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Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) | |
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Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Sigrid Undset is best-known for her novels about life in the Scandinavian countries during the Middle Ages. Her early fiction dealt with contemporary subjects, problems of city women. Often the heroines face tragic consequences when they are unfaithful for their true inner self or idealistically challenge traditional gender roles.
Sigrid Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, the eldest daughter of Ingvald, an archeologist, and Anna Charlotte, the daughter of a Danish attorney. Through his father's influence, Undset developed a fascination with medieval history and sagas, ballads, and mythology of Scandinavia. From her mother Undsed derived realistic view of life in general, but she never shared her mother's critical attitude toward religion. When she was two years old, the family moved to Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, where her father took a position at the university. A defining moment in Undset's childhood was when she came upon a copy of Njáls Saga, which was in her grandfather's library. (Sigrid Undset: A Study in Christian Realism by A.H. Winsnes, translated by P. G. Foote, Cluny, 2022, p. 18) Its story absorbed her so much that she lost all other awareness: "At times she had to put down the book in order as it were to swallow what she had been reading. Skarphedin slid down the ice-fall, which was so smooth and shiny that it hurt the eyes in the winter sunshine. He cut down a man as he slid past at full speed, someone threw a shield in front of his feet to trip him up, but he jumper over it and slid on, and by his side ran the river open and dark between the ice-bridges. . . . It gave her a tingling sensation to think of it, as when she read some forbidden book. . . . Strange that she pictured to herself Skarphedin with a face that was rather like that of her pious grandfather – sallow, with dark eyes and a dark beard." (The Longest Years by Sigrid Undset, translated from the Norwegian by Arthur C. Chater, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1935, p. 282) Ingvald Undset died in 1893, at the age of forty, and the family's financial situation deteriorated. Undset's mother sold her husband's collection of books and antiques, many of which Undset later searched for and acquired back. Ingvald became the model for Lavrans Bjørgulfsson in Kristin Lavransdotter (1920-22). After passing the middle-level exam at a school run by Ragna Nielsen, a supporter of the suffragist movement, Undset took a secretarial training course. To support her mother and two sisters, Undset took a job as a secretary to a German electrical contractor, Wisbech Electrical Company, where she worked nine-hour days. Undset remained at the office for the next ten years. On her spare time she read Norwegian authors such as Henrik Ibsen, history, Shakespeare and Chaucer, and the novels of Jane Austen and Charlotte and Emily Brontë. To her Swedish pen pal, Andrea (Dea) Hedberg she wrote long letters. In 1900, Undset began to work on a historical novel set in medieval Norway, finishing the manuscript four years later. With the hope of having it published, she took it to Gyldenhal Publishing Company in Copenhagen. The legendary reply of the editor, Peter Nansen, was: "Don't attempt any more historical novels. You have no talent for it. But you might try writing something modern." Undset's first novel, Fru Marta Oulie, came out in 1907, after the publishing house of H. Aschehoug & Co. had first rejected it. "I have been unfaithful to my husband," confessed the protagonist in the story of marital infidelity, which shocked some critics. The novel, set in contemporary Kristiania (renamed Oslo in 1925) was followed by a collection of short stories, Den lykkelige alder (1908). Fortællingen om Viga-Ljot of Vigdis (1909, Gunnar's Daughter), a short novel, was an imitation of Icelandic saga. Its protagonist is a woman, who raises her son to take revenge on the man, who had ruined her - his father. Gunnar's Daughter earned Undset a government scholarship for travel. She left her job and devoted herself entirely to writing. Her third novel, Jenny (1911), Undset set in partly Rome, depicting with enthusiasm the sights of the Eternal City. "Helge whispered aloud to the city of his dreams, whose streets his feet had never trod and whose buildings concealed not one familiar soul: "Rome, Rome, eternal Rome." And he grew shy before his own lonely being, and afraid, because he was deeply moved, although he knew that no one was there watching him. All the same, he turned around and hurried down toward the Spanish Steps." (from Jenny) The protagonist is a promising young artist, Jenny Winge, who tries to compromise between love and artistic goals. Jenny leaves her indolent fiancé, Helge Gram, feels attraction to Helge's father, Gert, a failed artist. He leaves his wife, but Jenny doesn't want to marry him. She loses her baby who lives six weeks, and travels to Rome where she commits suicide. After the success of her books, Undset began to travel. In
1912 she married the Norwegian painter Anders Castus Svarstad at the
Norwegian consulate in Antwerp, Belgium. She had met him in Rome, where
she had moved after her second novel. Undset returned with Svarstad to
Norway. Svarstad continued his career as an artist, spending most of
his time in his Oslo studio, Undset published several books, took
dutifully care of the home and the children -
three of them from his previous marriage. Eventually they separated in
1919, and Undset settled on a farm in Lillehammer in Gudbrandsdal with
her daughter, Maren Charlotte, who suffered from mental retardation,
and two sons. Her husband and stepchildren become frequent visitors to
the farm, called Bjerkebæk. When the future Nobel laureate F.E.
