Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

It occurred to him that she was overly sensitive about petty matters and reluctant to forgive him for minor offenses which he had committed with no ill intent.

She thought about her own children; she loved them more than the blood of her own heart, and there was not a waking hour when she wasn’t thinking about them. And yet there was much in her soul that she brooded over more—her children she could love without brooding.

Now she seemed to realize that great currents of both sorrow and joy had flowed between these two people, who had been given to each other in their youth by their fathers, without being asked.

Now she understood that the lives of these two people had contained much more than love for their children. And yet that love had been strong and wide and unfathomably deep; while the love she gave them in return was weak and thoughtless and selfish, even back in her childhood when her parents were her whole world.

“I thought, Kristin, that once you had children of your own, then you would better understand. . . .” She remembered when her mother said those words. Sorrowfully, the daughter thought that she still didn’t understand her mother. But now she was beginning to realize how much she didn’t understand.

“You know yourself, Kristin, that no one should rely too heavily on what Erlend says; he must be judged by what he does.”

For the time being the matter was allowed to languish,

Having too many men under arms?

“That looks like the gold clasp that Fru Helga of Gimsar used to wear to banquets.”

And so Kristin stayed at Husaby while Erlend was in Nidaros to give his daughter to Gerlak Tiedekenssøn.

The same sin as Erland and Kristan.

“But you needn’t worry, Erlend. I will not offend you again with my words, and from this day forward, I will never forget to speak to you as gently as if you were descended from thralls.” Erlend’s face had flushed dark red. He raised his fist at her, then turned swiftly on his heel, grabbed his cape and sword from the bench near the door, and rushed out.

But that was truly what he wished for most—to sit and drink with the smallholders who had come to town and with the servants and seamen. No one would make a fuss if these fellows gave their women a slap in the face; it would do them good. How in fiery Hell was a man to rule his wife if he couldn’t beat her because of her high birth and his own sense of honor. The Devil himself couldn’t compete with a woman through words. She was a witch—but so beautiful. If only he could beat her until she gave in.

stood

You and all the rest of us must neither think nor speak, but guard our tongues well until we learn more and can judge whether we ought to speak, and in what way.

His mother was the mother who had more and more children; they grew up and left the hands of women to join the life and companionship and fighting and friendship of the group of brothers. His mother had open hands through which everything they needed flowed; his mother had a remedy for almost every ill; his mother’s presence at the manor was like the fire in the hearth. She created life at home the way the fields around Husaby created the year’s crops; life and warmth issued from her as they did from the beasts in the cowshed and the horses in the stable. The boy had never thought to compare her to other women.

the way there is a kind of calm over the waves of the sea if viewed from high enough up a mountain ridge.

That was the moment when she felt the first drop of bitterness rise up in her heart. God protect the boy. May he never see the day when he realizes that he has placed his trust in a hand that lets everything run through its fingers like cold water and dry sand.

He might well have wished that she had a more even temperament. He didn’t always know how he stood with his wife. And more attention could have been paid to the housekeeping in his home. But no man should dare expect to have all his bowls filled to the brim, as the saying goes.

She had such a nice smile and wise eyes. She wasn’t truly ugly either, thought her father.

“The two of them are quarreling again.”

It seems to me a greater honor to be called my father’s bastard daughter than to be the lawful son of yours!”

He said that you, Father, were the traitor, and that it was thanks to Erlend that you were now sitting here, safe and rich, on your own manor.”

“The letter they tortured my father on the rack for, trying to make him say who had put their seal on it—I saw that letter myself! I was the one who took it and burned it.”

“Keep silent!” Furiously Erlend seized Gaute by the shoulder and chest. “I trusted you. You, my son! It would serve you right if I killed you now.”

“I picked it up and looked at the seals before I burned it, Father! I thought the day might come when I could serve you by doing so. . . .”

Erlend had had Simon’s private seal in his possession for a short time during that spring.

He had shown her the seal and said that Simon should have had a finer one carved.

Gyrd at Dyfrin. They had met only once, at Ramborg’s

Ulf Saksesøn was Gyrd Darre’s brother-in-law; Ulf had been part of the plot.

“Erlend, was it Gyrd?”

