Kristin Lavransdatter read-along | 2025

I wanted to use the laugh emoji for this! but maybe an eyeroll is better 🙄

I think the Simon - Ramborg marriage does show up a problem of accuracy re historical novels - that people did marry at an age where now they would be legally a child and this can be uncomfortable to read about. It’s also complex because medieval people did have boundaries that aren’t initially apparent when you first read about people getting married at a younger age than today - for example I know that medieval people did think some ages were too young through reading about Margaret Beaufort being pregnant at 13, but less about what age they would think were sufficiently mature although 15 / 16 does seem possible. Age gap marriages did happen & some were reputedly happy (apparently Edward I had a happy second marriage despite an enormous age gap) but then the old man with a young wife is a stock figure of comedy for writers including Chaucer.

One thing that makes the marriage hard to interpret is that we know very little about Ramborg’s feelings although there are hints that she was keen to marry Simon. We’re also told that Simon is good with children and that Ramborg and Ulvhild were fond of him. There are also hints that Simon is still fond of Kristin. It will be interesting to see the eventual direction of this marriage.

What is clear, is that this marriage is not good for Kristin. For much of the book she has been portrayed very positively- faithful wife, devoted mother, capable at managing her estates - but since the marriage we see a much more spiteful side to her (more like what we saw in the first book). She resents that Ramborg has the cradle, that Simon has altered his house for Ramborg’s comfort and that Lavrans clearly gets on better with Simon than Erlend. I did like how Lavrans’ relationships with his son-in-laws was portrayed- although Erlend has turned out much better than expected it felt that Lavrans just doesn’t see him as an adult and equal (whereas Simon clearly is seen as both).

Although I agree with @cassandrethat Kristin has a DH problem re her children, I do think that she has a slightly different DF problem in that neither Erlend nor Simon quite match up to Lavrans - as each has one aspect of Lavrans (Erlend the good looks and Simon the competence and status). Kristin rejected Simon because he wasn’t sufficiently attractive but she isn’t happy with Erlend as he isn’t as capable a landowner and father.

As for the badly behaved children, I have a lot of sympathy with Lavrans’ view as the death of Ramborg’s sheep was inexcusable.

I was also pleased that Lavrans and Ragnfrid made peace with each other. I think that suggests that companionship in marriage is to be valued.

I must say Erland is looking rather fine is those red boots....especially next to pudgy Simon. Shame he has to go and ruin it all shortly afterwards.

(Just realised I may be a chapter ahead - ignore me!)

Can we get through the week without Kristin having another child?
Apparently not!

Chapter 7, oh, I cried! Lavrans! He’s always been strict but the parting scene between him and Kristin was beautiful. They had chance to really see and know each other and say goodbye with so much love. I thought what he said about her struggling like a colt whenever she really loved someone was very perceptive.

Agree @cassandre that you would expect the father to be a strong role model for so many boys. Erland not doing enough, again.

Belated thanks for the kind words @Benvenuto; I'm super lucky in that I get to write about my favourite books as part of my job (although to be honest my post mostly consists of teaching, with the research taking a back seat and progressing very slowly!).

I hadn't thought of the similarities between the fates of Orm and Arne - very true. @MotherOfCatBoy I suspect Orm died of the plague or Black Death; the historical timing is right, I think.

I agree with everyone else that the Lolita vibes of the relationship between Simon and Ramborg are not pleasant! Maybe in Undset's time the idea of a man getting to know his future wife when she is still a child seemed less disturbing, but from today's perspective it feels worryingly like grooming. I do remember in War and Peace that the heroine Natasha is scampering around as a little girl in front of her future husband, and Tolstoy kept describing her as kitten-like. Ugh.

I'm curious about Ramborg's motivations for being so keen to marry the older, stout, double-chinned Simon. Is she really in love with him? Maybe her main motivation is to be a proper grownup and have a husband and a household of her own (a kind of implicit rivalry with her older sister Kristin). At least she doesn't seem traumatised the morning after her wedding night...

It's interesting to me that if a man marries a rich woman (as was the case with Simon and his first wife), he can't inherit her money after her death unless they have a living son.

On another topic, Lavrans' criticism of Kristin's lax parenting left me very much on Kristin's side. Although I'm sure Erlend is fairly rubbish as a father and hasn't helped out much with parenting, it can't be an easy task for Kristin to keep five small boys in line. Lavrans is from an older generation and thinks he knows best, although he has never had the chance to parent any boys himself, much less a whole horde of them so close in age! That said, some of the boys' behaviour IS pretty appalling: the way they killed poor Ramborg's sheep, for example. It would all make good material for an MN thread ('My DF keeps telling me how to parent my children - AIBU?') and I can see people arguing both sides, ha. I would say, 'OP, you don't really have a DF problem, you have a DH problem'.

