Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) is one of the three Norwegian authors (and so far
the most recent one) to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The
others are Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, the national bard, in 1903,
and Knut Hamsun in 1920. Undset received the Prize in 1928, for her
powerful description of life during the Middle Ages in Scandinavia, as the
Nobel Literary Committee in Sweden put it at the time. They were speaking
about her two extensive serial novels set against the background of
medieval Norway in the 13th century, the 3-volume Kristin Lavransdatter,
and the 4-volume Olav Audunssønn.
By GIDSKE ANDERSON
Both these novels about the Middle Ages, in particular "Kristin
Lavransdatter", became inter-national best-sellers at the time. According
to Alfred Nobel's will, the Literature Prize is to be awarded to the author
who has written "the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency", and
so Undset's books fell within this somewhat elastic category. But it was
Sigrid Undset's talent as a great story-teller rather than the idealistic
tendency which fascinated her readers all over the world. Her books had
been translated into the most important foreign languages even before she
received the Nobel Prize. After 1928, they were published in virtually
every major language. Now, after a lapse of 70 years, her books are still
being read worldwide, by new generations of readers.
Outside Norway, her reputation has been mostly confined to "Kristin
Lavransdatter". Not so in Norway. I noticed this in connection with my
biography of Sigrid Undset, published in 1989. I have received letters from
women and men, old and young, from every part of Norway, showing that she
is being read, by an increasing number of people -- in this age of
television.
Undset's books are being read, and not only the novels about the Middle
Ages. She wrote 36 books, the mediaeval novels being one part. Another part
are her contemporary novels of Kristiania (now Oslo) and Oslo between the
turn of the century and the 1930s, the third part being literary essays and
historical articles. Her authorship is wide-ranging and of considerable
substance. And, quite obviously, a new generation of readers in Norway has
discovered this.
None of Sigrid Undset's books leaves the reader unconcerned. She is a
great story-teller, with a profound and realistic knowledge of the
labyrinths of the human mind - at all times and in all places. With her
literary and historical expertise, acquired first-hand, her thorough
knowledge of nature and her understanding of its significance for all of
us, - Sigrid Undset has enormous riches, emotional and intellectual, to
draw on.
Who was Sigrid Undset? It might be worth mentioning that Sigrid Undset was
born the same year as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, three years before
D.H. Lawrence and Karen Blixen. From the literary point of view, none of
these were of importance to her personally, except D.H. Lawrence, whose
work greatly interested her in the 1930s. But they all belong to the same
generation; they are contempo-raries, each one in his/her own corner of
Europe. Their respective author-ships did indeed develop along very
different lines, but they do have one thing in common: they are the
children of a Europe in crisis, and they are very conscious of it.
Sigrid Undset's themes are clearly Norwegian, but equally clearly
European too, in the same way that James Joyce's themes are intensely and
exclusively Irish.
In Undset's case, this has to do with her adolescence. The
environment she grew up in was a European environ-ment in Norway, in
Scandinavia. Her father, Ingvald Undset, was an internationally respected
archae-ologist, whose special subject was the Iron Age in Europe, with
Norse and European pre-history as supplemen-tary fields. He pursued his
profession through extensive travel and archae-ological research all over
Europe. Her mother, Charlotte Undset, was Danish. She was deeply involved
in her husband's work, spoke German and French, and was very well versed in
Norse and European culture.
Sigrid Undset was born on 20 May 1882, at Kalundborg, in Denmark, at her
mother's handsome childhood home on the market place of the small town.
Sigrid was the eldest of the couple's three daughters. She came to Norway
at the age of two, when her parents moved on account of her father's
illness, which forced him to give up further scientific travel in Europe.
She grew up in Kristiania, the capital (the name was changed back to
Oslo in 1925). The first eleven years of her life were strongly influenced
by her father's serious illness but also by his extensive historical
knowledge. At an early age, Sigrid learnt not only the secrets of
archaeology, but also the mysteries of the Norse sagas and Scandinavian
folk songs.
Her father died, only 40 years old, when she was 11. Her mother was
left to cope single-handedly with three young daughters, on very slim
means. This family tragedy left its mark on Sigrid Undset's childhood and
adolescence. Her hopes of a university education had to be abandoned.
