Sigrid Undset

Inspired by tales of the hero Vilmund Vidutan and his fellow knights, Sigurd Jonsson and his young friends Ivar and Helge set out to reenact these exploits on their medieval Norwegian farm. They carve swords and lances and spend hours making shields. With a little imagination, a pasture becomes a battlefield, an old boar their greatest foe, and they pass many hours jousting and dueling. But when the summer is nearly over, the three boys stumble

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"Olav settles in at his ancestral estate and soon brings Ingunn home as his wife. Both hope to put their troubles behind them, but the crimes and shameful secrets of the past have a long reach and tenacious hold. The consequences of sin, suspicion, and familial obligations may prove a greater threat to the pair's happiness than even their long years of separation"-- Page 4 of cover.

"Set in thirteenth-century Norway, Sigrid Undset's spellbinding masterpiece now follows the fortunes of Olav Audunssøn to the final, dramatic chapter of his life as it unfolds in Winter, the last volume of the Nobel Prize winner's tetralogy. At the end of his life, Olav continues to grapple with the guilt of his sins as he watches his children make disastrous choices and struggle to find their rightful place in a family haunted by the past"--Provided...

" "I have been unfaithful to my husband." Marta Oulie's opening line scandalized Norwegian readers in 1907. And yet, Sigrid Undset had a gift for depicting modern women "sympathetically but with merciless truthfulness," as the Swedish Academy noted in awarding her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. At the time she was one of the youngest recipients and only the third woman so honored. It was Undset's honest story of a young woman's love life--"the...

“[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante.” —Slate
A Penguin Classic
Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and religious history with the daily aspects of family life to create a colorful, richly detailed tapestry of Norway during the fourteenth-century. The trilogy, however, is more than a journey into the past. Undset's own life—her familiarity with...