Kristin Lavransdatter (Kristin Lavransdatter, #1-3)

by Sigrid Undset

“What’s the matter with you, Kristin?” asked Fru Aashild a little impatiently. “You must be strong now and not so despondent.” “I’m thinking about all the people we have hurt so that we could live to see this day,” said Kristin, shivering.

But Kristin felt as if one landslide after another were ravaging her soul; everything was being torn down that she had built up since that terrifying day at Haugen. During those first days she had simply thought, wildly and blindly, that she had to hold out, she had to hold out one day at a time. And she had held out until things became easier—quite easy, in the end, when she had cast off all thoughts except one: that now their wedding would take place at last, Erlend’s wedding at last.

She tried to look up at the painting of Saint Olav—he stood there, pink and white and handsome, leaning on his axe, treading his own sinful human form underfoot—but Herr Bjørn drew her eyes. And next to him she saw Eline Ormsdatter’s dead countenance; she was looking at them with indifference. They had trampled over her in order to get here, and she did not begrudge them that.

When the sin is consummated it will give birth to death.”

Kristin thought: What if she screamed now so that her voice pierced through the song and the deep, droning male voices and reverberated out over the crowd? Would she then be rid of Eline’s face? Would life appear in the dead man’s eyes? But she clenched her teeth together.

“I put you here to suffer ridicule and shame, you timber. I put you here so the muck would devour you. I put you here as punishment because you struck down my pretty little maiden. I should have put you above the door of my loft and honored and thanked you with decorative carvings because you saved her from shame and from sorrow—for you caused my Ulvhild to die an innocent child.”

“I don’t understand any longer why God has given me so many great sorrows. I have striven faithfully to do His will. Why did He take our children from us, Ragnfrid, one after the other? First our sons, then little Ulvhild, and now I have given the one I love most dearly, without honor, to an unreliable and imprudent man. Now we have only the little one left. And it seems to me unwise to rejoice over Ramborg until I see how things may go for her.”

His thoughts were tumbling and racing through his mind. That one naked glance which the groom and bride had cast at each other, the two young faces blushing with red flames—he thought it so brazen. It had stung him that she was his daughter. But he kept on seeing those eyes, and he struggled wildly and blindly against tearing away the veil from something in his own heart which he had never wanted to acknowledge—there he had concealed a part of himself from his own wife when she had searched for it.

Married off—that was what had happened to him, practically unconsulted. Friends . . . he had many, and he had none. War . . . it had been a joy, but there was no more war; his armor was hanging up in the loft, seldom used. He had become a farmer. But he had had daughters; everything he had done in his life became dear to him because he had done it to provide for those tender young lives that he held in his hands.

Her eyes were no longer shy.

Lavrans didn’t know why he answered the way he did. His chest felt empty and hollow, like a man whose heart and lungs had been ripped out through his back. But he placed his hand, heavy and weary, on his wife’s head and said, “Earth has to be ground up, my Ragnfrid, before the food can grow.”

Saint Lavrans

Now she felt it again. Deep within her womb it felt as if a fish was flicking its tail. And again the whole world seemed to reel around her,

Bethlehem. In Norwegian it means the place of bread. For that was where the bread which will nourish us for eternal life was given to the people.

Then Kristin had seen her father’s eyes meet her mother’s across the church, and she withdrew her gaze, because she knew that this was not meant for her.

“You know yourself that I didn’t mean it like that. But you lived all that time at Jørundgaard and listened to Lavrans—so splendid and manly he is, but he often talks as if he were a monk and not a grown man.” “Have you ever heard of any monk who has had six children?” she said, offended. “I’ve heard of that man, Skurda-Grim, and he had seven,” said Erlend in despair. “The former abbot at Holm . . . No, Kristin, Kristin, don’t cry like that. In God’s name, I think you’ve lost your senses.”

But then it is also said that a man should keep his word, even if it’s to the Devil himself.

Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis et omnes iniquitates meas dele. Cor mundum crea in me, Deus et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis. Ne projicias me a facie tua et Spiritum Sanctum tuum ne auferas a me.3 “Can you understand it?” asked Gunnulf, and Kristin nodded and said that she understood a little. The words were familiar enough that it seemed strange to her that they should appear before her right now. Her face contorted and tears rose up.