Having passed the intermediate school (Middelskole) examination, she took a
1-year secretarial course, and, at the age of 16, got a job as secretary
with a major German-owned engineering company in Kristiania. Did she have a
talent for that? That was hardly the point; it was necessary for her to
earn money to help her mother and her two younger sisters. She worked with
the same company for 10 years as a secretary, gradually assuming a highly
trusted position. There were times when she detested office work, feeling
she was wasting her time and her youth. But it gave her insight into a
major industrial enterprise, taught her how to work systematically, and
made her into an expert typist. She later exhibited a considerable talent
for organisation, both as housewife and subsequently as chairman of the
Society of Norwegian Authors. Furthermore, systematic office routine
undoubtedly taught her a good deal about how to proceed with major literary
works such as her serial novels.
But the ten years of office work were a torment to Sigrid Undset.
Late at night, and during weekends and holidays, she stole the time to
write. Sigrid was no more than 16 years old when she made her first
hesitant attempt at writing a novel set in the Nordic Middle Ages. For
several years, she wrestled with the subject. At the same time, she read a
lot, acquiring a thorough knowledge of Nordic as well as foreign
literature, English in particular.
She was deeply moved by Shake-speare, enthusiastic about Chaucer,
attracted by legends of King Arthur . But she also immersed herself in the
work of Scandinavian writers, such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Brandes, and
English authors such as the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen. On her own
initiative and in her spare time she thus acquired a sound knowledge of the
art of writing, preparing herself for what she felt from an early age to be
her "fate" in life.
The manuscript of Undset's first novel was ready by the time she was 22. It
was the result of burning the midnight oil for many years. It was an
historical novel set in the Denmark of the Middle Ages, clearly of the
rather romantic type. The manuscript was turned down by the publishing
house, and to her this was a devastat-ing blow. All the same, two years
later, she had completed another manuscript; much less voluminous this
time, only 80 pages. She had put aside the Middle Ages, and had instead
produced a realistic description of a woman with a petit-bourgeois
back-ground in contemporary Kristiania. The title was Fru Marta Aulie, with
an opening sentence which scandalised the readers: I have been unfaithful
to my husband. These were the words of the book's main character. This book
was also refused at first, but after the intervention of a well-known
writer of the time, it was subsequently accepted.
Thus, at the age of 25, Sigrid Undset made her literary debut with a
short, realistic novel on adultery, set against a contemporary background.
It created a stir, and she found herself ranked as a promising young author
in Norway. During the years up to 1919, Undset published a number of novels
set in contemporary Kristiania. The 10 years at the office had been lonely
and difficult ones, but they had given her a foothold in the world of
unimportant, everyday people; those who bravely, if not necessarily
heroically, strove to find some happiness in life. Undset was a shy, rather
introvert young woman with few personal friends. But she had unusually
sharp eyes, she saw people, and she saw through them. Her way of breaking
out of her loneli-ness was to take long strolls in and around Kristiania,
both east and west, and she came to know it better than most. Her
contemporary novels of the period 1907-1918 include all this -- the city
and its insignificant inhab-itants, the monotonous boarding-house existence
of secretaries in a gloomy town, their longing for a little warmth and
love, and their brave, not to say heroic, rejection of seediness. These are
the stories of working people, of trivial family destinies, of the
relation-ship between parents and children, written with warmth, but
soberly, and completely unsentimentally. Her main subjects are women and
their love. Or, as she herself put it -- in her typically curt and ironic
manner -- "the immoral kind" (of love).
This realistic period culminated in the novels "Jenny" in 1911 and
"Vaaren" (Spring) in 1914. The first is about a woman painter who, as a
result of romantic crises, believes that she is wasting her life, and in
the end commits suicide. The other tells of a woman who succeeds in saving
both herself and her love from a serious matrimonial crisis, finally
creating a secure family. These books placed Undset more or less clearly
apart from the incipient women's emancipation movement in Europe -- perhaps
not exactly against it, but on an entirely different level.
Undset's books sold well from the start, and after the publication of her
third book, she quit the office job, and prepared to live on her income as
a writer. Having been granted a writer's scholarship, she set out on a
lengthy journey in Europe. After short stops in Denmark and Germany, she
continued to Italy, arriving in Rome in December 1909, where she remained
for 9 months.
