Well, uh, THAT was certainly the last book in the trilogy! After really enjoying The Wreath, I've spent much of the rest of it wondering more and more: yeah? So? And? Seriously, why am I supposed to care about ANY of this? And if that makes me sound like an apathetic high school student, so be it. I came to really, really not care about Kristin, her jumble of interchangeable sons, or anything they were doing. Bah. I did kind of like Simon Andressøn, I guess.

I have finally finished the third book of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy.

The trilogy is epic. I wouldn't call it enjoyable -- I felt very frustrated with Kristin throughout all three books, although I appreciated her journey the most in book three. This last book was the best of the three.

It was worth the read for me, to learn about medieval Norway (the land of my ancestors). I also found the exploration of medieval Catholicism and its mixture with superstition fascinating.

Too much Christianity, not enough Svartedauden

Gosh golly. I'm finally done it. What an epic story. I struggled with liking Kristin for so much of the book, but the last book truly redeemed the whole trilogy. Fantastic writing. I plan to re-read this again in a decade! :)

I'm so happy this trilogy is over! I wasn't sure I would be able to finish, but I did. The only good part of this book was the last 2o pages when it dealt with the historical event of the Black Death in Norway. The back of the book was kind of misleading in talking about this event like it was a big part of the book. I kept reading waiting for it and out of 403 pages that part doesn't start till 382. Basically, I would have preferred a non-fiction history book on Norway during this time than these novels with characters which I disliked.

4.5

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.

The Cross is my favorite (and probably the most melancholy) of the trilogy—I toyed with giving 5 stars, but as much as I enjoyed it overall I can’t say I really love loved it. Even more than n  The Wifen, The Cross focuses on motherhood and family, including on Kristin’s increasingly dysfunctional (yet equally passionate) relationship with Erlend. They are both too stubborn, proud, and impulsive for their own good, making for fascinating (and often frustrating) characters.

Generally, it felt like more happened in this book than in the others; or, at least, like there was a wider variety of drama. There are sword fights, love triangles, plague, marital conflict, and inner religious turmoil. Most of the novel was a page-turner in a way that the earlier two weren’t for me, even though it’s essentially just as slow and introspective as the others.

Surprisingly, the first third is told from Simon’s perspective—and it’s more than a little angsty. Unset has created such an interesting dynamic here, and it’s one with no easy answers. Simon has always loved Kristen, and Kristen would undeniably have been socially and financially (and perhaps morally, from her culture’s viewpoint) better off with him as a husband and father…but for all his positive attributes, she believes she could never have loved him, while Erlend, for all his flaws that have wreaked such havoc on their family, has her undying love and devotion. Meanwhile, Simon marries Kristen’s uncomfortably young sister, Ramborg, who he treats like a child and who it’s impossible not to pity.

The social drama (for lack of a better term) in this book was much easier for me to follow than the political maneuvering of The Wife, and I was very emotionally invested as Kristen fought to defend her honor and keep her family intact. She also endures emotional turmoil (largely related to her sons growing into men) and personal tragedy that I found both captivating and moving.

I think Unset’s writing has continued to improve throughout the trilogy, because I found this to be the most evocative, both visually and emotionally. There seem to be more metaphors and descriptions than in the first two books. Sometimes her writing does feel a bit stilted (such as: He didn’t know how Kristin would handle things without her diligent and loyal helper.), and I don’t know whether this is intentional or the fault of the translator or an unavoidable consequence of translating from Norwegian.

Like the other two Penguin editions, the ebook is plagued with an unacceptable number of typos.

Some favorite passages:

Many different thoughts rise up in the darkness—like those gossamer plants that grow in the lake, oddly bewitching and pretty as they bob and sway; but enticing and sinister, they exert a dark pull as long as they’re growing in the living, trickling mire. And yet they’re nothing but slimey brown clumps when the children pull them into the boat. So many strange thoughts, both terrifying and enticing, grow in the night.

Simon couldn’t see that Erlend gave much thought to anything at all.

Simon hid his face in his hands. Yes, in that sense they had been good, obedient sons. It had been easy for Gyrd and him to feel love for the brides whom his father announced he had chosen for them. The old man had made a long, splendid speech to them one evening, and afterward they had both sat there feeling abashed. About marriage and friendship and faithfulness between honorable, noble spouses; in the end their father even mentioned prayers of intercession and masses. It was too bad their father hadn’t given them advice on how to forget as well—when the friendship was broken and the honor dead and the faithfulness a sin and a secret, disgraceful torment, and there was nothing left of the bond but the bleeding wound that would never heal.

