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The Master of Hestviken #4

The Son Avenger

sigrid undset

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Powerfully written and filled with magnificent vignettes of the daily life of a medieval estate, 'The Son Avenger' suggests a Greek tragedy whose vision of fate coexists with a Christian sense of suffering and forgiveness. And in the somber, twilight figure of 'Olav the Bad, ' Undset has created an antihero as moving as Oedipus or Lear.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1926
Series
The Master of Hestviken

This edition

Format
288 pages, Paperback
Published
June 24, 1995 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
ISBN
9780679755524
ASIN
0679755527
Language
English

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sigrid undset

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 72 votes)
5 stars
27(38%)
4 stars
21(29%)
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24(33%)
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72 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
DDGG
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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This all tetralogy gave me uneasy feelings and unquiet thoughts. Besides anxious,troubled,restless and etc. Olav's life until the end of Winter was joyless journey of trials and tragic choices for a soul and still I will miss him. Undset is a one of the greats in Literature. That is the best book I read this year, reminiscences of the best of Shakespeare and of course,The Bible, with such raw emotions and tale about human connection with the divine, failed sinner,mad man, powerful words and acts tha can change fates....
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uptoolate
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Such a complicated and confounding story of this man. But such a rich text, so real and full of intricate details of his inner and outer world. Amazing.
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bokchoyforsale
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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...and now I feel guilty for disliking Eirik in the earlier books.
(Maybe I'll write an actual review when I find a moment. )
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Tr4shm4n
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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The wages of sin; the effects of Olav's long-unshriven sin on his life and that of his family. Beautiful scenes at the end.
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jxson05
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Just finished this series. I read the Kristin Lavransdatter series in high school and loved it. This series is just as gripping. It's fascinating to read about Old Norway with the clash of the old Viking ethics and the newer Christian beliefs and culture.
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Aquaduck
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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In this final installment of Olav Audunsson, readers find Olav as an old man running his estate, caring for his daughters, and pondering what marrying his daughter and foster daughter off will come to. His care for them is legitamit and deep, he thinks he will marry them off to “a most peculiar man who wouldn’t want to bear such treasures through the world on outstretched arms if he ever had the good fortune to acquire them.” (8) When the time comes to marry off Cecilia, though, Olav takes the advice of his ‘son’, Eirik, and gives her away to Eirik’s friend Jorund. From the time Eirik and Jorund were children, Olav never trusted Jorund, but he lets himself be swayed to give him his daughter’s hand rather than allow Cecelia to marry a man she loves.
What causes Olav to act so poorly in this moment? Is it an attempt to please Eirik, the son who he has lied to his entire life? It doesn’t seem so. Undset shows how deeply Olav’s sin and his neglect of confessing it has corrupted his whole being. No, he is not totally evil, he is still a human being and has a conscience still. Readers do see him use this conscience and good judgement at times. But when it counts, Olav chooses wrongly until the end of the novel.
In showing how sin has corrupted Olav, Undset reveals how natural the corruption of sin can be. He doesn’t become savage, but he treats his daughter poorly when all he wanted was what was best for her. He made the choice that caused her pain. His home doesn’t run as well as it could be. Once he is no longer the master of the home, it starts to flourish in ways it didn’t before (TEXT). Rather be known as the loving and welcoming man that Eirik knows that Olav is, he is remembered as distant and removed because this is really what he was. For the majority of his life, he was distant from God and removed from God.
When Olav finally decided to confess his sin, it was very moving. He ran to confess. His late wife asked him to not confess so he could be with his family. He listened to her. As soon as he could do something for them with his confession, he rushes to it. He can feel God’s mercy ready to envelop him. And he becomes paralyzed and cannot do the one thing that can bring him into communion with the Church and his family. What does this do for Olav? He in some way did penance for his sin in his own way by carrying it around with him and letting his wife’s offspring live with him as his son, but he really atones for it in these last years of his life. He doesn’t work, spend time with his family, or even speak. He just wanders. He spends some of Purgatory on earth.
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Strawberry4759
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Part IV moves faster than II or III

The fourth part of The Master of Hestivken moves at a much quicker pace than the previous two installments. The translation remains a problem, all four novels in their English versions using very dated language. But this installment has more characters and enough incidents to keep the pace up to an acceptable level. One section at the end consists of the lengthy and not very interesting religious ruminations of Olav, the main character, as he wrestles with a thirty year old moral dilemma that is important to his character but come across as rather of small importance to the plot.
All in all, I cannot recommend this tetrology. It is mainly slow moving and very little actually takes place.
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