I found the scenes/conversations between Kristin and Lavrans, and the one between Lavrans and Ragnfrid, very moving. It looks as though Lavrans is not long for this world 😥

I was shocked reading through chapter 5 given Ramborg’s age - 10 when they get acquainted, 12 when she is regularly sitting on his lap, 14 considered old enough for betrothal and 15 when they marry. Yuk. I know it was legal and customary back then but she’s just a child.
I also thought this was written through Simon’s gaze - he presents himself as a responsible older man, but as @TimeforaGandT notes, doesn’t rebuff Ramborg or make sure he never touches her - quite the opposite. It’s Lolita-like. When they first met and she was described, with her dress and flushed cheeks, I assumed she was an adult. It’s only later you realise how young she is, highlighting how Simon sees her. Ugh.

I noticed a distinct change in the tone in Chapter 5 - it felt noticeably ironic in the part describing the discrepancy between Simon’s expectations and reality. Simon was also portrayed as very young during his engagement to Kristin (whereas in the last book I felt he came across as almost middle-aged so presumably he seems older than his years).

The story of his marriage was sad - even though it was his choice it was clearly a rebound match and another case of a wife’s affection not being returned. It also suggests that it was difficult to get the social access to someone to work out if they would be a suitable spouse: Simon has clearly got close enough to his widow for her to work out that she is attracted to him - but not close enough for him to realise that he is repelled by her.

I felt that Simon’s second marriage was something that Ramborg wanted and that Lavrans wanted to keep his daughter out of Erlend’s power. Simon seems a bit overwhelmed by it all. As @TimeforaGandTsaid age gap marriages were useful, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Sigrid Undset shows the problems with them.

It is making me laugh that Erland persists in being so dim! But in real life I imagine he would be insufferable. Many people seem to like him but they don’t have to live close up with the consequences as Kristin does.

Haftor’s attempted seduction and Kristin’s obliviousness was also very funny.

The chapter with the illness that threatened their children and killed Orm was awful. I’m assuming a measles outbreak?

Second comment is to say to @cassandrethat I absolutely understand why you want to talk so much about the Heptameron - what an absolutely amazing text and author to get to write about! (I’m immensely impressed).

What you said about Héloïse in the convent was so interesting as the expectation of her taking the veil must have been that she repented of her affair. Re Kristin Lavransdatter and your point about what makes a good historical novel, one thing that I did think was anachronistic was that Kristin feels so bound to Erlend once their affair has started. While I can understand that emotionally, practically I wonder if she actually had more choices than characters did in later (and Protestant) novels in that she is an heiress, so someone may well have been willing to marry her, and she also had the option of going into a convent (which from what we see in the novel is quite a comfortable life). Other than that, I think the book balances really well the need for authentic detail with the needs of plot and readability as what happens to Kristin feels very plausible as well as being very compelling to read.

I agree with the comments re Orm, especially as things were looking up for him with a possible career in the Church. His death seems to me to parallel that of Arne in the first book, in that they both seemed to be significant characters, so their deaths were unexpected. Possibly that says something about how fragile life was in medieval times.

I didn’t like the quick passing of time very much, as it made the text feel a bit disjointed. I did though like that things seem a bit more positive for Kristin as the first two chapters from last week were very bleak.

I also liked how we were told Erland’s perspective on his marriage and why - despite his love for Kristin - it feels so burdensome to him. It doesn’t excuse him from being so annoyingly weak, but it does make him much more interesting that if he had just got bored and found another woman. His feelings re fatherhood are also so sad in that he can’t love his later children as much as Orm - but then he wasn’t able to be a good father to Orm. The hints we get about his own childhood are also revealing especially that his mother promised Gunnulf to the Church if Erlend recovers from illness - I know that children were promised to the Church, but in those circumstances it would make much more sense to promise Erlend himself, and it does suggest that Erlend was the favoured child (my view is that this was really unfair to Gunnulf and it is Gunnulf’s credit that he has made the best of his situation - I also think that the family estates would be in much better shape if Erlend had been the one given to the Church).

This section was full of leaps and bounds, shocks and surprises.
Snap with cassandre and Cutflowers on Orm and Bjorn and Fru Aashild. No, you didn't miss anything, cassandre!

Thanks for all the interesting commentary.

I was also very sad about Orm and was wondering the same about Bjorn and Fru Aashild!

OK, I've caught up and can now talk about the Actual Book again (sorry for all my digressions).

I'm very sad about Orm. I really liked him as a character, and I liked the way he bonded with Gunnulf in chapter 2, with both of them being 'marginal' sons, albeit in different ways. He is also insightful; he notices that his father and his uncle Gunnulf are dissimilar, but also alike in certain ways.

