Was a solid 3 until the end (I would still give it a 7/10)
There is much to pray with in this book. Took a long time to get through though (which is probably why I won’t make my reading goal lol), but it is quotes like these ones that buoyed and convicted my heart:

“…As your pierced hands were stretched out on the cross, O precious Lord of Heaven. No matter how far a soul might stray from the path of righteousness, the pierced hands were stretched out, yearning. Only one thing was needed: that the sinful soul should turn toward the open embrace, freely, like a child who goes to his father and not like a thrall who is chased home to his stern master.

Now Kristin realized how hideous sin was. Again she felt the pain in her breast, as if her heart were breaking with remorse and shame at the undeserved mercy.”

“Oh, no. The Devil was probably not so convinced that he was going to lose her soul. But when she lay here before, crushed with sorrow over her sins, over the hardness of her heart, her impure life, and the blindness of her soul... then she had felt the saintly king take her in under his protective cloak. She had gripped his strong, warm hand; he had pointed out to her the light that is the source of all strength and holiness. Saint Olav turned her eyes toward Christ on the cross- see, Kristin: God's love. Yes, she had begun to understand God's love and patience. But she had turned away from the light again and closed her heart to it, and now there was nothing in her mind but impatience and anger…”

“You followed your father so lovingly. May God reward you, my Kristin, for all the joy you have given me.”

"But I chose this world myself, and whenever things went against me, I tried to tell myself that it would be unmanly to complain about the fate I had chosen. For I've realized more and more with each year that I've lived: There is no worthier work for the person who has been graced with the ability to see even a small part of God's mercy than to serve Him and to keep vigil and to pray for those people whose sight is still clouded by the shadow of worldly matters. And yet I must tell you, my Kristin, that it would be hard for me to sacrifice, for the sake of God, that life which I have lived on my estates, with its care of temporal things and its worldly joys, with your mother at my side and with all of you children. So a man must learn to accept, when he produces offspring from his own body, that his heart will burn if he loses them or if the world goes against them. God, who gave them souls, is the one who owns them—not I."

4.5

Нет, почему уже два тома позади(

Vigdis La Farouche = Kristin Lavransdatter 2: Husfrue = The Wife (Kristin Lavransdatter #2), Sigrid Undset

Kristin Lavransdatter is a trilogy of historical novels written by Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset. The individual novels are Kransen (The Wreath), first published in 1920, Husfrue (The Wife), published in 1921, and Korset (The Cross), published in 1922. Kransen and Husfrue were translated from the original Norwegian as The Bridal Wreath and The Mistress of Husaby, respectively, in the first English translation by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott.

The second book opens with Kristin's arrival at Husaby. She is suffering from remorse for her sins and fears for her unborn child.

Her relationship with Erlend is no longer the careless one of days past, as she can see that he is impetuous and wasteful of his possessions although his passion for her is unchanged. She gives birth to a son, Nikulaus (Naakkve for short), who to her surprise is healthy and whole in spite of the circumstances of his conception.

Kristin Lavransdatter:II: The Wife, Sigrid Undset, Tiina Nunnally, New York,...: Penguin Books, 1999, xxv,417p

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هشتم ماه مارس سال 2002میلادی

عنوان: زن رام نشدنی (همسر)؛ نویسنده: سیگری (سیگرید) آندست (اونست)؛ مترجم مریم حسن زاده؛ تهران، مرجان کلک، 1379؛ در 196ص؛ شابک ایکس - 964925370؛ عنوان دیگر بازی سرنوشت سال 1378؛ در 239ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان نروزی - سده 20م

زن رام نشدنی (همسر)، رمانی عشقی نوشته ی «سیگری آندست (اونست)»، رمان ‌نویس «نروژ»ی است؛ قهرمان اصلی این رمان، زنی سختکوش به نام «فیگدیس» است، که با فراز و نشیب بسیاری در زندگی روبرو می‌شود؛ نویسنده در این رمان، تصویری از «نروژ» در سده های میانی میلادی، ارائه می‌کنند؛ یعنی زمانی که ترکیب مسیحیت و بت ‌پرستی، در سرزمین «نروژ» سبب جنگ، انتقامجویی، و خونریزی شده بود؛

ناریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/02/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

There are some fine moments in this, and I've no doubt of SUs talent at execution. But the story reads largely as a record of gossip and superstition.