Undset's parents had had a close relationship with Rome. As a matter
of fact, Sigrid should have been born in Rome while her parents lived there
in 1882. But just before her birth, her father became suddenly and
seriously ill, her parents travelled north in a great hurry to her mother's
home at Kalundborg, and that is where Sigrid was born. However, Undset
herself very likely felt that her proper place of birth was Rome, and
during her stay there in 1909 she followed in her parents' footsteps.
The encounter with Southern Europe meant a great deal to her. She
immediately made friends within the circle of Scandinavian artists and
writers in Rome, she became more open, and more outgoing and lively in her
relations with other people.
In Rome, she met Anders Castus Svarstad, a Norwegian painter, whom
she married 2 or 3 years later. She was then 30 and, most likely, he was
her first love. Svarstad was nine years older than her, he was married, and
had a wife and three children in Norway. Their meeting must have been a
case of love at first sight, but it was nearly three years before Svarstad
got his divorce.
They were married in 1912, and went to stay in London for 6 months.
Svarstad painted, and Undset developed strong ties with English art and
letters, which were to be of decisive importance to her for the rest of her
life. From London, they returned to Rome, where Sigrid's first child was
born in January 1913. It was a boy, and he was named after his father.
Marriage and the other children who came later, meant a great deal to
Sigrid Undset, both as a person and as a woman. But it was a serious
dilemma for the creative artist. In the years of marriage up to 1919, she
had three children of her own, and a large, busy household to look after;
one which also included Svarstad's three children by his first marriage.
They were difficult years for Sigrid Undset. Her second child, a girl, was
retarded, and Svarstad's retarded son also lived with them. She kept an
open and busy house for the large family and for old and new friends.
At the same time, she continued writing at night, after the others
had gone to bed, finishing her last realistic novels and collections of
short stories. She also entered the public debate on the most topical
themes: women's emancipation, ethical and moral issues. She had
considerable polemical gifts, and was categorically critical of
emancipation as it was developing, and of the moral and ethical decline she
felt was threatening in the wake of the First World War, which was raging
beyond the shores of neutral Norway.
In 1919, she moved to Lillehammer, a small town in the
Gudbrandsdalen, a valley in south-east Norway, taking her two children with
her. She was expecting her third child. The idea was that she should take a
rest at Lille-hammer and move back to Kristiania as soon as Svarstad had
their new house in order. However, it was not to be.
Instead, the marriage broke down. In August 1919, Sigrid Undset gave
birth to her third child, at Lillehammer. She decided to make Lillehammer
her home, and within two years, Bjerke-bæk, her large, beautiful
house was completed. It was a property consisting of three large, handsome
houses of traditional Norwegian timber architec-ture, and a big, fenced
garden with lovely views of the town and the villages around. Her ailing
daughter and the two boys now had a secure and exceptionally beautiful
home. At last, after years of moves and changes, Sigrid Undset, the writer,
had a quiet place to which she could retreat from the world at large in
order to do the one thing she now knew she was really good at; writing.
Marriage and the First World War were to change Undset's atti-tudes. During
those difficult years she had experienced a crisis of faith, almost
imperceptible at first, then increasingly strong. The crisis led her from
clear agnostic scepticism, by way of painful uneasiness about the ethical
decline of the time, towards Christi-anity. She had grown up in a tolerant,
free-thinking home, and had herself been a sceptical free-thinker, though
without the blind faith of the time in science and materialism being the
be-all and end-all.
It would appear that Sigrid Undset had had a personal religious
experi-ence at one time or another during those years. In all her writing
one senses an observant eye for the mystery of life, for that which cannot
be explained either by reason or common sense. At the back of her sober,
almost brutal realism, there is always an inkling of something
unanswerable. It would seem that this recognition of mystery resulted in a
personal religious experience. At any rate, this crisis changed her view of
Christianity. She no longer believed that man had created God, but had come
to believe that God created man.
It was not the Lutheran Church, the Protestant State Church of
Norway, where she herself had been christened, that became her choice. She
joined the Roman Catholic Church in November 1924, having received thorough
instruction from the local Catholic priest in her home district. She was 42
years old at the time.
