At 1124 pages, Kristin Lavransdatter is quite an investment. It isn’t an easy creature to lug about, and it doesn’t fit well into a purse or briefcase. It takes quite a while to wander through the life of this stubborn farmer’s daughter, from childhood to death, her heart open for readers to see and consider. Set in fourteenth century Norway, Kristin’s journey revolves around the conflict she carries between her duty to her father and youthful passion. She follows her heart but regrets it, carrying the sin of her behavior with her until she dies. Her story is romantic at times and realistic always, allowing that hindsight may offer clearer vision, but our actions still follow us and there is nowhere to hide.
“Her heart was bleeding with sorrow and shame, but she knew that she could not believe in miracles because she was unwilling to give up her inheritance of health and beauty and love.”
Author Sigrid Undset, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928 after publishing the trilogy that would become Kristin Lavransdatter, was the first woman to win the prize, in spite of complaints about the sexual explicitness and blatant moral questions explored in her work.
“She was so blissfully robbed of all power. She leaned closer to the man and whispered faintly; she didn’t know herself what she said. When he placed his hands on her bodice and stroked her breasts, she felt as if he had laid her heart bare and then seized it.”
I stumbled upon Kristin when I was a member of the ALA/YALSA DVDs for Young Adults Committee and watched a fifteen minute animated short called The Danish Poet, which is a charming study of coincidence and possiblity. The poet, who finds himself unable to write, travels to Norway to meet his favorite writer, Sigrid Undset. Kristin is mentioned and noted by its size, and my interest began. When I returned home, I searched the stacks for a copy and lo and behold, there it was. I walked around with Kristin for several weeks and attracted not a few stares and questions, but was totallly absorbed in a life set in a faraway time in a faraway land but so close to my own. How many decisions do we carry with us forever, decisions made on a passing feeling, a hunch, a guess, without thought to the next twenty or thirty years? Kristin walks through life with her baggage of guilt, but she finds fulfillment and happiness in spite of it. It isn’t easy, but her struggle proves worthwhile and universal.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
[...] brick. There are some gigantic books that are so worth the time and effort (Gone With the Wind, Kristin Lavransdatter); these two are not of that persuasion. #38 - Toad from The Wind in the Willows. Pooh, and now [...]