A smile of such heartbreaking sweetness was possible only for someone who knew what it meant both to lose a battle and to win.

Just as a gash in the skin can reopen from too sudden a movement, a fleeting memory caused him pain.

“But that was twenty years ago, man!” exclaimed Erlend, overcome and confused. “Yes. But don’t you think she’s . . . worth thinking about for twenty years?”

But you’ve never loved me the way you love her. She is still always in your thoughts, but you seldom think of me unless you see me.” “I’m not to blame, Ramborg, if a man’s heart is created in such a fashion that whatever is inscribed on it when it’s young and fresh is carved deeper than all the runes that are later etched.”

The evenings were already quite dark, and north of the church the path passed through the woods and beneath the shadow of Hammer Ridge. There gusts of cold wind always issued from Rost Gorge, and the din of the river brought a trace of moisture to the air. Swarms of big white moths hovered and flitted under the trees, sometimes flying straight at her. The pale glow of the linen around her face and on her breast seemed to draw them in the dark. She swatted them away with her hand 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.

And the loathsome white moths were everywhere, teeming beneath the trees in the darkness, swarming up in great clouds from the heath-covered mounds when she trod on them.

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. She struggled to protect her sons with wings that were bound by the constraints of earthly care. She had striven to conceal her anguish and her inexpressible weakness from everyone, walking forward with her back erect and her face calm, holding her tongue, and fighting to ensure the welfare of her children in any way she could. But always with that secret, breathless anguish: If things go badly for them, I won’t be able to bear it.

There were far too many things she wanted to ask, but she was afraid of being overwhelmed if she opened even the smallest part of her heart.

She would hear this before he died. She would give him one kiss. I am the one who loved you and who loves you still.

But deep in her heart Kristin felt that she had not forgiven Erlend. She could not, because she would not. She held on to her bowl of love, refusing to let it go, even though it now contained only these last, bitter dregs. The moment when she left Erlend behind, no longer thinking of him even with this corrosive bitterness, then everything that had been between them would be over.

She thought about her sons, and she felt as if she would break down and collapse on the ground. The throngs of people moved toward the church door, as the bells rang from the nearby bell tower. She had once heard a saga about a murdered man who couldn’t fall to the ground because he had so many spears in his body. She couldn’t fall as she walked along because of all the eyes piercing through her.

“Kristin, my dearest love,” begged Erlend in despair. “Oh, Kristin, I know I’ve come to you much too late . . .” Again a tremor passed over his wife’s face. “It’s not too late,” she said, her voice low and harsh. She stared down at her son, who lay in a swoon in her arms. “Our last child is already in the ground, and now it’s Lavrans’s turn. Gaute has been banished by the Church, and our other sons . . . But the two of us still own much that can be ruined, Erlend!”

But she had aged, she thought, feeling a rush of triumphant pride. It was easy for someone to stay young if he refused to learn, refused to adapt to his lot in life, and refused to fight to change his circumstances in accordance with his will.

Love had always been behind her toil with earthly matters. Erlend had never given her much thanks for that; it was not the way he wanted to be loved. But she couldn’t help it; it was her nature to love with great toil and care.

Kristin felt as if she were now an old woman. It seemed to her that a woman was young as long as she had little children sleeping in her arms at night, playing around her during the day, and demanding her care at all times. When a mother’s children have grown away from her, then she becomes an old woman.

Now, whenever she took the old path home past the site of the smithy—and by now it was almost overgrown, with tufts of yellow bedstraw, bluebells, and sweet peas spilling over the borders of the lush meadow—it seemed almost as if she were looking at a picture of her own life: the weather-beaten, soot-covered old hearth that would never again be lit by a fire. The ground was strewn with bits of coal, but thin, short, gleaming tendrils of grass were springing up all over the abandoned site. And in the cracks of the old hearth blossomed fireweed, which sows its seeds everywhere, with its exquisite, long red tassels.

Feelings of longing seemed to burst from her heart; they ran in all directions, like streams of blood, seeking out paths to all the places in the wide landscape where she had lived, to all her sons roaming through the world, to all her dead lying under the earth.

Inside her there was an empty house, completely silent, dimly lit, and with a smell of desolation.