In Norway Sigrid Undset's conversion to Catholicism was not only
considered sensational; it also had an air of scandal about it. It was also
noted abroad, where her name was becoming known through the international
success of "Kristin Lavransdatter". Today, we can only smile at that
sensation. But at that time there were practically no Catholics in Norway,
an almost obsessively Protestant country. "Papism" was held in contempt,
even feared by large sections of the community, and not only by the Church,
but actually just as much by free-thinkers, and among those more or less
closely connected with Marxism, Leninism, and socialism. The attacks were
quite vicious at times, with the result that Sigrid Undset's polemical
gifts were aroused. For many years she participated in the public debate,
in fact going out of her way to join in it, in almost total defence of her
Roman Church.
However, it is not, after all, the Mistress of Bjerkebæk or the
Catholic lady who interest us most when it comes to Sigrid Undset, it is
Sigrud Undset the writer, and this is a pro-ductive period for her.
As soon as her third child had been born, and she had a secure roof over
her head, she started on "Kristin Lavransdatter", a major project indeed.
She was completely at home in the subject matter, having written a short
novel at an earlier stage, about a period in Norwegian history closer to
the pagan times. She had also pub-lished a version in Norwegian of the
Arthurian legends, from the British/ Celtic Middle Ages. She had studied
Norse manuscripts and medieval texts, and had closely investigated medieval
churches and monasteries, both at home and abroad. She was now an authority
on the period she was struggling to portray, and a very different person
from the 22-year old, who had written her first novel on the Middle Ages.
What had happened to her in the meantime has to do with more than
history and literature, it has just as much to do with her development as a
person. She had experienced love, and passion, to the bitter end. She had
been in despair over a sick world in the throes of the bloodbath of the
First World War. When she started on "Kristin Lavransdatter" in 1919, she
knew what life was about.
"Kristin Lavransdatter" is, of course, an historical novel. But it is
more than that. The historical novel aspect is not even the most important
part of it. The historical background is precise and realistic enough, and
never romanticised. This is by no means a writer's escape from the
contemporary scene into vague longings for the past. Instead, in these
three volumes Undset transfers the feelings -- well known to herself -- of
happiness and sorrow, of ecstasy and despair back into a distant past. Not
in order to romanticise them, though obviously Undset's choice of the
Middle Ages is a result of her admiration of the rock-firm faith that
characterized this period.
She transfers the protagonists to a distant past in order to
establish the distance the author needs, in order to create a work of art
from her own strong feelings and strict thoughts. She was aware of being on
the threshold of something new in her authorship. She searches for, and
finds, the necessary distance by going back to the Middle Ages. «I am
finding my feet, and quite unaided at that», she wrote to a friend.
It is life's mystery, as she knows it from her own experience, that
she writes about in "Kristin Lavrans-datter". That is why these 1,400
pages, as well as the 1,200 on "Olav Auduns-søn" are timeless. Her
characters are men and women of flesh and blood, they could well be our
neighbours today. And Undset has put them in a natural setting which is
ours to this day. It is the city of Oslo she knew so well, the valley -
Gudbrandsdalen - that she loved, and her father's Trøndelag region.
She knew those settings intimately and they remain as they were when
she wrote about them 70 years ago, and indeed as they were in the 13th
century.
It was after she had broken out of her marriage that Sigrid Undset
became mature enough to write her masterpiece. In the years between 1920
and 1927 she first published the 3-volume "Kristin", and then the 4-volume
"Olav" (Audunssøn). Simul-taneously with this creative process, she
was engaged in trying to find the meaning of her own life, finding the
answer in the God of Christianity. As she herself put it: «He brought
me in from the outposts.»
At the end of this creative eruption, Sigrid Undset entered calmer waters.
After 1929, she completed a series of novels set in contemporary Oslo, with
a strong Catholic element. She selected her themes from the small, though
interesting Catholic community in Norway. But here also, the main theme is
love. She also published a number of weighty historical works, which
undoubtedly did their bit in putting the history of Norway into a more
sober perspective. In addition, she translated several Icelandic sagas into
Norwegian and published a few literary essays, mainly on English
literature, of which a long essay on the Brontë sisters, and one on
D.H. Lawrence are especially worth mentioning. These are not great
litera-ture, but they are strong and inspiring.
In 1934, she published "Eleven Years Old", an autobiographical work.
