Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath (Book One)

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

This trilogy, however, is more than a journey into the past. Undset’s own life—her familiarity with Norse sagas and folklore and with a wide range of medieval literature, her experiences as a daughter, wife, and mother, and her deep religious faith—profoundly influenced her writing.

Her grasp of the connections between past and present and of human nature itself, combined with the extraordinary quality of her writing, sets her works far above the genre of “historical novels.”

This new translation by Tina Nunnally—the first English version since Charles Archer’s translation in the 1920s—captures Undset’s strengths as a stylist. Nunnally, an award-winning translator, retains the natural dialog and lyrical flow of the original Norwegian, with its echoes of Old Norse legends, while deftly avoiding the stilted language and false archaisms of Archer’s translation. In addition, she restores key passages left out of that edition.

Undset’s ability to present a meticulously accurate historical portrait without sacrificing the poetry and narrative drive of masterful storytelling was particularly significant in her homeland.

Granted independence in 1905 after five hundred years of foreign domination, Norway was eager to reclaim its national history and culture. Kristin Lavransdatter became a touchstone for Undset’s contemporaries, and continues to be widely read by Norwegians today. In the more than 75 years since it was first published, it has also become a favourite throughout the world.

To see all the titles in the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, please click here.

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Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) was born in Denmark, the eldest daughter of a Norwegian father and a Danish mother. Two years after her birth, the family moved to Oslo, where her father, a distinguished archaeologist, taught at the university. Her father’s interest in the past had a tremendous influence on Undset. She was particularly entranced by the dramatic Old Norse sagas she read as a child, later declaring that her exposure to them marked “the most important turning point in my life.”