Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

She began looking for evidence that other people, like herself, were not without sin. She paid more attention to gossip, and she took note of all the little things around her which indicated that not even the sisters in the convent were completely holy and unworldly.

“Ah, young child, you probably think there’s nothing else that entices in the world save sensual pleasure and wealth and power. I must tell you that these are small things that are found along the side of the road—but I, I have loved the roads themselves. It was not the small things of the world that I loved but the entire world.

Nothing you do could ever change your father’s heart toward you.”

“Kristin,” the priest said sternly. “Are you so arrogant that you think yourself capable of sinning so badly that God’s mercy is not great enough?

It must be true, what the priests had told him, that sin ate up a man’s soul like rust—for he could find no rest or peace here with his sweet beloved.

She had never felt so tired before in all her life. She was tired of merriment and tired of sorrow, and most of all tired of brooding.

He walked back between the fences, homeward to the calm and pleasant goodwill that prevails when a small circle of close kin remains after a great banquet.

Now she realized that her mother’s heart had been deeply etched with memories of her daughter, memories of her thoughts about the child from before she was born and from all the years the child could not remember, memories of fears and hopes and dreams that children would never know had been dreamed on their behalf, before it was their own turn to fear and hope and dream in secret.

Now here she sat with a contrite heart—not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road’s end.

The world was a master from whom it was difficult to flee once a person had submitted to its power.

The life to which this ring had married her, over which she had complained and grumbled, raged and rebelled. And yet she had loved it so, rejoicing over it, with both the bad and the good, so that there was not a single day she would have given back to God without lament or a single sorrow she would have relinquished without regret.