Welcome to Reading Revisited, a place for friends to enjoy some good old-fashioned book chat while revisiting the truth, beauty, and goodness we’ve found in our favorite books.
Hello Readers,
It is finally time to meet (or revisit) Kristin Lavransdatter and medieval Norway and I cannot wait!
Each winter/Lent we read a long book over the course of a few months. What better time for a long book than when you are stuck inside contemplating life?For this year’s long book we are reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset.
I am so excited to introduce you to my second favorite book of all time! We will be spending the next three months with my “literary patron saint” (yes, I think these exist and don’t tell me I’m wrong because I need it)! She is a melancholic of melancholics. You will love her and a page later will want to smack her upside the head. But, I pray and hope that through reading this story you will know yourself better and see the beauty in this ordinary and broken life that we all live.
Kristin is a character that I have not gotten out of my head since I met her eight years ago. She is a character that I relate to so strongly that I actually tremble at the thought that people will know me too well after meeting Kristin. So be warned…you may see yourself (or myself) in this book and it might be a little painful.
This book is not simply a love story, but the whole life of a girl who grows into womanhood and then must deal with the consequences of the life she has chosen. You will go through every emotion while reading this book. Some people report being so frustrated with Kristin at times, to which I reply, “Yes! That is exactly how Sigrid Undset wanted you to feel!” But at the same time you will also be encouraged that even the most flawed among us can seek forgiveness and redemption.
I got my copy off the shelf to write up this (hopefully) enticing introduction and I am already engrossed in this story just by opening and reading random scenes. I don’t know how Sigrid Undset wrote this, but we should all be thankful!
If you want to hear Jessica Risma, Hannah Suire, and I talk about it on the podcast from Book Drop Day you can fast forward to exactly the one hour mark to hear!
A Note on Translations
Translation matters. It always does. But it especially matters when you are going to spend 1,124 pages and three months with a book. I am a firm believer in the Tiina Nunnally translation. This is the newer translation and the translation itself has won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 2001. While it reads like it is updating the text, I have been assured that Undset actually wrote the book that way and this is a more accurate translation.
In my personal experience, I started reading the older translation (Knompf or Archer/Scott) not knowing that there were options and I could not get into the book for the first 200 pages. Once I switched translations (to Nunnally) I was almost immediately hooked and couldn’t put the book down. I’ve since reread the beginning in the Nunnally translation and absolutely love it!
Even if you like the older language, be aware that there are important scenes cut because the translators thought they were inappropriate.
The translation note in the Nunnally edition is very helpful, though I do admit that the last sentence is a bit ridiculous (as noted by Amy Fahey in Women of the Catholic Imagination).
Best Editions and Audiobook Comments
Instead of being one long book, this is actually three moderately sized books. So we will be reading one book each month. The most cost effective way to acquire the book is in one volume6 so that is my official recommendation. It is a very sturdy paperback for such a long book (clocks in at 1100 pages or so). If you haven’t heard me wax eloquent about Penguin Deluxe Classics then you will just have to trust me. Somehow it even miraculously stays open where you want it to.
However, it can definitely be annoying to carry around a brick for three months so you can also buy each book separately (which I recently did for this very reason. It is a little pricier, but it is nice to have a smaller book to lug around. They are also published by penguin, but not in the deluxe version. I won’t lie to you, they are inferior that way. But here are links to get them individually:
Again, just be aware that if you buy these used double check the translation. There are many other editions out there, but everything that is not published by Penguin is the older translation. If you do end up reading the older translation I would love to hear your thoughts! If anyone wants to write an essay comparing the two, let me know!
As for audiobooks: I have been informed that there is a better version on audible now but it is not fantastic. So depending on your audiobook pickiness level, that could be an option. It is the one on audible published in 2023 (and I believe the only option currently available to purchase). It was the same cover as the penguin deluxe so should be easy to recognize!
Is This a Russian Novel?
No! I emphatically say that no, this will not feel the same as a Russian novel. However there are two similarities. The length (as already talked about at length) and so many names! So here is a chart that might be helpful to print out and stick into your book in case you are forgetting how people are related. I definitely read it the first time without this information and still followed the story, but if you are wanting to make more connections this will definitely be helpful!
Some of My Favorite People Talk About Kristin
My Husband
I cannot bring myself to shorten my lovely husband’s (Aaron Hartley) efforts to convince everyone to read this book…it is too compelling. So if I haven’t convinced you yet, I leave you in his capable literature teacher hands….