Almost as good as book 1 but I don't think it's because the book is any less good, but because of my ignorance of 14th century Christian morality and Norwegian politics. The character studies are fantastic, stellar, amazing! I got lost and a bit bored during some long passages discussing sin and redemption and later again when politics got thick and heavy. But overall it was great and had I understood Christian morals and politics of the time better I'm sure it would have been 5 star read.

Continuing Kristin's story into married life/motherhood/maturity along with bigger political manoeuvrings that her husband Erlend gets involved in. I am running out of superlatives to describe this series. Everything is just so smoothly/effortlessly woven together - a totally immersive experience in which you just get involved/carried along with the story without "seeing the join" on any level - which is how reading is supposed to be, but rarely achieves such heights. On to book 3...

Litt for mye vrien middelalderpolitikk for det dumme huet mitt, men plutselig dukker det opp navn som Kløng Islending og Haftor Graut, og da er alt tilgitt.

The Wife felt a little more uneven than The Wreath – the plot seemed to start and stop, jolting from one episode to another. Also, I found the political intrigue hard to follow, mostly because I can’t keep track of who’s married or related to whom. I really need to make a chart or some kind to keep track of all those secondary characters! They have a way of lurching into the plot long after I’ve forgotten them and becoming relevant again, and I just can’t keep the Norwegian names in my head.

Those difficulties aside, I defy anyone to do better than Undset in terms of producing a realistic, hard-hitting depiction of the struggles of the spiritual life. She interweaves faith and the everyday existence of her characters smoothly, with tremendous impact at the climactic moments. I may not have always followed the political elements of the plot, but I was with Kristen in every high and low. And of course, the medieval Norwegian setting was fantastically real, beautifully alive and detailed. I really loved this book and I’m looking forward to reading The Cross (and judging by the name, I’m guessing it’s not going to be any less harrowing).

One of the pleasures of reading these books has been that the translation is so exquisitely done and naturally written, it's easy to think that it's a book originally in English. Translated works don't always so freely allow an authentic connection with the text, and that's one of the joys here. Apparently, there is a truly enormous difference between the original English translation of the 1920s (Archer) and this refreshing, enjoyable modern one of the 2000s (Nunnally). So, do mind how you go.

This book only got four stars from me initially because for nearly half of it, I worried that we were in for just a big old guilt-fest mingled with a bit of obscure politics. And it is, a little, and it does go on, a little. (Me in my lunchtime texts: "Did you know about SIN? PEOPLE HAVE SINNED LOTS? And also, sometimes both sides of 700-year-old debates sound exactly the same?") I got through with promises that, later on in this volume, "the sh*t hits the faaaaaaaaaannnnn," and I won't disagree that it does! But I worried for a while that my enthusiasm was going to flag only halfway through this series. It didn't, it came back! This is another great book, but slower to reel me in.

Certainly, the greatest section in the early part of this book is Kristin's penitent pilgrimage to the cathedral at Nidaros, which she undertakes barefoot and alone other than the infant on her back. I wanted to know what this day would have been like, so I tried to figure out where I would pilgrimage to from where I live that would be a similar walk, and I came up with Slough. Er. Maybe not, but, it's some perspective. Walking to Nidaros is enough of a thing, still, that the Norway tourism website has a whole page about how to do it.

Anyway, I wasn't sure where this was going to go, early in. The trilogy is quite traditionally divided: coming of age in the first, family life in the second, and the fate of the lineage in the last. So now in the second, what kind of marriage novel would this be? There's some rough stuff between Kristin and Erlend, quite close to the start, and I thought it looked likely that we had a pretty standard "be careful what you wish for" tale coming our way: a Kristin ever more pious, an Erlend ever more cruel, both deserving their unhappiness. But nope. In that scene where they're riding, they both act badly (though Erlend started it), and the incident is transformed into something entirely different and far more complex by the very next page. And that's exactly what the book is like. And that's exactly what people are like.

