Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

1299 to 1319) are likely to feel impossibly

But the other people in the valley felt that God’s kingdom had cost them dearly enough in tithes, goods, and money already, so they thought it unnecessary to attend to fasts and prayers so strictly or to take in priests and monks unless there was a need for them.

Kristin was afraid of Sigurd of Loptsgaard, and she didn’t like it when he took her on his knee, because he was in the habit of saying that when she grew up, he would sleep in her arms. He had outlived two wives and said he would no doubt outlive the third as well; so Kristin could be the fourth.

Certainly the behavior shown by Sigurd towards an infant Kristin are viewed with disapproval; yet Undset uses this interaction to cast a long view abeads towards Kristin’s ultimate renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil.