Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

A particular poignancy attends the reading of very long novels, especially those which, for all their undeniable charms, you’re unlikely to read again. Weeks, even months of your internal life are given over to some new cast of characters, who vaporize when the book is closed.

“But weren’t they inside the caves?” asked Kristin. “Saint Sunniva and the Selje men?5 Isn’t that true?” The monk squinted at her and smiled again. “It’s both true and not true. It seemed to be true for the people who found the holy bodies. And it seemed true to Sunniva and the Selje men, because they were humble and believed that the world is stronger than all sinful people. They did not imagine that they might be stronger than the world because they did not love it. But if they had only known, they could have taken all the mountains and flung them out into the sea like tiny pebbles. No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love.”

“There is no one, Kristin, who does not love and fear God. But it’s because our hearts are divided between love for God and fear of the Devil, and love for this world and this flesh, that we are miserable in life and death. For if a man knew no yearning for God and God’s being, then he would thrive in Hell, and we alone would not understand that he had found his heart’s desire. Then the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, and he would not feel the pain of the serpent’s bite if he did not long for peace.”

Brother Edvin continued, “It was because of God’s mercy toward us that He saw how our hearts were split, and He came down to live among us, in order to taste, in fleshly form, the temptations of the Devil when he entices us with power and glory, and the menace of the world when it offers us blows and contempt and the wounds of sharp nails in our hands and feet. In this manner He showed us the way and allowed us to see His love.”

“Have you been to Paris then?” asked the child. “God bless you, little Kristin, I’ve been to Paris and traveled elsewhere in the world as well, and yet you mustn’t think me any better for it, because I fear the Devil and love and desire this world like a fool. But I hold on to the cross with all my strength—one must cling to it like a kitten hanging on to a plank when it falls into the sea.

“I’ve had my glory days, Kristin, but I’m not foolish enough to complain because I have to be content with sour, watered-down milk now that I’ve drunk up all my wine and ale. Good days can last a long time if one tends to things with care and caution; all sensible people know that. That’s why I think that sensible people have to be satisfied with the good days—for the grandest of days are costly indeed. They call a man a fool who fritters away his father’s inheritance in order to enjoy himself in his youth. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion about that. But I call him a true idiot and fool only if he regrets his actions afterward, and he is twice the fool and the greatest buffoon of all if he expects to see his drinking companions again once the inheritance is gone.

Sira Eirik himself said that they caused no one any harm, and as for Fru Aashild’s witchcraft, he was not her parish priest. It could be that the woman knew more than was good for the health of her soul—and yet one should not forget that ignorant people often spoke of witchcraft as soon as a woman showed herself to be wiser than the councilmen.

“You know very well . . . ,” he said, his voice low and shaking. “You know that you would be lying if you tried to pretend that I didn’t . . . You know quite well what I wanted to talk to you about, many times, but you received me in such a way that I wouldn’t have been a man if I had mentioned it afterward, not if they tried to draw it out of me with burning tongs.

Ragnfrid crossed her thin arms over her withered breasts. Yes, God help her. What kind of woman was she? What kind of mother was she? She would soon be old. And yet she was just the same. She no longer begged the way she had when they were young, when she had threatened and raged against this man who closed himself off, shy and modest, when she grew ardent—who turned cold when she wanted to give him more than his husband’s right. That’s the way things were, and that’s how she had gotten with child, time after time—humiliated, furious with shame because she couldn’t be content with his lukewarm, married man’s love. Then, when she was pregnant and in need of kindness and tenderness, he had had so much to give. Whenever she was sick or tormented, her husband’s tireless, gentle concern for her fell like dew on her hot soul. He willingly took on all her troubles and bore them, but there was something of his own that he refused to share. She had loved her children so much that it felt as though her heart were cut out of her each time she lost one of them. God, God, what kind of woman was she, who in the midst of her suffering was capable of tasting that drop of sweetness when he took on her sorrow and laid it close to his own?

Kristin slowly rose to her feet. Jesus, how heavy it was to bear all that silver and gold. Then Fru Aashild took her by the hand and led her forward to a large water basin, while the bridesmaids threw open the door to let in the sun and brighten up the loft.

He had been a good husband to her; he believed that himself. He had shown her all the respect he could, given her full authority, asked her advice about everything, been faithful to her; and they had had six children. He had simply wanted to live with her without her always trying to seize what was in his heart—and what he refused to reveal. He had never loved anyone. What about Ingunn, Karl’s wife at Bru? Lavrans blushed in the darkness. He had always visited them when he traveled through the valley. He had probably never spoken to the woman alone even once. But whenever he saw her—if he merely thought of her—he felt something like that first smell of the earth in the spring, right after the snow had gone. Now he realized: it could have happened to him too . . . he could have loved someone too. But he had been married so young, and he had grown wary. Then he found that he thrived best out in the wilderness—up on the mountain plateaus, where every living creature demands wide-open space, with room enough to flee. Wary, they watch every stranger that tries to sneak up on them.

“You poor wretch,” whispered Kristin, petting the dog who had come over and put her head on Kristin’s knee. Her backbone was as sharp as a scythe, and her teats almost swept the floor. The pups were literally eating their mother up. “Oh, yes, my poor wretch.”

Night after night he had knelt here with his senses closed off and his limbs numb, until he saw the vision. The hill with the three crosses against the sky. The cross in the middle, which was meant to bear the king of heaven and earth, shook and trembled; it bent like a tree in a storm, in fear of bearing the much too precious burden, the sacrifice for all the sins of the world. The lord of the storm tents forced it, the way a knight forces his defiant stallion; the chieftain of heaven carried it into battle. Then that miracle occurred which was the key to ever deeper miracles. The blood that ran down from the cross in redemption for all sins and penance for all sorrows—that was the visible sign. With this first miracle the eye of the soul could be opened to contemplate those still hidden—God, who came down to earth and became the son of a virgin and brother to the human kin, who lay waste to Hell and who, with the released souls that were his spoils of war, stormed toward the dazzling sea of light from which the world was born and which sustains the earth. It was toward that unfathomable and eternal depth of light that his thoughts were drawn, and there they perished in the light, vanishing like a flock of birds into the radiance of an evening sky.

“Perhaps you may think, wife, that you’ve had more sorrow than joy with me; things did go wrong for us in some ways. And yet I think we have been faithful friends. And this is what I have thought: that afterwards we will meet again in such a manner that all the wrongs will no longer separate us; and the friendship that we had, God will build even stronger.”