When the history books recount the era of the Reading Revisited Empire©, they will tell that it all began with me. Well, at least Kelsie’s third of the empire. I met her in 2012 in Chicago on the corner of LaSalle Boulevard while with a group headed for Oak Street Beach off of Lake Shore Drive. It is I, reader, who take not a small degree of credit for my wife’s sharp literary industriousness. At least I take credit for the literary part. I got her into Chesterton and Lewis, I told her how much I loved Hawthorne and got her to read him. I told her that she needed to read Homer. And what has happened since? The Reading Revisited Empire© has become the fastest growing literary triumvirate Substack may have ever seen. From that hot day in that cold city on the way to Oak Street Beach a friendship blossomed into a romance, dueled through tragedy, and danced into a comedy. I think right now it might be sailing through the shoals of a contemporary medieval Norwegian epoch; which is where I plan to drop an anchor.
For all the credit I feel like I can take for my wife’s literary project I must admit that it was she who dropped this novel on my bed stand. She must have said something like, “I know it’s about a girl but its medieval Norway and it’s cool. It’s like gritty and inspiring and sad and I just think you would think it was cool.” To which I dutifully began reading. The next time she found me with the book I was weeping. And I’m like a really strong dude who is like really tough!
Sigrid Undset had introduced me to Kristin, the daughter of Lavrans, the wife of Erland and told me the story of her life. That’s it, that’s what Kristin Lavransdatter is about. Kristin’s life from her birth to her death. Oh yah, she’s gonna die at the end.
In Kristin, I peered into the joys, temptations, failures and hopes of a woman who was very much not like me. She’s scrupulous and shy, controlling and nervous. But I knew Kristin in another way. Because woven into Kristin’s story were joys, temptations, failures, and hopes of Erlend, her husband without whom this story would not have been written. Kristin’s chaotic spouse is in many ways why this novel is worth reading. Not that Kristin isn’t interesting in and of herself, but the catalyst of her story is Erlend. So Undset was introducing me to myself. Which I guess may be the purpose of all great literature.
I imagine that if Erlend had written this story he would have thought that he was the reason behind the story. He was the catalyst for the most important moments in Kristin’s life. He was the reason all of the things that happened in the book happened. But of course, Undset wrote this book, not Erlend; and she knows better. You see what Undset realizes is that Kristin herself is not the hero even of her own story. The mosaic that Undset lays tells the story not merely of the marks left by the characters upon each other, but the marks made by God upon their souls. Undset’s Kristin reflects this truth in a way no other book I have read does. There are passages of this novel I cannot read again without genuinely weeping (and remember, I’m like really big and strong, I like to hunt!). Undset does all of this by telling us about how Kristin’s vocation, replete with all of the trials of marriage, is the tool by which God is shaping her soul. And mine. Because in Erlend Nikulausson I met my wife’s husband. I saw why she loved him, what she feared for him, how she cared for and resented him, and how she would get him to heaven and vice versa.
So read this book if you want to get to know Kelsie better! And uhh, ignore all of Erland’s faults cause he’s really cool. But more importantly read this to see how God uses our vocations to shape our souls. And finally, to all the Historians, remind me to tell you about when I thought about starting a podcast and told Kelsie that she should start one about books with her friends.
Christy Isinger
One of my favorite bookish influences, Christy Isinger, kindly agreed to help us introduce Kristin for our Book Drop Day…here’s what she says:
There is definitely too much to say about Kristin Lavransdatter. It is at once a historical epic precisely depicting medieval life in fourteenth century Norway, but also one of the most authentic and accurate novels detailing what it means to be a woman. The interweaving of culture, societal pressures, the intimate relationships of father, daughter, husband and wife, the experience of motherhood in its fullness from birth to death, the depth of the spiritual life, and the cost of personal sin have never been brought together in a single story to such powerful effect.
The three part saga of Kristin Lavransdatter will at times make you angry, bewildered, frustrated, excited, happy, and then emotionally devastated. It is a complete ride of a reading experience that not only gives you an intense look at a woman’s life in medieval Norway, but a mirror to seeing your own life and experiences. Undset has the incredible ability to weave story and drama around the very human and universal experiences that most of us will have at some point in our lives. But it is the honesty and beauty that Undset brings to these experiences that will surprise you. Kristin Lavransdatter isn’t just a classic that should be read at one point in your life, it is a book that will not only stay with you through characters you come to believe are real and that you know intimately, but it will pierce your soul.
