scandinavian authors who richly deserved their prizes and who are still read widely, not only in their own countries. They were the prolific Swedish author Selma Lagerlof (1858-1940: Nobel laureate 1909) and the equally prolific Norwegian author Sigrid Undset (1882-1949: Nobel laureate 1928).

            Selma Lagerlof I first met as a child when one of my elder brothers gave me as a Christmas present (an English translation of) Selma Lagerlof’s famous children’s book Nils Holgersson, rendered into English as The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, about a boy shrunk to tiny size by malicious goblins, and then flying all over Sweden on the back of wild geese. I think I was in my twenties when I read Lagerlof’s novel for adults Gosta Berlings Saga (The Story of Gosta Berling), a very rambling and eventful tale of a defrocked clergyman and his romantic attachments. The fact is, I read it only because I was at that time (and still am) fascinated by silent movies, and I’d read that the Swedish director Mauritz Stiller had made a film version of Gosta Berlings Saga in 1924 (it starred Lars Hanson and a pudgy young woman, making her first notable appearance, Greta Garbo). And that, dear readers, has been my complete engagement with the works of Selma Lagerlof.

            More recently, though, I became immersed in the work of Sigrid Undset by reading what is still her most popular work, her trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter. Apparently an English-language translation of Kristin Lavransdatter was published in the late 1920s, but it was universally panned as a botched job. In the 1990s there appeared Tina Nunnally’s new translation, which was highly praised. It was the Tina Nunnally version that I read.

             A few words first about Sigrid Undset. Her parents were Danes but they moved to Norway when Sigrid was 2, where she lived for most of her life in what was then called Kristiania (it reverted to its ancient name Oslo in 1925). She was always interested in Scandinavia’s Middle Ages and as a young woman she wrote a novel with a medieval setting; but it was rejected by publishers. So she set about writing novels with contemporary Norwegian settings. They were severely realist in style and they focused on women, often very frank (for their times) about sexual relationships and adultery, and frequently advocating women’s emancipation. But the idea of the Middle Ages still attracted her. She married a man considerably older than she and raised three children, but the marriage broke up. By the 1920s, having established herself as novelist and earning a reasonable income, she turned at last to writing on medieval themes. The trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter was published between 1920 and 1922 and it was this work that persuaded the Nobel committee to award her the Nobel Prize in 1928. It was also in the 1920s that she made a major decision. Her parents were nominally Lutheran but were in effect atheist. Sigrid turned to Catholicism, disgusted with the formality and tepid faith offered by the Lutheran church of Norway, and perturbed by what she saw as the disintegration of society in the aftermath of the war (what we now call the First World War). At the age of 42 she was received into the Catholic Church, to the consternation of some of her readers, and remained a devotee thereafter. In the 1930s, she wrote frequently against Hitler and his regime, so during the 2^nd World War, with Norway occupied by the Nazis, she took refuge first in neutral Sweden and then in the USA. She returned to Norway in 1945 and died there three years later.

            Set in the 14^th century, Kristin Lavransdatter combines three of Undset’s major preoccupations. First is the status of women, which she’d written about in her contemporary novels. Kristin Lavransdatter [her name could be translated as Christine, Laurence’s daughter] is a very assertive woman, and the trilogy traces her whole life from adolescence to her mature adulthood with her final decision about the way of life that would be most desirable for her. Second, the nature of the Middle Ages in Scandinavia, scrupulously re-created in her prose  - apparently it was her ability to bring to life those ancient times that was most admired by the Nobel committee and won her the prize. And third, religion, with 14^th century Scandinavia having only recently adopted Christianity and still having pockets of the older paganism.

            The first of the three novels The Wreath (Kransen in the original) opens on Kristin’s childhood. Her parents are the formidable Lavrans Bjorgulfson and his wife Ragnfrid Ivasdatter who own the manor at Jorungaard. All Kristin’s brothers died in early childhood and her sister Ulvhild, injured in an accident, later dies. So, ignoring her little sister,  Kristin is the apple of her father’s eye and he hopes to marry her off profitably to a suitable suitor. But the adolescent Kristin is courted by two young men, Arne and the priest’s son Bentein, whose feeling for Kristin are so intense that they kill each other in a brawl. Violent times! Lavrans, to Kristin’s despair, arranges for Kristin to be betrothed to a proper gentleman, Simon Andresson, whom she does not love and says so. To cool her heels, her father sends her as a pensioner to a convent to improve her education and prepare her for marriage. Instead she meets and falls in love with Erlend Nikulausson, very much her elder. Erland has a very bad reputation, having had an adulterous affair with a woman called Eline and having had two children with her. Kristin often rendezvous with Erlend (sometimes in the town brothel!) and in due course is pregnant. The man who is officially betrothed to her, Simon Andresson, confronts her and, in a gentlemanly fashion, breaks off their engagement. Erlend tries to win favour with Kristin’s father Lavrans. In secret Kristin visits Erlend at the home of Erlend’s aunt Lady Aashild. Eline, the woman whom Erlend cast off, visits Kristin and attempts to poison her. In a scuffle, Eline dies. The matter is hushed up by Erlend and his influential relatives. Despite Erlend’s scandalous reputation, Erlend gradually wins the favour of Lavrans, especially when Erlend manfully helps to fight the flames that are devouring a burning church. And so Kristin and Elend are married.

