Kristin Lavransdatter read-along | 2025

[TimeforaGandT]

Following on from The Count of Monte Cristo read-along in the first half of 2025, we are reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset for the second half of 2025.

The medieval epic tells the story of a passionate and headstrong woman from childhood in three books : The Wreath, The Wife and The Cross.

It’s a majestic 1124 pages in the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition which has been translated by Tiina Nunnally and this is the edition I am using for page number references. Kudos to anyone who is reading it in the original Norwegian.

There are 67 chapters in total (if I have counted correctly) and the consensus is to read three chapters a week / one every two days with Sundays off. I have ignored the Introduction as part of the read-along as, in my experience, there are often contain spoilers.

Starting on Monday, 7 July our first week looks like this:

The Wreath – Part 1 (Jørundgaard)

Monday / Tuesday – Chapter 1 (pages 5 to 21)
Wednesday / Thursday – Chapter 2 (pages 22 to 37)
Friday / Saturday – Chapter 3 (pages 38 – 47)
Sunday – day off

I will try and tag all those who have previously expressed interest.

I was delighted to see Lavrans back for much of this week. He is clearly a stark contrast to Erlend and whilst Erlend remains out of favour chez Agualusa, he is perhaps slowly learning from Lavrans. We see how easily Erlend is influenced by people around him, even Kristin notes it, and to become more Lavrans would be a good thing by any measure.

I will admit the last chapter somewhat flew over my head, I understood the two sides, but keeping track of the sides with the names was hard. Again, I come back to Lavrans and how Erlend seems to have underestimated his influence and reach.

I decided to let the historical stuff wash over me, it's quite complicated (although I would be interested to look into it a bit more) but for the purposes of the book it's only significant that Erlend is drawn to the opposite side to Lavrans.

It's brilliant diplomacy from Lavrans that he suggests sending Erlend off to a completely different fight against the Russians, where he can go and put his new warship through its paces and they don't risk ending up on opposite sides.

The chapters about Kristin's penance were quite uncomfortable reading, especially as Erlend was last seen going off hunting!

I ve just caught up. It does continuously seem that Erlend is weak and easily influenced. I was also amused by Lavrans’ suggestion which is clearly to send him off in the opposite direction to where all the big important stuff is happening but make him feel he’s had a promotion, as it were. Genius!
It was also surprising that Erlend still hasn’t twigged after all this time that Lavrans is truly respected and for good reason, not just because he seems pious. He’s really quite naive isn’t he?

Excellent psychology going on on Lavrans's part. Erland is weak but works well under guidance. The thing is to find him a position as part a chain of command that he respects so that he feels important. Preferably somewhere far, far away :)

And this week we are reading:

Monday/Tuesday - Chapter 2 (pages 430 - 458)
Wednesday/Thursday - Chapter 3 (pages 459 - 487)
Friday/Saturday - Chapter 4 (pages 488 - 500)

Thanks @TimeforaGandT! I've just caught up with my reading and the thread; I'd fallen behind due to feeling poorly for awhile (just a virus, but very annoying).

There are so many interesting comments and I'm so late, I won't try to namecheck people, but thank you!

That description of Kristin's labour and giving birth was excruciatingly realistic. I do think that's one of the features of the fact that the author is a woman: I felt as though she knew what she was talking about. The depictions of breastfeeding are also very convincing.

I confess that all of the 'sin' stuff is quite heavy going for me. I keep wondering how much of the ethos is consistent with medieval times and how much of it is Undset's own conservative religious mindset (she converted to Catholicism shortly after writing the saga, I think). I've read a lot of medieval literature (but no Norse medieval literature, admittedly!) and while there is certainly a high priority placed on female virginity (both in a religious sense, and in the sense of virginity being a commodity and crucial to families' reputations), Ragnfrid's bitter self-condemnation, lasting over so many years, doesn't feel very medieval to me. There are loads of premarital and extramarital sexual relations in medieval texts. No, these relations usually aren't seen as ethically unproblematic (except maybe in comic stories?), but still, it seems to me that medieval people broke the rules (or sinned) and then just got on with things! First Ragnfried, and then Kristin, are so fixated on their sexual sin. Even the whole first section of The Wife is called 'The Fruit of Sin'.

Anyway, rant over. I don't want to judge this novel just on the basis of how historically accurate it is, because it deserves to be appreciated in its own right, as the work of a woman writer in 1920s Norway. However, I suspect that the details about daily life in this novel (what @MotherOfCatBoy called the Little-House-on-the-Prairie-esque detail) are more historically accurate than the depictions of people's thoughts and feelings. But the thoughts and feelings of the past are harder to capture. We can find them in literature to a degree, but literary texts themselves are never simply a straightforward depiction of everyday life.

I did admire the chapter about Kristin's pilgrimage. They did love pilgrimages in the Middle Ages!

One theme I find fascinating is the idea, referenced several times now, that an experience a woman has during pregnancy can affect the child in the womb, and change their physical appearance. I've read a bit about this and it's called 'maternal impression'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_impression

Goethe wrote a novel about it called Elective Affinities. I kept thinking that Kristin's baby would be fine, but as it happens, he has the dramatic 'drops of blood' over his heart.