The Divided Soul
![The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life [BACK ORDER]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SYf9!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4b3914da-50ec-4bcd-be58-09d1a22155f5_1445x1873.jpeg "The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life [BACK ORDER]")
Another one of our favorites literary ladies, Heidi White (of Close Reads Podcast fame), also wrote a lot about Kristin in her latest book, The Divided Soul. Chapter 8 is fully devoted to Kristin, but the whole book would be a great contribution to your next few months of reading. The chapter is called Agents and Objects: Feminine Desire in Literature. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite…
In Poetics, Aristotle proposed a literary criteria for tragedy, which he considered the highest form of narrative because it contains “an imitation of people who are better than we are.” According to Aristotle, characters are tragic because of actions they take in excess of their virtues. Since desire ought to be the seed of virtue, tragic characters meet tragic ends when they want to be happy but fail to be good. (44)
(Kristin’s) heart is the battleground between her father’s duty and her lover’s desires…Kristin is not an ideal woman; she is a real one. (151-152)
Medieval Norway and the Modern Heart
If Aaron has not already convinced you that this book is for men too, then please go read this amazing essay by Tyler Blanski beautifully titled Kristin Lavransdatter and Your Nordic Medieval Catholic Heart. He will convince you to love Kristin, but is especially helpful if you want to know that it is by no means only a “girl book.”
(I encourage you to read this article in full…but just in case you don’t, here are a few of my favorite parts!)
I will not sleep, I will not even sit down, until every man goes to bed with a paperback copy of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter.
In these high fourteenth-century mountains, priests still visit the sick shouting, “God help those in this house!” as they raise a cross to all four corners of the room and splash holy water everywhere. Wolves and bears still reign in the forest, and goblins and elves still hide under every rock. Swords slash at you from every page and the ecclesiastical Latin will keep you reaching for your dictionary. On second thought, maybe it’s best if you don’t take this epic trilogy to bed. What will you say to your wife when the crumbs of lefse and dried reindeer fall out of the opening chapters? What will you do when the homebrewed ale spills out of the paragraphs and stains your pajamas?
“Is it safe?” a friend asks.
“Safe?” I say. “Who said anything about safe? Of course it isn’t safe. But it’s good.”
….
Adam was standing next to Eve when she ate the forbidden fruit. He was right there. And he was silent. Kristin Lavransdatter is in fact the story of Eve as she deals with the consequences of Adam’s silence. It’s as if someone handed Eve a typewriter, and she told the story of a sinful world in Adam’s shadow—the New Adam’s shadow as he hangs from the bloody cross. Christ has spoken once and for all from the cross, and Kristin throws this challenge to every man: will you join Him? Your life rises or falls on this one question: will you speak from your cross?
Women of the Catholic Imagination
In a book recently published by Word on Fire and edited by Haley Stewart there is a whole chapter on Sigrid Undset that is focused on Kristin Lavransdatter. So grab yourself a copy of Women of the Catholic Imagination and learn more about Undset and what makes Kristin such a literary masterpiece. Full disclosure: The author disagrees with me about the translation question and makes a good argument! Here is a good introduction to Kristin from Amy Fahey:
After its saga-like opening, the novel introduces us to young Kristin, daughter of the saintly Lavrans and the moody, melancholic Ragnfrid, and proceeds to trace her entire life in a manner that combines the spare, stark tenor of an Icelandic saga with eh psychological realism and descriptive richness of the modern novel. The result is, paradoxically, a novel that speaks intimately to each reader precisely because it is set in a time and place so seemingly removed from our own. Kristin lives in a world where the reality of the supernatural - both heathen and Christian - is assumed, and the reader is thus able to enter into Kristin’s external and interior struggles without having to directly acknowledge the modern burden of unbelief.
-Amy Fahey (Women of the Catholic Imagination, 27)
Close Reads Bonus Podcasts
If you become a paying subscriber of Goldberry Studios’ Close Reads Podcast then you can listen to many, many podcasts featuring David Kern, Sean Johnson, Heidi White chatting about this beloved book. It is worth a few bucks a month!
Read With Us
I deeply hope that you decide to read with us over the next three months. I am thoroughly convinced that if you give Kristin time, she will change your life. As you start reading please tell us what you are thinking and as always, we hope you enjoy your In Person or Virtual Book Clubs!
If you are looking for an in person group, message me and I can either help you find one or start your own. If you’d like to join a virtual option, message me as well. We now have two time zone options for those of you wanting to participate in Europe!
Feel free to share this Introduction with any reader you know who might want to read along with us during Lent! And let us know how your read of Kristin is going as well!
We are still running our Christmas Sale on Paid Subscriptions if you were hoping to read along with us for Paradise Lost! You have til Candlemas (February 2nd) to save money!
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
What We’re Reading Next:
January
Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
February-April
Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Paid Subscriber Read-Along
Paradise Lost by John Milton
A Few Reminders:
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I wanted to share super some bookmarks I made with the readings broken down on a weekly level. They all have about the same number of pages, rounded to the nearest chapter. https://www.canva.com/design/DAHANYrY5dM/KdVqbPqCS___1chjM2HBDw/edit?utm_content=DAHANYrY5dM&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Started this late Fall and took a pause after end of Book 2 and reading your write up is very encouraging to pick it up once again this Winter.