            Are you reeling from all the Scandinavian names I have packed into this synopsis of the first novel of Sigrid Undset’s trilogy? I had to pick my way through them carefully myself. The title of this novel The Wreath refers to the wreath that is placed on the bride’s head when she is married (like the veil in other European countries). This novel represents the first stages of Kristin’s maturation, from childhood and unmarried adolescence to marriage. As my synopsis alone makes clear, Kristin is a very wilful young woman, rejecting her father’s choice of spouse, fornicating with a man with a scandalous reputation and in effect rebelling against the patriarchal norms of her time, when a father virtually owned a daughter. In a way, though the novel is set in a very credibly-presented medieval world, Sigrid Undset is continuing to explore the themes she addressed in her earlier contemporary novels, broaching women’s emancipation. It is possible, too, that in having Kristin marrying an older man, Undset was inspired by her own marriage [which had fallen apart]. Yet the raw violence of the Middle Ages is also there (note the brawls, sudden deaths and fights etc,). It is also made clear, in the last pages of The Wreath, that Kristin’s rebelliousness has something to do with her parents’ relationship. Kristin’s mother Ragnfrid resents Lavrans’ great affection for their daughter. She broods, she has a cold heart and it is made clear that she married Lavrans only when she couldn’t marry another man whom she loved. A thwarted woman of the sort her daughter chooses not to be.

            The second novel of the trilogy The Wife (Husfrue in the original) chronicles Kristin’s life as a married woman. Brought up to finer things in Lavrans’ home, she has to adjust to Erlend’s much rougher and rugged estate Husaby. [The early botched translation titled this novel The Mistress of Husaby.] She has difficulties with disobedient servants who do not respect her but, even as she swells with her first child, she proves to be an efficient mistress of the estate. She gains some spiritual comfort from the priest Gunnilf, Erlend’s civilised brother. She goes through the pains of childbirth when he first child Niculaus (pet name Naakkve) is born. She goes on a pilgrimage to expiate her disobedience to her father and to thank God for her safe birth. She is rewarded with her first visionary experience – she has a vision of the saintly Brother Edvin who had once counselled her. The years pass by at Husaby. Erlend, true to form, is often neglectful and roguish, away for months at a time fighting small wars with encroaching Finns. But nearly every year, Kristin presents him with a child, to the total of seven. Kristin gains the confidence of Erlend’s bastard son Orm, though she has a more difficult time with Erlend’s bastard daughter Margret. When Kristin’s father Lavrans dies, she visits his estate Jorundgaard; and once again she feels the guilt of disobedience to her father while taking stock of her not-very-satisfactory marriage. Lavrans, with his patriarchal righteousness, was a man of firmer morality that her impulsive husband. For example, when Erlend finds a suitor sleeping with his bastard daughter Margret, he chops off the man’s hand and then forces him to marry Margret on pain of death. Lavrans would never have done that. On the whole, this second novel is the book of Kristin’s trial – constantly, she is forced to contrast her household at Husaby with the more orderly values in which she was bred. She feels a pang when her much younger sister Ramborg marries Simon Andresson, the man whom her father had chosen to be her spouse. In political matters Erlend becomes involved in a plot to create a king for Norway separate from the king of Sweden (in the 14^th century the two countries were ruled as one). Erlend is convicted of treason and tortured to extract information on his fellow conspirators; but he steadfastly refuses to name names, displaying a residue of knightly-warrior honour, even though he was trapped because he dallied sexually with a woman (the Lady Suvvina) who reported his plans. It is Simon Andresson, the suitor she rejected, who answers Kristin’s appeal and persuades the king to release Erlend – though Erlend’s penalty is to have all his estates stripped from him.

