Gunnar’s Daughter ~ Sigrid Undset
This is a short book, written in simple language, easy to read, one short chapter after another. Undset has written a story of the Viking age, set in the early 11th century, and she has written it in the style of the Old Norse sagas. This immediately transports the reader to the place and time. Like Ljot (and every other man in the story) I fell in love with Vigdis the first time I set eyes upon her:

It was dark when they reached the place. They found Gunnar in his hall, sitting in the high-seat. Gunnar was a big, handsome man with long grey hair and a beard which covered his whole chest. By the hearth sat two women; one of them was spinning by the light of the fire; she was not very young and was darkly clad, but bright and fair of face. The other was but a young maid, who sat with her hands in her lap doing nothing.

Veterlide went forward and greeted the master of the house, and before he had told the half of his business Gunnar rose to his feet and abde him welcome, together with his folk, ordering the women to bring food and drink.

They rose at his word, and the elder busied herself; she called to the serving-women and bustled hither and thither; but the younger stood by the fire loooking at the strangers. And by its light they now saw that she was very fair, tall and shapely, narrow in the waist, with a high and well-formed bosom; she had large grey eyes, and her hair reached beyond her knees; it was yellow, thick and smooth, but not ery bright, and her hands were large, but white and beringed. She wore a garment of rust-red wool, richly embroidered and bedight; her hair was bound with a fillet of gold and she had many rings and jewels, more than women are wont to wear in daily life.

The other woman now came in with a great horn of mead, which she placed in the hands of the younger, saying:

“It is your part, Vigdis, to bid welcome to the house.”

She who was called Vigdis then took the horn and passed along the benches, offering it first to Veterlide and after him to all the men. And the last she saw was Ljot.

For at first Ljot had seated himself at the end of the bench nearest the door, but then he had gone forward to the fire, being wet. And he held his cloak about him with one hand; but his black hair came down over his brow, so Vigdis saw little of his face but the eyes, which were dark-blue and deep-set.

When the maiden handed him the horn he dropped his cloak, and as he drank he looked at her over the brim of the vessel; it seemed that she liked not his staring, for she said not a word, but took the horn which he gave her, turned away and went to the raised bench, where she sat down.

Ljot seated himself so taht he could see Vigdis. After a while she galnced that way and met his eye; then she looked aside and turned red. But the next moment she looked at him again, and now she returned his stare until he took his eyes off her. (From Ch. 2)

And that is a mere glimpse of her character; she is strong and her beauty is deep. That also gives you an idea of the style of the language in which Sigrid Undset tells her tale.

Undset's characters come to life in their dialogue, which is often witty, and often full of tragic, but humorous sarcasm. The plot unfolds before the beauty of the Norwegian landscapes, wolf-haunted forests clad in snow, ice crusted winter streams, the stormy sea, it is a harsh but beautiful country. Vigdis prevails over it, perhaps because she, like it, is also beautiful, and harsh. The dangers of life in medieval Norway and Iceland, and a code of honour that demands vengeance for wrongs suffered, makes the threat of death to loved ones a constant. The weak cannot hope to survive for long.

This is a love story that cannot be, and the inevitable doom toward which the action drives makes all the beauty painful. It has left me with many questions, but I am unable to raise them, without spoiling the story. Suffice it to say that you will hate and love the main characters, and you will feel deep sorrow for them as well as anger. They are only imperfect humans, after all. No one is able to escape his time, and Undset knows the mediæval norse world so well, that her characters are very true to their day and age. So, the tensions between Viga-Ljot and Vigdis are a reflection of the tension between two world systems that were at that time colliding: the pagan way of life demanding vengeance, and the newer Christian way, pleading for forgiveness.

I have not yet read Kristin Lavransdatter, about which I have heard so much, but the storytelling in this short tale is masterful. There are constant surprises. Small details of things that happen in one chapter are not forgotten later, but are used to advance the plot. Nothing is pointless. There is a red cloak that carries deep meaning. There are stories within stories, ghosts, miraculous visions. The great takeaway is this: Be very careful to treat your woman well, especially when she speaks Old Norse and carries a great knife, the blade of which is scored with runes. :-)

"Woman’s mind is not easy to unriddle," says Ljot. (Ch. 4)

And that is true not merely of the beautiful Vigdis, but of the lovely Sigrid.

See also: my review of Sigrid Undset's Happy Times in Norway

I read it in high school. The writing style seemed strikingly different from the trashy beach-reads I was into at the time.

I re-read it recently (2008) and again was struck by the effect of the sparse writing, which effectively conveyed both the cruelty of the weather and the characters.

"Il y a longtemps que j'aspire à poser ma tête sur ses genoux."

Die Hass- und Liebesgeschichte von Viga-Ljot und Vigdis wird von Undset im Tonfall eines Mythos erzählt, der dennoch ungewohnt feministische Töne in dem blutrünstigen Wikinger-Stoff anschlägt.
Relativ kurz aber ungeheuer fesselnd wird das ereignisreiche Leben der beiden erzählt, die sich an Willenskraft and Kaltblütigkeit ebenbürtig zu sein scheinen.
Zweifellos sehr erstaunlich bleibt dabei, dass in der Romanwelt, in der regelmäßig Männer wegen der geringsten Beleidigung um die Ecke gebracht werden, die Vergewaltigung einer Frau (insbesondere natürlich einer Jungfrau, aber dennoch) als unsägliche Untat gehandelt wird, für die keiner der Charaktere Vergebung findet oder auch nur sucht.