With a minimum of camouflage, it tells the story of her own childhood in
Kristiania, of her home, rich in intel-lectual values and love, and of her
sick father. It is one of the most fetching Norwegian books ever written
about a little girl, surpassed by very few. Sigrid Undset was passing from
strength to strength.
At the end of the thirties she started on a new book, an historical novel
set in 18th century Scandinavia. Only the first volume, "Madame Dorthea",
was published in 1939. The Second World War broke out. It was to break her,
both as a person and as a writer. She never finished the set of 18th
century novels. The War had sapped all her strength.
When Germany invaded Norway in April 1940, she was forced to flee.
She had strongly opposed Hitler and Nazism since the early '30s, and from
an early date her books were banned in Germany. She had no wish to be taken
hostage by the Germans, and fled to Sweden. Her elder son, Anders, was
killed in action at the age of 27, in April 1940, only a few kilometres
from their home at Bjerkebæk. He was an officer in the Norwegian army
and was killed in an encounter with German troops. Her sick daughter had
died shortly before the outbreak of the War. Bjerkebæk was occupied
by the German Army, and used as officers' quarters during the War.
In 1940, Sigrid Undset and her younger son left neutral Sweden for
the United States. There, she untiringly pleaded her occupied country's
cause, in writing and speeches. She returned to Norway after the liberation
in 1945, worn out. She lived for another four years, but she never wrote
another word.
Today there is a strong indication that younger generations of
Norwe-gians are becoming interested in her work. She accepts the moral
responsi-bility of the individual, not only for him or herself, but also
for the extended family, for nature, and for all living things around us.
To me it seems that this is why her books today appeal to a growing number
of readers.
*
Sigrid Undset in the 1990s
by Janneken Øverland
Even into the 1990s people continue to be fascinated by Norwegian author
Sigrid Undset and her lifework. This fascination is manifested in the fact
that her works, particularly the books about Kristin Lavransdatter,
continue to be among the best-selling and most-read books in Norway. New
stage and screen versions of Kristin Lavransdatter have been introduced. A
Finnish/- Norwegian theatre production with original music written by
bassist Arild Andersen has been performed in Norway and abroad. A clearer
picture of Sigrid Undset is emerging in other ways as well.
This is due not least to the extensive biography published in 1993,
"Menneskenes hjerter - Sigrid Undset. En livshistorie" (Aschehoug), written
by Tordis Ørjasæter, professor of special education.
This biography complements in many ways the biography published by
Gidske Anderson in 1989: "Sigrid Undset - et liv" (Gyldendal).
Ørjasæter's book is based on an enormous amount of material
including several new sources and gives a very well-documented picture of
Sigrid Undset, particularly as a private person, but also as an author.
Ørjasæter presents among other things new information about
the father's illness, which it turns out was most likely a nervous disease
like multiple sclerosis and not syphilis as previously believed. The
biography provides an insightful depiction of the difficult working
conditions she experienced as a young author and single parent,
particularly her close relationship to her middle, retarded child. She also
describes Undset's reasons for converting to Catholicism in greater detail
than anyone else before. She shows how Undset's special knowledge of
history and interest in the Middle Ages gave her a natural platform for
gravitating towards Catholicism in Protestant Norway, and points out that
her interest did not start in the 1920s, but had roots going far back in
her life. Ørjasæter's book received the Norwegian
"Brageprisen" award for the best nonfiction book in 1993 and has been
translated into other languages.
Not least, Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann's 1995 film
version of the first part of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy helped put
Undset on the Norwegian cultural map again. Over three hours long in its
first version, the movie traces Kristin's early life on the farm and her
relationship to her father, Lavrans, but concentrates mostly on the love
story between her and Erland and ends with that she, against her parents'
wishes, marries him. The movie was filmed for the most part on location in
a Norwegian mountain valley, where an authentic medieval farm was built for
that purpose. The combined talents of capable Norwegian actors and the
world-famous Bergman photographer Sven Nykvist made film a success from the
very beginning. A shorter version aimed at overseas markets and a TV
version have also been made. A large, international film audience is thus
set to become acquainted with Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, perhaps the
most famous Norwegian literary figure after Peer Gynt.
Produced for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Nytt fra Norge
The author is responsible for the contents of the article.
Reproduction permitted. Printed in June 1996.
Reproduced with permission from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Related links:
|