Sillanpää went to see her in 1930 at her house, an angry dog chased him
away. Before publishing her great historical novels, Undset wrote Splinten
av troldspeilet
(1917), which focused on the contradictions
between new opportunities for women and their traditional duties. In
1924 she converted to the Roman Catholic faith, and at the same time
had her marriage annulled. Her religious beliefs are reflected in
everything she wrote but without dogmatism. Undset's own spiritual development
is recorded in Gymnadenia (1929, The Wild Orchid), Den
brændende busk (1930, The Burning Bush), and Den
trofaste hustru (1936, The Faithful Wife). Undset's relationship
with feminism was more ambivalent: her heroines often find fulfillment
in home and family rather than in paid work. The enlarged version of Saga of Saints (1934) was published in Norway under the title Norske helgener
(1937). It contained portraits of such saints as St. Sunniva, St. Olav,
St. Hallvard, St. Magnus, St. Eystein, and St. Thorfinn. Undset was the third Norwegian writer to be awarded The Nobel Prize, after Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Knut Hamsun. Her first masterwork from the 1920s is the trilogy Kristin Lavransdottir, slow and unpretentiously old-fashioned, consciously setting itself against modermism and vicissitudes of history. It re-created a woman's life in the devout Catholic Norway of the 13th and 14th centuries. The first volume, The Bridal Wreath, depicted Kristin's passage to adulthood. Kristin is the proud and beautiful daughter of a prosperous landowner. Early on she is close to being a victim of rape, and marries a basically unworthy man, Erlend, who had saved her. "She understood not herself why she was not glad—it was as though she had lain and wept beneath a warm covering, and now must get up in the cold. A month went by—then two, now she was sure that she had been spared this ill-hap—and, empty and chill of soul, she felt yet unhappier than before. In her heart there dawned a little bitterness toward Erlend. Advent drew near, and she had heard neither from or of him; she knew not where he was." (Ibid., p. 167) The Mistress of Husaby and The Cross dealt with Kristin's marriage, the love and hate relationship with her husband, who has illegitimite children, and her final reckoning with God and succumbing to the Black Death. "And the last cdear thought that formed in her brain was that she should die ere this mark had time to vanish and she was glad, it seemed to her to be a mystery that she could not fathom, but which she knew most surely none the less, that God had held her fast in a covenant made for her without her knowledge by a love poured out upon her richly and in despite of her self-will, in despite of her heavy, earthbound spirit, somewhat of this love had become part of her, had wrought in her like sunlight in the earth, had brought forth increase which not even the hottest flames of fleshly love nor its wildest hursts of wrath could lay waste wholly." (The Cross, translated by Charles Archer, p. 382) The novel was followed by a tetralogy, translated into English as The Master of Hestviken (1924-27), also a medieval tale. The protagonist, proud and unyielding Olav, has committed murder - he kills the lover of his fiancée - which he chooses not to confess. In both novel series "the first sin" shadows the protagonists life. In his presentation speech, on December 10, 1928, Per Hallström, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy, stated: "The erotic life, the problem common to the two sexes, which constitutes the centre of Sigrid Undset's psychological interest, is found again, almost without modifications, in her historical novels. In this respect, objections naturally come to mind. In medieval documents, the feminist question is not known; one never finds hints of the inner personal life which later was to raise this question. The historian, demanding proofs, has the right to note this discrepancy. But the historian's claim is not absolute; the poet has at least an equal right to express himself when he relies on a solid and intuitive knowledge of the human soul." Undset did not deliver a Nobel lecture, but said in her brief acceptance speech that "I write more readily than speak and I am especially reluctant to talk about myself." With the exception of Madame Dorthea (1939), the only completed volume of a planned trilogy set in the 18th century, Undset's later novels dealt with contemporary society. In most of these works, such as The Wild Orchid and its sequel The Burning Bush, Undset wove religious themes in the story. In the 1920s, Undset began to earn a comfortable income from
her books. Moreover, she was awarded a lifetime annual author's stipend
from the Norwegian goverment. Her Nobel Prize money, 156,000 kroner,
Undset gave away. Part of it went to a foundation established to help
families with mentally retarded children. Undset sold also her Nobel
medal later, giving the money to the relief effort for Finnish children
after the outbreak of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet
Union in 1939. In 1939, Undset lost both her mother and daughter. When Norway
was occupied by the Germans in April 1940, Undset joined the
Resistance. In her essay 'Fortschritt, Rasse, Religion' (1935, Progress, Race,
Religion) she had compared the "superior race" belief of the Nazis to
the pride of Lucifer.