You were the one who once told me that those who have loved each other with the most ardent desire are the ones who will end up like two snakes, biting each other’s tails.

The uncanny fog, tinged like clotted blood, had faded, and darkness began to fall.

“No one knows what he has been spared by dying in his youth,” said his mother quietly.

With The Cross, I have now completed the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy of Sigrid Undset, and my reaction to the end of this book was to want to pick up book one and start all over again. What an amazing story this turned out to be. By the time I reached the final section of this installment, I felt I knew Kristen intimately. Along the way, I fell in love with her father, Lavrens; her jilted lover, Simon; her reckless and charming husband, Erlend; several of her sons, a couple of priests, and numerous smaller characters.

This is a book about self-realization, about relationships and how they shape us, and about our relationship with God and how He carries and sustains us.

Then had it been the burden of her burning prayer, that might this poor, unhappy child but be made whole in body and in wits, she would crave for naught more...She thought of Gaute, sitting his great iron-grey, a brave and goodly horseman. And she herself--not many women of her age night to half a hundred years, were blessed with such health; she had marked it well on her journey across the mountains. Lord, give me but this and this and this--then will I thank Thee and crave no more than this and this and this--

Never, it seemed to her, had she prayed to God for aught else than that He might grant her her own will. And she had got always what she wished--most. And now she sat here with a bruised spirit--not because she had sinned against God, but because she was miscontent that it had been granted her to follow the devices of her own heart to the journey’s end.

How many of us are guilty of this? Always wanting our own way, always promising God not to ask any other boon if he grants us this one.

These books are religious in the finest kind of way, because they explore the spiritual side of man and his need for God and because, in this historical context, they are perfectly accurate. There was law and religious law, both imposed on the people and often completely overlapping, religious leaders sitting in judgement of both civil and moral trespasses.

Think you, woman, child that you still are in your old age, that ‘tis God punishing for the sin, when you must reap sorrow and humiliation because you followed your lusts and your overweening pride over paths that God has forbidden His children to tread? Would you say that you had punished your children if they scalded their hands when they took up the boiling kettle you had forbidden them to touch, or if the slippery ice broke under them that you had warned them not to go upon? Have you not understood, when the brittle ice broke beneath you--that you were drawn under each time you let go of God’s hand, and you were saved from out the deep each time you called on Him?

This tale of Kristen’s stepping on the ice and being saved time and again, is one of the most gripping I have ever encountered. If you don’t mind a book that breaks your heart to the extent that you have to take breaks to wash away the tears, this might be a book for you.

I really should have read this book closer to when I finished the first two because it was hard to remember what had happened. The plague stuff at the end was definitely the most interesting.

I loved the third book in this trilogy as much as the first two. Once again Kristin seems to face unfair criticism from her community because of misunderstandings about her complicated relationship with her husband. The societal shifts occurring in this time period are greatly accelerated when the Black Plague arrives in Norway, a truly devastating historical event. I loved these stories and can understand why Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I wish I could read them in the original Norwegian, but Nunnally's translation is an excellent substitute. I highly recommend these books if you are looking for a story of Medieval times written by a woman nearly a century ago that is still relatable today. I had the feeling reading it that our stories are the same from generation to generation; we all fall short in our relationships to others and our relationship to God due to our human fallibilities, yet we are all worthy of love.

April 2022 reread - Finished this book midday on Easter Sunday. I didn't even mean for this to be a Lenten read, but I couldn't have planned it any better. The final book is a powerful redemption, a truly out-of-mind/body reading experience. Beautiful.

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2019 - A stunning achievement. The final installment of the Kristen Lavransdatter series is a true culmination, and clearly the most intensely philosophical/theological of the three books. Through the flawed love of Erlend and Kristen we see a timeless parallel - the endless cycle of desire, pride, jealousy, deceit, joy, and heartbreak. A beautiful, complex work, this entire series blew me away with the intricacy of its characters. They are fully human (fully flawed), written with subtlety and precision. I loved reading about a historical world that could have easily seemed so remote, but instead was intensely real and accessible. Beautiful. Life-changing. Read it.

I don’t know that I’ll be able to resell this book given all the tear stains I left on the last few pages.

“She had not come to God with her wreath or with her sins and sorrows, not as long as the world still possessed a drop of sweetness to add to her goblet. But now she had come, after she had learned that the world is like an alehouse: The person who has no more to spend is thrown outside the door.”