Giving this 4 stars in faith that when I read all four books, the heartbreak will be worth it. Why are her books so good?

Only made it about 15 pages into this before I had to put it down. The style was just too awful; it read like a bad fanfiction. It was just a litany of confusing names and events passing by at the speed of light. I thought it was perhaps just the beginning, and then it would turn into a better, more narrative style, but I paged ahead and it didn't.

This might be a 5 for me upon further reflection and after I've read the other books in the series, but I'm giving it a 4 for now. It's so similar to K.L. (1920-22) and with echoes of G.D. (published 1909) that I'd probably need to read them all in a row and in publication order to give a fair evaluation. (Project for the rest of 2020?) The beautiful setting and depiction of the religious/moral struggles of the characters keep me coming back for more of Sigrid Undset, even if I'm not sure yet what she's doing here that she didn't already do in K.L.

"Mea culpa - she had been afraid of being saved from doing what she wished and accepting what she had brought upon herself. Now it dawned on her that, when she received God's forgiveness for the evil she had done to herself and to Olav, she would no longer desire to escape her punishment. The mere sight of Olav had been enough to make her see the nature of Love...And behind it she caught a glimpse, as in an image, of the origin of Love. In the cup which our Lord was compelled to receive that evening in the Garden of Gethsemane He had seen all the sin that had been committed and was to be committed on earth...And since God had suffered, because of the suffering her own fault would bring her, she too would desire to be punished and made to suffer every time she thought of it. She saw that this was a different suffering from any she had suffered hitherto; that had been like falling from rock to rock down a precipice, to end in a bottomloss morass-this was like clibing upward, with a helping hand to hold, slowly and painfully; but even in the pain there was happiness, for it led to something."

This is the first book in a multi-volume family saga set in 13th century Norway. This book focuses on the marriage of a young couple amid scandal.

I had read the first volume of Kirstin Lavandstater when I was a teenager after my mother told me the trilogy was her favorite book. I remember being annoyed and rebellious at the enormous restraints placed by church, family, superstition and custom. The Vows deals with the impact of customs, pagan and Christian beliefs and caste. Yet now I am aware of how beliefs, class, social customs etc continue to plague us and often form our most important decisions. Looking forward to the next volume of the series.

Undset does such an impressive job of making a pretty over-the-top dramatic story seem believable and painful and very human. I'll withhold judgement until I read at least one more of the series, but I think I may be on track to prefer this over Kristen Lavransdatter, which is pretty high praise.

I first started to read this in the earlier translation (titled The Axe) and I highly recommend reading this edition with Nunnally's translation instead.

Fabulous. Every bit as good as Kristin Lavransdatter.

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 4.0 of 5

It is interesting for me that I just purchased a set of Sigrid Undet's Kristin Lavransdatter series because it looked very interesting to me. And shortly after doing so, I find out that translator extraordinaire Tiina Nunnally has translated a different series by Undest. My ancestors are Scandinavian (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) and I've been doing a lot of ancestry research lately, so literature that gives me a feel for life in medieval Scandinavian has a special appeal for me.

Olav Audunssøn's father is dying and the father asks his old friend, Steinfinn Toressøn, to raise his boy when he passes on. Steinfinn agrees to raise the child as his foster son and also promises that Olav will be betrothed to Steinfinn's daughter, Ingunn. Olav and Ingunn then spend their youth as both siblings, knowing they will be husband and wife as they get older.

But Olav and Ingunn couldn't be much more different from one another and the medieval time in which they live is turbulent as church rules and law clash. There are some in the community who don't believe they are legally married but for Olav and Ingunn all that matters is that they've been intimate and they believe they are married.

But when Steinfinn passes away, Olav and Ingunn travel to the city of Hamar to ask the church to bless their union. The Church, however, is trying to enforce more control over religious behavior and makes this difficult.

Olav does some traveling and is gone for a decade and Ingunn combats her loneliness by being extra friendly with a young man who works for a local priest. This has Ingunn and Olav examining their relationship upon his return.

Undset's writing, and Nunnally's translation, is beautiful and extremely accessible. We get drawn in to the story by the language, we are held in the story by the remarkable characters who are ordinary and real and fascinating.

In many ways this reminds us that everyone has a story to tell. You don't need to be a superhero or the leader of a rebels in a dystopian world to be worth reading about. You can be a young couple in medieval Norway, looking to find your own way and dealing with the changes going on in the world and have a story worth sharing.

But there's so much going on here. In addition to the story of these two people, we are getting a story about a country going through a religious revolution and a Church finding itself in a position to influence its beliefs into a government, through the people. The title "Vows" is incredibly apt here, telling not only of the vows people make to each other, but the religious significance of vows.

I enjoyed this and am eager to dig into the Kristin Lavransdatter series but will wait until I've read the rest of the books in the Olav Audunssøn series.

Looking for a good book? Olav Audunssøn: I. Vows by Sigrid Undset and translated by Tiina Nunnally is a book you don't just read, but experience, and this is well worth experiencing.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Sigrid Undset received the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages” (Nobel Prize website). But Undset’s lucid and precise prose, as cast in English by Tiina Nunnally, goes beyond describing a milieu long gone by. Olav Audunssøn brings to historical fiction readers what they most cherish, but too rarely find in one book: a vivid, living time and place authentically inhabited by men and women whose joys and woes, wrath and love, resonate in the hearts of men and women to this day.
Full review at Historical Novel Society
(PS I don't do star ratings)

This book is absolutely gorgeous! I could not put it down and it is but the first of four! I don't even know what to say about this book-- there is so much to say. I loved it-- it's one of the best I have ever read.

A favorite quote: "But a man's faith is put to the test on the day God's will is not his.”

Undset picked a really interesting time period in which to base her story. I was expecting a more Viking-type of tale, however late 13th century Scandanavia was a time of transition. The Viking culture was now largely a Christian based culture, but with Viking sensibilities still rooted in communities. As our main characters Olav and Ingunn come of age, this transition leads to rising tensions, particularly between the Church representatives and the nobles.

This is the first book in a tetralogy and focuses on the relationship of the story's two main protagonists, Olav and his fiancee, Ingunn. All kinds of drama pops up as the two come of age and are eager to honor their fathers' pledge to marry the two of them. This may sound kind of lame, but we have plenty of intrigue, murder, and betrayal. Olav and several others are strong characters. Ingunn is a frustrating character, but something tells me that she's going to be easy to root for in the coming books.

As to the author, I love Undset's style. Nothing flowery about the writing style, but she allows deep access into the minds of her characters. All of their emotions just pour out onto the page. It can make even a quiet scene quit stirring. I am very impressed. She won a Nobel for a reason. I am going to jump right back into book 2 today. A rating does not mean much until the entire series is read, but this a promising start and an excellent book on its own merit. Solid four stars.

This was not my favorite book due to the slow pace, but by the end I was interested enough to find out how things ended. The author is known for her simple, descriptive prose and her accurate depictions of Norwegian life in the middle ages. This edition was translated to English from the original Norwegian and has been praised for being true to the author's style. While the prose is simple to the point of being plodding at times, I did appreciate the lyrical descriptions of nature and especially the changing seasons in the far north, which the author clearly has experienced herself. What I found less enjoyable was the harsh way one of the main characters is judged for her actions and the double standards that existed at the time. While probably an accurate representation of the period, it still got under my skin as I was reading. Since it was one of the main plot points, it made the whole story less appealing to me. This book is the first of four volumes, and while I am curious to find out how the saga ends, I'm not curious to put in the time to read three more books.