Kristin Lavransdatter Reading Order

Kristin Lavransdatter (1920–22) by Sigrid Undset is the great Norwegian medieval trilogy — three volumes (The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby, The Cross) tracing the life of a Norwegian woman from her childhood in fourteenth-century Norway to her death during the Black Death. Kristin is the daughter of a prosperous landowner in the Gudbrandsdalen valley; her life — her passion for the wild and ambitious Erlend Nikulaussøn against her parents' wishes, her long marriage to this charming but irresponsible man, the raising of their seven sons, her eventual separation from Erlend and widowhood, and her death in a plague convent — unfolds against the backdrop of medieval Norwegian society with an exactitude of historical reconstruction that is unparalleled in Scandinavian fiction. Undset won the Nobel Prize in 1928 primarily on the strength of Kristin Lavransdatter, and the award was a recognition of something genuinely extraordinary: the trilogy gives the reader the sensation of living in the Middle Ages without any mediation, as if fourteenth-century Norway were as immediately present as the contemporary world. Undset, who had converted to Catholicism in 1924, brought to the trilogy a deep understanding of medieval Catholic theology and practice — Kristin's spiritual life, her sins and her attempts at expiation, her faith and her failures, are central to the novel's structure. The trilogy is often described as the greatest Norwegian novel.