This gets truer and truer in the following book, but as I read this volume I started thinking about whether I've read many other novels with as realistic and clearly seen travails of marriage and parenthood. Even aside from the deeply intense and complicated rollercoaster of feelings between Kristin and Erlend, which carries on in highs and lows and which I think I'm going to chew on later for the next review, there are just very true moments that I recognise as what it's like to look after little kids. But with the twist, of course, of looking after them seven hundred years ago. Making sure your toddler doesn't wander off while you pick berries on the mountain. Arranging yourself in bed so the baby doesn't fall out as you all pile in together. The little and large things you observe around the house when you wake in the night for a fussing child. And I was practically keening when, at the big climactic period of the plot late in this book, Kristin as a totally side issue is suffering heavy symptoms from a mastitis infection. It has almost nothing to do with anything that's going on in the drama, it just is the sort of thing that would happen to make real life more complicated. (And also, girl, been there.)

At a certain point in book one, the main event is that "ERLEND is happening" (as I put it) and, indeed, in this book he just keeps happening to people (as a friend once hilariously said of a not completely dissimilar guy in another book). In book three, there is a quote calling Erlend "that bird of misfortune," and I cracked right up, it is so perfect. He is definitely our biggest puzzle as readers in all three novels; he fails at being our enemy and fails at being our protagonist. Do we love him? Do we pity him, do we resent him and blame him? I do, I do, I do.

Sharper in this volume, too, is the contrast between Kristin's husband Erlend and her Atticus Finch-like father, Lavrans. The realisation for Kristin that she can't recreate the peaceful home of her parents simply by growing to adulthood and moving to her own, grander* estate, and constantly carrying a child "under her heart," as is said. No one is the same as their parents, in fact. And in a society so tiny that everyone knows everybody else, there's no getting away from the past, or awkward exes, or any combo of the two. Getting to spend more time with Simon, though, is one of the great pleasures in this book and enriches the plot quite a lot.

(*Grand estates in medieval Norway: no guarantee that you aren't going to be sleeping in freezing houses and eating porridge at every meal.)

I'd like to note that the introduction to this volume contains a very minor spoiler about the ending of book three. Only to indicate what the eventual situation with Kristin is. It's not a large detail, but it's so difficult with these things to mesh the enjoyable scholarly writing and the reader's need for an experience. After too many spoilers over many years of trying to make this balance work, I now only ever read introductions after I've finished the novel, but I should have considered that it still wouldn't help me here in the middle of a trilogy.

At any rate, the introduction is thick but really interesting, especially the reflection that the trouble Erlend gets embroiled in here is so historically accurate that it really should have happened, and after Undset wrote it in a novel, historians wonder why nobody thought of trying it back in the 1330s. Which is crazy! It is fictional, but too real. (Some of our characters and side plots are straightforwardly true, too.)

As a historical novel, we get so much more out of this one than the first — still a soap opera, yes, and also with fascinating new amounts of detail as the people around Kristin change and the home around her changes and the concerns around her change. Men with swords, beds of dirty straw, good luck without a hospital, see you on the rack.

We get another interesting ending, here, though not quite to match that lovely sadness of the first. Again, though, we're left in a quiet moment of revelation (almost too understated, I think), and any reader would feel anticipation. Luckily, there's plenty of these guys left for us.

Since I first read this, ten years ago, my understanding of love and forgiveness, especially in marriage, has grown and leads me to better appreciate the relationship between Kristen and Erlend. I really liked reading this again. This book is definitely a classic in my opinion because it teaches me new things on each reading.

This book covers in great detail the Norway of the 14th century. Kristin gives birth to 7 sons, her husband is still reckless but tries hard. Their love is apparent even though they are both flawed.
The funeral preparation for Kristin's father was a strange highlight.
As in the first book, there were long sections of dialogue or internal thoughts mainly from Kristin and Erlend. Then occasionally there would be a major incident to bring life back into the story. However for me, there was a bit too much repetition covering their regrets on how they were married.
Nonetheless, the characters remain human, the rules and laws covering behaviour and allegiances were interesting, the power of the Church and religion were covered respectably while Norway comes out of it as a fairly mature and structured country for the Middle Ages.