In general: damn life was hard! I feel sorry for Kristin (and to a lesser degree Erlend) for having FIVE little sons in a just a few years, when neither of them wanted that. Contraception/birth control has changed our lives so much.

I actually (dare I say it) found myself warming to Erlend a little, when he decided not to sleep with the Norwegian woman on the ship. His drunken threesome with the wild Finnish women doesn't count of course (eyeroll). It's touching though when Kristin is ill and he tries to feed and entertain the poor as she would have done.

I'm interested in the occasional references to literacy. Erlend is originally said to be less literate than Kristin, but he gets better at reading letters (though for writing he has a scribe). And Kristin knows how to write, but prefers to dictate her letters because she thinks it's more proper for someone 'uneducated'.

I wanted more info about the deaths of Bjorn and Fru Aashild! Why did he kill her and then himself?! Did I miss something?

P.S. to Benvenuto: I forgot to mention that I also completely concur with your point that woman writers tend to have a more 'realistic' take on these issues than male writers do. This is the case if you compare Boccaccio's Decameron (where sex is mostly fun and games) with Marguerite's Heptameron (which focuses on women's vulnerability, and on how a woman's life can be destroyed if she loses her 'honour' or reputation for chastity).

OK I promise to stop talking about the Heptameron now!

One of the things I've been thinking about is how hard it is to write a good historical novel. This is partly because I just read an entertaining novel set in 1920 (The Eights by Joanna Miller), and although the author had done a lot of research on the historical detail, the characters and dialogue just didn't sound at all like they came from 1920. Undset on the other hand is very convincing, I think, when it comes to making us believe in her 14th century world. It's impressive.

Thanks for all the thought-provoking ideas about literary tradition, @Benvenuto. I'm sure you're right in saying that Lavrans' comment about not being in Wales is a way of distancing the novel from the courtly Arthurian tradition. That said, Lavrans isn't someone who can really get his head around the existence of erotic desire anyway!

I got excited when you mentioned Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron. I've been totally immersed in that work lately and have fact just finished writing an article about love in the Heptameron 😳(which I hasten to say is too niche to be of general interest, and won't come out for ages!). So I don't want to say much about the Heptameron, because I'm longwinded enough already and I'm afraid of digressing even more and boring everyone senseless, ha. But YES to the point that even being a woman of high status in pre-modern Europe doesn't mean you're safe from sexual assault! One thing that I love about the Heptameron however is the fact that the ten storytellers engage in debate and commentary after every story. So there's not just one conception of love, but lots of different conceptions of it. Everyone has their own take, depending on whether they're young or old, male or female, religious or less religious. It's a bit as though every one of Marguerite's tales were followed by an MN thread! (Ok, maybe I'm getting a little carried away here. 😂) Anyway, it's useful to remember that there's never one single 'take' on sex and sin in the Middle Ages; it was a topic for debate and people living in the same time and place could have very different perspectives.

And yes, it's fascinating to see what Undset does with the 'fallen woman' theme, in contrast to the male writers who preceded her.

@JaninaDuszejko thanks so much for the Norse saga rec! I will definitely add that to my TBR list (though it might be awhile before I get to it).

Off now to catch up on the chapters (I'm a night owl).

Thanks for the fascinating comments everyone, especially @Benvenuto. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply; I've been disorganised this week! And in fact I still haven't read this week's chapters yet, but I will have done by tomorrow.

Very interesting thoughts about sin, Benvenuto. The Heloise and Abelard example is a fascinating one and one I had forgotten about! I've read their letters in the past, as well as a biography of Abelard, and I had the impression that his castration wasn't just a punishment for sexual sin (though it certainly was that), but also retaliation against Abelard by powerful male rivals. He was a powerful, controversial figure and had a lot of political and religious enemies. Interestingly, in the Heloise/Abelard correspondence (long after his castration), he lectures her about how she should forget their earthly love and focus on love for God, whereas she (despite having become an abbess) continues to write him letters that are very sensual, reminding him of their mutual love.

Did Henry VIII really believe that his first marriage was sinful, or was that just an excuse to get rid of a wife who had given him no sons, and get another one? Hmm.

I totally agree with your point about how almost no one in the novel lives up to medieval moral standards (Simon's sister is a good example), and that this constitutes an implicit critique of those standards. I hadn't thought of that before.

@TimeforaGandT pilgrimages fascinate me too. I wonder if it's the medieval expression of wanting to pursue mental/spiritual growth, though that desire manifests itself differently today: we might try yoga or therapy or meditation, something of that ilk, instead of a pilgrimage. I read Margery Kempe's autobiography last year and it was fascinating -- she made various pilgrimages (having been inspired to do so by the example of a Swedish woman mystic) and had lots of adventures while travelling. Then there are the Canterbury Tales of course, which illustrate that you might still be interested in secular entertainment, even when you're on a religious pilgrimage!