            Perhaps some readers, reading this second novel, might think that Sigrid Undset is reneging on her critique of patriarchal control of women that was expressed in the first novel The Wreath. But this is not the case. Undset is expressing the painful fact that what we most desire when we are young may lead to something more imperfect than we expected; and thus it is in Kristin’s relationship with her husband.

            The third and final part of the trilogy The Cross (Korset in the original) shows Kristin, now in early middle age, seeing her elders dropping away. With both her parents dead, Kristin and Erlend move into Lavrans’ estate Jorundgaard, with their household. They are now in close proximity to Kirstin’s sister Ramborg and her husband Simon Andresson. It is clear that there is now much mutual admiration between Kristin and Simon as when, for example, Kristin saves Ramborg’s ailing child by using folklore medicine. Erlend understands his moral debt to Simon; but he feels it as a burden. Ramborg resents her husband’s admiration of Kristin. But Simon, the gentleman, understands that he can never love Kristin as he did in his youth. Things gradually become even more fractious between Kristin and Erlend. When, for the last of many times, she criticises his selfish and negligent ways, he walks out on her and chooses to live as a semi-hermit in a house that has been deserted by his aunt. When Simon Andresson dies of a fever, Kristin discovers that Simon’s marriage to Ramborg was never harmonious either. Now subject to scorn because her husband has deserted her, Kristin is left to rear her growing children at  Jorundgaard. One spring, she attempts to effect a reconciliation with Erlend, visits his den, and is so strongly still physically attracted to him that she becomes pregnant; but Erlend refuses to return to her household. The child is born. Kristin names the child Erlend (even though it is the custom not to name a child after a living forebear). But the newborn is sickly and soon dies. A fantastic rumour arises that the child was the product of “incest” [meaning in this case having sexual intercourse with a household servant, Kristin’s steward Ulf Haldorsson]. Kristin is even brought before the bishops’ visiting court. Kristin’s sons seek out Erlend who, typically, defends his wife’s honour by getting into a brawl and being killed. But at least Kristin has been exonerated. Now into middle age, Kristin lives with, and for, her sons. Two of her sons train for  the monastery, but she is not sure they are up for it. Her younger sons seek more adventurous lives further afield. Her son Gaute is gradually becoming the master of the estate. By force, Gaute carries off a nobleman’s daughter, Jofrid, has a child by her, and manages to get her family’s consent to marry her. As Kristin judges it, clearly Jorundgaard once again has a capable and determined master and mistress.

            Widowed, single, in her forties, Kristin sets out on another pilgrimage. Again, she encounters the spiritual guidance of Erlend’s brother Gunnulf. Kristin enters a convent and becomes a nun, living a pious and devoted life. The plague known as the Black Dead strikes. In a country which still has a lingering paganism, some people attempt to ward off the plague by long-abandoned remedies, such as child sacrifice. Kristin saves a child from human sacrifice and arranges for the Christian burial of the child’s deceased mother. Then she dies, , realizing the justice and mercy of God in tempering and shaping such an act.

            Summing up this whole trilogy, I would call it a long historical saga, spanning Norwegian life from about 1300 to 1349, but it is a domestic saga, a family story, not a pageant of battles, sieges and what have you. Politics and historical circumstances come to the fore only when Erlend becomes involved in a conspiracy, a very small part of the trilogy. Part of the trilogy’s purpose is to show the pride of the old Norwegian warrior-gentry caste, but also noting its inadequacy as a moral code. Taking more central themes of the novel are the immense importance of marriage settlements and inheritance, and the struggles of Scandinavian Christianity against the real possibility of the survival of paganism. More important than all this, however, is the moral development of Kristin herself. No matter how accurate its historical details are,  Kristin Lavransdatter is centrally a psychological work rather than an historical work, showing a woman’s mental growth from adolescence to her death aged about 50; her responsibilities as mother and lady of the manor; her strong influence by her father; the difficulties of matrimony with a reckless and irresponsible spouse who only late in his life proves his moral worth; and finally discovering a way of finding peace of mind.

Some modern readers might carp at Kristin’s finally becoming a nun. (She does so in her 40s – about the same age as a Sigrid Undset was when she became a Catholic – there is clearly some sort of autobiography in this trilogy). But if you are sceptic, a little research might show you that convent life was one of the few places in medieval life where women could run their own affairs and not always be under the surveillance of men. In their own ways, and in very different eras, both Kristin and Sigrid Undset are expressing a form of women’s emancipation.