Sorry, I'm still going with the posts, I'm long-winded!

Even though the sin theme is making me grumpy, I think Undset is doing a great job of highlighting male hypocrisy and selfishness through the character of Erlend. He's just SUCH A DICK. I can't get over the fact he's disappointed in Kristin being pregnant, because he thinks people will admire them less as a newlywed couple, when he's the one who had sex with her despite her protest!

He did get a long telling-off from his priest brother. (Incidentally, the younger brother being a priest is also an authentic historical detail: primogeniture meant that only the oldest son could inherit, so younger sons had to work out what the hell to do with their lives.)

@Benvenuto I really liked your comment about how earlier Kristin was more like her mother (experiencing sensual passion), but now she's more like Lavrans. That's so true. She's wisely improving everything in Erlend's neglected household. And now that she's a mother, she's less interested in sex, much to Erlend's annoyance.

I'll leave it for now but I'm enjoying the read! I didn't understand the historical stuff very well either. Can't decide whether to go back and reread or just carry on...

Just one last thing I promise! Reading the wiki entry on Undset, I'm struck by how some of the details of her life match Kristin's:

In Rome, Undset met Anders Castus Svarstad, a Norwegian painter, whom she married almost three years later. She was 30; Svarstad was thirteen years older, married, and had a wife and three children in Norway. It was nearly three years before Svarstad got his divorce from his first wife.

Undset and Svarstad were married in 1912 and went to stay in London for six months. From London, they returned to Rome, where their first child was born in January 1913.[A boy, he was named after his father. In the years up to 1919, she had another child, and the household also took in Svarstad's three children from his first marriage. These were difficult years: her second child, a girl, was mentally handicapped, as was one of Svarstad's sons by his first wife.

(Apologies for the dated term 'mentally handicapped' btw; someone should edit the Wiki entry.)

She and her husband ultimately divorced when she was pregnant with their third child, but I don't know whether that links up to Kristin's story (I doubt it!). All these events took place before she started writing Kristin Lavransdatter.

Anyway I know one should be careful interpreting novels as autobiographical (especially women writers, because assuming that women can only tell their own stories is a sexist assumption). But I do wonder whether Undset isn't exploring themes via Kristin that she encountered in her own life: marrying an older man who already has a partner and children, taking in the stepchildren. And then embracing God as a way of coming to terms with her past.

As a side note, I also read online that she became a big advocate for children with learning disabilities and even donated part of her Nobel Prize money to a fund for families caring for these children at home. That is impressive.

Today's chapter was long but really interesting I thought. I agree with @cassandre about the obsession with sexual sin seeming a bit much - I would have thought that the marriage would have cancelled that out but apparently not! Surely the whole poison/Aline episode was worse?

It was good to hear more about Orm and his relationship with his father. I hope he is going to become a more central character.

He's just SUCH A DICK. I can't get over the fact he's disappointed in Kristin being pregnant, because he thinks people will admire them less as a newlywed couple, when he's the one who had sex with her despite her protest!
You're going to like him even less in this chapter! I think his emotions are very much always on the surface and he doesn't bother to hide what he thinks - probably because he has never had to.

Thanks for posting about maternal impression. I found that fascinating. When I was pregnant I broke my arm and I kept dreaming that my son would be born with a broken arm too. Needless to say, he wasn't!

I am enjoying all the domestic details too, especially all the different places to sleep which seem to change every night depending on who is around. It must have been a far more communal life with little privacy.

(Does anyone else sometimes find the narrative difficult to follow with the skips forward in time? Maybe I am just not very good at concentrating on long texts anymore...)

Thank you for your interesting posts @cassandre ! Maternal impression, especially. And the biographical detail is surely not a coincidence.

I thought that Kristin would have found a sense of acceptance and resolution following her pilgrimage that ended in a vision, but clearly not. The burden of sin continues to weigh heavily on her (and on the reader!) I thought that talking with the priestly brother would have helped by now. Yes, the 'sin stuff' is hard going. And Erlend continues to be a dick. There are two more stupid comments in the chapter about Kirstin's second pregnancy. And he isn't nice to Orm either who seems like a lovely young man.

The jumps in the text are a bit startling, Buttalapasta!

I just want to add to what @cassandresaid about sin, because it is an important part of the novel and there is a lot think about. I think that there are 2 ways to look at this - firstly from a historical perpective and secondly as part of the literary tradition. (I’ll caveat this by saying I’m not a historian & I don’t know much about Norwegian literature).

From a historical point of view, medieval rules about chastity were strict, and the consequences for women for flouting them could be severe - although not always. A good example is Queen Isabella of England who got away with a presumed affair (until she got into trouble politically) because her husband (Edward II) was so inept - in contrast 2 of her sisters-in-law (married to French princes) were imprisoned for adultery because Isabella’s father was a much stronger king. Men tended to escape this censure, although not always (Pierre Abelard was castrated for his affair with Héloïse) and they could be resented for this (I’m think I remember that this was one of the complaints against King John). The point about confession and absolution is a really good one - but while I would agree with expecting someone to move onwards after that, I can’t help wondering if this might be depend on what else happens in your life. Admittedly, that’s due to thinking about Henry VIII continuing to think that his first marriage was sinful because he has no sons despite what the church told him, and he probably isn’t a strong argument for anything.