Sigrid Undset was heavily influenced by the Norse Sagas which were some of the most psychologically complex literature being produced in Europe in the medieval period. If anyone is interested in reading any of the Sagas to see the comparison then Laxdæle is probably a good one to start with. The Penguin Classic translation by Magnus Magnusson (yes, that one) is very readable.

Thank you @Benvenuto and everyone for such interesting commentary! Reading everyone’s reflections is making the reading experience so much richer.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubhWe’re told that Erlend and Ragnfrid insisted that the second child to a foster mother. My assumption was that Erlend had found it a nuisance that Kristin was nursing their first child and didn’t want the same situation with the second, however your view might better explain Ragnfrid’s reasons.

Thinking a bit more about @cassandre’s points about sin, I think we also have to think about both the author’s values and how the book relates to other texts, because it is a historical novel rather than a history book, so it has to be assessed as a novel. I thought the biographical information was really interesting, but I haven’t much to add about that as I’ve been avoiding reading it (I read a bit of the introduction then decided to leave reading it until after I’d read the books as there were too many spoilers).

The literary tradition though, I have been thinking about both in terms of medieval texts and the development of the novel. This is a bit difficult to think through as I don’t know much about the Norwegian tradition, so I’ve tried to think about what lines of enquiry I might think about to investigate if I was studying the text.

I think there is a case for thinking about medieval texts as there is some reference to them in the book - I probably started to think about this because the text led me to think about Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Arthur trilogy (which retells Arthurian legends) as those books really do examine the different relationships on medieval manors. I can think of 3 types of medieval narratives about love affairs (admittedly this is only based on texts that I know so there may be others) - firstly comic ones such as some of the stories in the Canterbury Tales (and we know that Kristin wouldn’t like her story to be considered like this). Secondly, there are the Arthurian legends which fuse both ideals of courtly love with a deeply tragic outcome where transgressive love affairs - if I was a student, I would be tempted to argue that even though Erlend first appears like a knight from an Arthurian legend, Lavrans discounts placing his daughter’s story in this tradition when he makes his comment about “not being in Wales”. I’ve used English examples, but there are examples from other European countries so it would seem likely that the author would be aware of both traditions and the reference in the book implies that Kristin would be aware of one or both traditions.

There is though, another text written at the end of the Middle Ages / beginning of the Renaissance where a woman writes about being assaulted by a man. He gains access to her chamber, she fights him off but is then advised by her lady-in-waiting to keep quiet about the incident as everyone will assume that she led him on. The story is in the Heptameron, and it is thought that Marguerite de Navarre based it on an incident that happened to her - I think it really sums up the risk to women in that not even royalty was safe. I’m not mentioning it as an influence on the text, but rather because it sets up the idea of women writers treating this issue with more realism, which would be interesting to examine to (dis)prove.

Skip forward to the novel, and one of the key early drivers of the development of the novel was how it treated illicit relationships. This is particularly the case in England where you have Richardson’s Clarissa ending in tragedy contrasting with Fielding’s more comic work. It’s really striking just how many nineteenth century novels adopt the tragedy position in that if a character becomes a “fallen woman” the only outcome is death (or exile as happens to Little Emily in David Copperfield). I’ve been thinking about that as I can remember reading a history of English literature at school, which contrasted how the realisation of these women’s characters improved from Little Emily to Tess of the D’Urbervilles - but despite this the outcome is still tragic.

Sigrid Undset seems to reject this tradition as although Kristin initially saw herself as part of a great love affair, she has to come to terms with this being no excuse for deceiving her family and friends and behaving in a way that she later regrets. There is no tragic outcome for her in that she ends up married and she does begin to win back the respect she lost due to her marriage by her good management of her estate - she just has to deal with a husband who is losing her respect and her deep regrets for her past behaviour. In an earlier post, I compared Erlend to Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility, and I do think the characters have a lot in common - both appear in a most attractive manner and rescue the heroine, but both are ultimately revealed as being weak (and also having children from previous illicit relationships). I think Jane Austen too, showed the anguish that illicit relationships caused families but she also refused to see those involved in these relationships as tragic - they end up short of money, married to someone they dislike or having to live with an unpleasant aunt. Again, if I was a student, I would be interested to write about Sigrid Undset’s literary influences to try to place her in the evolution of the depiction of illicit relationships moving from being clearly comic / tragic to a more realistic depiction - and if this fits in with a difference between male and female writers.

As said, this is quite a sketchy argument for various reasons, but it has been really interesting to think about.