“But I must be like a leper in God’s eyes,” said Kristin. She rested her face on the priest’s arm which she was gripping. “Such as I am, infected with sins.”

the mother tumbled, hazily recalled, the sight of a bud she had seen in the cloister garden—something from which red, crinkled wisps of silk emerged and spread out to become a flower.

But he continued without mercy.

Kristin curtseyed, took a drink, and thanked the man with such words as poor people usually said to her when she gave them alms.

Kristin sank to the ground beneath her sin.

Lord Jesus Christ. Was there ever a sinner like her?

without the commoners, we are in many ways helpless children all our days, and that for God’s sake as well as our own, we ought to serve them in turn with our knowledge and protect them with our chivalry.

I think the people of Outer Trøn-delag liked the gentry better back when we led their sons on military incursions, let our blood run and mingle with theirs across the planks, and split apart rings and divided up the booty with our serving men.

“Things are such, Erlend, that few are born to rule, but everyone is born to serve; the proper way to rule is to be your servants’ servant.”

bast

censorious.

“Perhaps He thought that your eyes needed to be opened so you would learn that you ought to serve Him wherever you are.

This is a piece of the sponge which the pious maidens used to wipe up the martyr blood so that it would not be lost, and this is a knuckle from the finger of a holy man—but only God knows his name. Then all four of us vowed that every day we would invoke this holy man, whose honor is unknown to any human. And we chose this nameless martyr as a witness so that we might never forget how completely unworthy we are of God’s reward or the honors of men, and always remember that nothing in this world is worthy of desire except His mercy.”

“I’m afraid of you,” she said again. “Gunnulf, when you talk like that, then I realize I’ll never be able to find my way to peace.”

Peace—perhaps the king’s peace would be possible up there someday, but in his lifetime there would be peace only when the Devil attended mass.

They looked like hawks in the rain.

I wonder whether any woman respects the laws and beliefs of men as we do among ourselves—when she or her own kind can win something by stepping over them.

he had always thought that a man ought to bring his joy to the drinking table.

He said we should pay no attention to the whims of you two young people. And I wonder whether the knight might have been right—now that I see you can’t live in a seemly fashion with the husband you insisted on winning.”

“A man can learn a great deal without asking.”

“You are good to everyone, my dear child, but I have also realized that you can be cruel to those you love too dearly. For the sake of Jesus, Kristin, spare me the need to be so worried for you—that your impetuous spirit might bring more sorrow upon you and yours. You struggle like a colt that has been tied up in the stable for the first time, whenever your heartstrings are bound.”

I’m too heavy-footed and too lighthearted to be used in making secret plans.

“You’re cold, Father,” said Kristin. “Take my cloak.” She undid the clasp, and then he pulled a corner of the cloak around his shoulders, so it covered both of them. He slipped his arm around her waist.

“But I chose this world myself, and whenever things went against me, I tried to tell myself that it would be unmanly to complain about the fate I had chosen. For I’ve realized more and more with each year that I’ve lived: There is no worthier work for the person who has been graced with the ability to see even a small part of God’s mercy than to serve Him and to keep vigil and to pray for those people whose sight is still clouded by the shadow of worldly matters.

With this last ring, she felt as if he were marrying her again. Now that she would soon sit beside his lifeless body, he wanted her to know that with this ring he was committing to her the strong and vital force that had lived in this dust and ashes.

Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world’s end.

And she remembered the first night—and all the nights afterwards—when she received the clumsy caresses of the newly married boy and acted cold as stone, never concealing how little they pleased her.

“Venite ad me, omnes qui laborate et onerati estis. Ego reficiam vos1

He laughed the hardest every time one of the cows relieved itself on the floor.

Kristin knew that her father loved her no less than before. But she had never noticed until now that he loved her mother.

It was a great joy for her that now there was something she could do for her father.

and prosperity in the world. “My greatest sorrows were that I never saw my mother’s face, and that I lost my children—but soon they will no longer be sorrows. And the same is true of other things that have grieved me in my life—they are no longer sorrows.”