Did my brother join you in that plan?”

that Erlend might have misused his seal—he

During the year that Bjørgulf and Naakkve spent with Sira Eiliv at the monastery on Tautra, they had eagerly suckled at the breasts of Lady Wisdom, as the priest expressed it.

There were many books at Jørundgaard. Lavrans had owned five.

as she rushed upward, sliding on the slippery carpet of needles and stumbling over the writhing roots that sprawled across the path she was following.

The roar of the river drew her. She walked all the way over to the edge and looked down. Far below, the water shimmered white as it seethed and thundered over the rocks from one pool to the next.

The monotonous drone of the waterfalls resonated through her overwrought body and soul. It kept reminding her of something, of a time that was an eternity ago; even back then she realized that she would not have the strength to bear the fate she had chosen for herself. She had laid bare her protected, gentle girl’s life to a ravaging, fleshly love; she had lived in anguish, anguish, anguish ever since—an unfree woman from the first moment she became a mother. She had given herself up to the world in her youth, and the more she squirmed and struggled against the bonds of the world, the more fiercely she felt herself imprisoned and fettered by them.

Was this how she would see her struggle end? Had she conceived in her womb a flock of restless fledgling hawks that simply lay in her nest, waiting impatiently for the hour when their wings were strong enough to carry them beyond the most distant blue peaks? And their father would clap his hands and laugh: Fly, fly, my young birds. They would take with them bloody threads from the roots of her heart when they flew off, and they wouldn’t even know it. She would be left behind alone, and all the heartstrings, which had once bound her to this old home of hers, she had already sundered. That was how it would end, and she would be neither alive nor dead.

After a moment he asked, “What is weighing so heavily on your heart, Kristin, that you don’t think you’ll be able to sleep?”

I know you’re more pious than I can ever be. And yet, Kristin, I have difficulty accepting that this is the proper interpretation of God’s words: that you should go about storing everything away and never forgetting. He had a long memory too, Lavrans did. No, I won’t say anything about your father except that he was pious and noble, and you are too; I know that. But often when you speak so gently and sweetly, as if your mouth were full of honey, I fear that you’re thinking mostly about old wrongs, and God will have to judge whether you’re as pious in your heart as you are in words.”

“I’m frightened!” She sat up, wringing her hands together in her lap. “I’m so frightened. Gentle Virgin Mary, help us all. I’m so frightened. What will become of my sons?”

“Yes, I’ve had to learn to ration out the solace sparingly, Kristin. There’s been a cruel shortage of it for several years now. We have to save it up because we don’t know how long it might have to last.”

It had been such torment to feel her body so weak, her mind so ignorant and inexperienced, and yet not dare rely on the wisdom and strength of her husband.

So small, so defenseless you are, and your father doesn’t seem to remember that above all else he needs to keep you safe.

They were whirling away from her, both her husband and all her sons, with that strange, boyish playfulness which she seemed to have glimpsed in all the men she had ever met and in which a somber, fretful woman could never participate.

The painful anguish in her heart loosened its grip for a moment, and the trance of sleep descended, tangling up all the threads of her thoughts as she sank down, first into well-being and then into oblivion.

And she could see no end to it all. Here she stood now, about to beg him to come back, to fill her goblet each day with uncertainty and unrest, with expectations, with longings and fear and hope that would be shattered. She

“So we’ll see,” he said finally, “which of us is more stubborn, my fair Kristin. This is not the last time we will meet; you and I both know that!” As she rode past the church, she gave a little shudder. She felt as if she were returning home from inside the mountain. As if Erlend were the mountain king himself and could not come past the church and the cross on the hill. She

From the first scene the water troll enticing her into the mountain.

But Skule took a step forward. “Yes, Mother, I’m riding up to see Father now. If you’re forgetting that Ulf has been a foster father to all of us children, then you should at least remember that you can’t command and rule me as if I were a servant or an infant.” “Can’t I?” Kristin struck him a blow to the ear so the boy staggered.

“After you had a child yourself, Kristin, I thought you would understand,” her mother had once said. 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.

Even before he was married, Kristin had noticed that Gaute was very reluctant to speak against Jofrid. And he had become the most amenable of husbands.