This is the first novel Sigrid Undset published, and it's also the first book of hers that didn't blow me away.

It's a relatively short, straightforward, and simply told story that seems to be modelled on the genre of Icelandic saga. You don't get Undset's masterful novelistic touches -- the epic chronological scope and huge cast of characters, the spiritual turmoil and psychological realism, the lavish description of place and material culture -- that became her hallmarks with Kristin Lavransdatter and Olav Audunsson. Nonetheless, this book reads more like a novel than a saga -- there is more dialog, more prolonged action, more interiority than you find in a saga; but no complicated web of characters, no sense of scope, and little sense of historical verisimilitude. For reasons I can't yet articulate, Gunnar's Daughter *feels* like fiction, like artifice, whereas a genuine Icelandic saga feels like real (albeit fictionalized) history.

In the end, Gunnar's Daughter isn't a very successful work, because it misses the mark both of novel and of saga. But I do think you can see in the work, unsuccessful though it is, Undset beginning to work out her approach to medieval storytelling in a modern mode that would lead, a decade later, to her astonishingly successful masterpieces and (I would argue) to her creation of a new genre.

This early novel by Sigrid Undset took me by surprise. Written in a terse pseudo-saga style, it harbours a traditional love-and-revenge-driven drama, subtly combined with a slightly more modern plot, and an essential role for the female protagonist of the story, Vigdis.

Without wanting to spoil too much of the story, Vigdis and Ljot are two headstrong people from mediaeval Norway and Iceland, entangled in an affair of love and hate. While Ljot bears the original responsibility for their failed relationship and all subsequent hurt and destruction, both characters are presented in a balanced manner.

A fine example of how writers around the turn of the 20th century combined stylistic and thematic influences from the Middle Ages with modern literary form.

absolutely not. i do not remember when i started it

Merci Telma, dépaysant et rafraîchissant

2024:
4 Stars

Well told and went to places I didn’t expect.

Sigrid Undset kannte ich bisher gar nicht; zumindest nicht, bis ich dieses Buch in den Händen hielt. Etwas später erfuhr ich, dass sie zu den frühen Literaturnobelpreisträgerinnen gehört. Also Zeit, die Autorin kennenzulernen.

Die Geschichte, die hier erzählt wird, hätte in dieser Form passieren können. Sie kann auch immer noch passieren. Trotz des historischen Hintergrundes ist die Handlung aktuell. Zwar werden heute nur noch selten Köpfe abgeschlagen, aber als Sinnbild funktioniert es auch im 21. Jahrhundert noch.

Liebe kann man nicht erzwingen. Wie schnell kann ein Leben kaputt gemacht werden. Wie schnell können alle Leben kaputt gehen, die darin verwickelt sind. Nein, es ist keine schöne Liebesgeschichte, die Undset erzählt. Für schöne Liebesgeschichten erhält man wahrscheinlich auch keine Nobelpreise.

Schon eher dafür, dass man als Schriftsteller/in aufzeigt, dass nicht alles immer Friede und Freude ist. Dass man aufermerksam macht und den Lesern vor Augen führt, dass auch kleine Dinge enorme Wichtigkeit entwickeln können.

Das ist die Stärke der Literatur und Undset weiss diese gut einzusetzen.

Sigrid Undset is probably one of my favorite authors. This book is very different in some ways from Kristin Lavransdatter, her most well-known work, as it was highly inspired, not only in content but also in form, by the Icelandic sagas, specifically Njal's Saga and Laxdaela Saga. Gunnar's Daughter is more of a tragedy as well, dealing with the romance of Vigdis (the title character) and Ljot, his betrayal of her, their lives apart from each other, and finally their fateful meeting decades later. Undset again captures beatifully and compellingly the time, place and society of medieval Norway — this time dealing with the period just after the end of the Viking Age, when its harsh customs were only beginning to give way to the milder ways of Christianity. Indeed, the main plot of Gunnar's Daughter revolves around the Viking idea of retribution. But this is not just a story of revenge. Vigdis and Ljot are well-written characters, both sympathetic to the reader, and one hopes the best for them despite the terrible things they do at certain parts of the story. Perhaps the saddest part of the story is the hardships endured by Leikny Lytingsdatter, an Icelandic woman who had no guilt in the larger saga of Vigdis and Ljot, but who suffers because of it anyway. Despite the tragedy and oppressiveness of the time period, Undset makes the reader feel as if he was there, and makes him wish he was. Her clarity and economy (following the sparse saga style) is beautiful and her story heart-breaking.

Contre toute attente, j'ai adoré ce récit au rythme qui m'a rappelé les sagas islandaises ou nordiques. Un style direct, une histoire grandiose et une femme forte vivant dans la Norvège du Moyen Âge, alors que le christianisme remplace peu à peu les anciens dieux. Des paysages et des sentiments plus grands que nature. J'ai adoré.