One of the things I really like about this novel is that as well as looking at what the author and the characters say, you also have to bear in mind what the characters do, and it is really striking that if the main women characters in the novel, few actually live up to medieval moral standards. The only one does is Ulvhild, who is (1) very young and (2) very unwell - Kristin, Ragnfrid, Fru Aashild and Simon’s sister all fall short. Kristin’s friend at the convent would have probably liked the opportunity to sin and Simon’s mother is possibly cross that Kristin has behaved too properly towards Simon. My reading of that is that it is quite a damming critique of medieval morals - they just aren’t realistic for most people.

Some men do fare better on this, but it is striking that of the “good” men, none are celibate. Lavrans and Simon both marry, and Gunnulf pointedly doesn’t engage with the conversation when Erlend asks about his celibacy. Sigrid Undset also makes it clear that they have all paid a high price for conforming to societal standards (Lavrans and Simon would prefer to be married to someone else and Gunnulf presumably would rather not be in the Church). Again it shows that the system doesn’t work for men either - you either pay the price for conforming, or (like Erlend and Bjorn) you lose the respect of your peers.

I also think that it isn’t the sin that is such a problem for Kristin and Ragnfrid - it’s more that their behaviour has been so secretive and deceptive. Kristin herself shows that public opinion isn’t always as strict as moral standards when she thinks that people would be sympathetic if she was pregnant if her father had kept her and Erlend apart because it is romantic, but they will think it funny that she and Erlend could not wait until they were married. Simon’s sister’s situation is very sad when her fiancé dies unexpectedly, but her experience is very different to that of Kristin. Simon and his wife look after his sister while the baby is born, the baby’s father’s family adopt the baby and Simon’s sister then returns to her family. It is a very sad situation, but the impression is of family rallying around to support someone who had been very unlucky.

Ragnfrid, I think is haunted by the fact that she deceived Lavrans when they were married and she must have been under a lot of pressure as it is implied that Fru Aashild knew about this so could betray her - then this was compounded by her later betrayal and being unsure of who the father of her first child was. The deaths of her children and Ulvhild’s injury, I think really confirmed her belief that she was being punished for her behaviour. Ulvhild’s situation is particularly sad as I think there is a hint in the book that Lavrans and Ragnfrid were getting on much better after Ulvhild’s birth because Ragnfrid was much happier (and prettier). This just makes her situation sadder as she is trapped by her own guilt.

For Kristin, I think that she was betraying her commitment to Simon and deceiving her parents and the abbess - and that it is hard to sustain the image of a romantic love when her behaviour has been so squalid at times (eg meeting Erlend in a brothel). I think it is this deceit that is so hard for both Ragnfrid and Kristin to bear and this does distinguish them from Simon’s sister. I’m also wondering how Kristin’s reckoning with her own behaviour while on pilgrimage will affect her relationship with Erlend, who hasn’t had this experience (because he went hunting).

I’ll write a bit more later re my thoughts on the litarary tradition - & thanks again to @cassandrefor making me think so much about this aspect of the book.

I’d fallen behind but just caught up with book and comments. I can’t add anything to everyone’s insightful posts but have been nodding along. I agree it was interesting to see Erlend from Lavrans’ perspective, as rather a nonentity, and enjoyed him being manoeuvred away.

Thanks for your post, Buttalapasta.
There's a lot to think about. I wonder if Kristin's unhappiness in marriage will be as extensive as her mother's. It seems to be the case as her health is suffering. I wonder if that was why she didn't nurse her second son.

Some really interesting commentary here from everyone which I am really enjoying. As ever, I am behind on my reading but have read last week's chapters.

I have to remind myself how important religion was in those times which is reinforced by Kristin's reference to the fact that she learnt the words by rote/following her parents and it's only recently they have actually begun to resonate with her. And events were justified by reference to religion whether it be a bad harvest or infertility. It's difficult to relate to now how important religion was, in most cases, to both individuals and the community.

I am always fascinated by pilgrimages and can't fathom under what circumstances I would consider walking miles alone barefoot with a breastfed baby. I felt slightly robbed that at the end of the pilgrimage chapter we moved on several months as I wanted to know how Kristin felt afterwards. Presumably she had to slog home again too.....

It feels as if Erlend has arrested development and is stuck at the equivalent of the irresponsible teenager stage of life with no sense of foresight or consideration for others. Meanwhile, Kristin, who might have matched that stage when they first met has matured and become the adult in the relationship.

I am all at sea on the history but it feels like Erlend has been manipulated and out-manoeuvred!

@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.

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

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.

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!

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).

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!

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?

Thanks for all the interesting commentary.

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

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!

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).