Undset's eldest son, Anders, was killed during a combat in
Gausdal in 1940 while trying to defend Lillehammer. As
an outspoken intellectual, who wrote articles against
Nazism, Undset was a person of interest" to the security police, and
her books were banned. Internationally Undset was the best known
Norwegian author besides Henrik Ibsen a that time. Norwegian
authorities advised Undset to
flee the country. She had barely enough time to pack a suitcase. In
April 1940 Undset started with her son a long journey on foot and
skis over the mountains into Sweden and then crossed Siberia by train,
on to Japan, eventually sailing to San Francisco in August 1940. Later
she described this escape in Tilbake til fremtiden (1945), which was published in an English translation under the title Return to the Future
(1942). This propaganda book is now mostly forgotten. Bjerkebæk was
taken over by the Germans for several years. He writing desk was
chopped up for firewood. Undset lived in exile in the United States, in a small apartment in Brooklyn, New York. Her new acquaintances included the novelist Willa Cather, whose novels she greatly admired. Durig this period, she made lecture tours, which gained much publicity. Undset called herself a "propaganda soldier." At the end of the war, Undset returned to Norway, where she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1947, for her "distinguished literary work and for her service to her country." Undset died in Lillehammer, on June 10, 1949. Undset combined in her work knowledge of history with a psychological analysis. With the '"domestic epic," a sweeping drama set against a carefully studied social background, she broke a new ground. Undset turned away from the sentimental style of national romanticism and wanted to re-create the realism of the Icelandic sagas and write so vividly, that "everything that seem romantic from here - murder, violence, etc becomes ordinary - comes to life," as the author explained. In her personal life Undset devoted herself to medieval interests - she restored house dating from the year 1000 and dressed in the grown of a Norse matron of the Middle Ages. In Lillehammer Undset lived a reclusive life and refused to open the doors of his house to journalists. Undset's emphasis on women's biological nature, and her view that motherhood is the highest duty a woman can aspire, has been criticized by feminists as reactionary. For further reading: 'Sigrid Undset's Problematic Propaganda: The Call for Democracy in "Return to the Future"' by Christine Hamm, in Nordic War Stories: World War II as History, Fiction, Media, and Memory, edited by Marianne Stecher-Hansen (2021); Sigrid Undset: A Modern Crusader by Giuseppe Caruso (2014); Foreldre i det moderne: Sigrid Undsets forfatterskap og moderskapets grammatikk by Christine Hamm (2013); 'Undset, Sigrid (1882-1949)' by Katherine Abernathy, in The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel: 1900 to the Present: Volume II, edited by Michael D. Sollars (2008); Dikterdronningen: Sigrid Undset by Sigrun Slapgard (2007); 'Undset, Sigrid,' in Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature and Theater by Jan Sjåvik (2006); 'Introduction', by Tiina Nunnally, in The Wreath, translated by Tiina Nunnally (1997); 'Sigrid Undset,' in Women Writers of Great Britain and Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter (1997); 'Undset, Sigrid,' in World Authors 1900-1950, Volume 4, edited by M. Seymour-Smith and A.C. Kimmens (1996); Redifining Integrity by Elisabeth Solbakken (1992); Natur og normer hos Sigrid Undset by Liv Bliksrud (1988); Sigrid Undsed: Chronicler of Norway by Mitzi Brunsdale (1988); Sigrid Undset by C. Bayerschmidt (1970); Sigrid Undset, ou la morale de la passion by Nicole Deschamps (1966); Undset: A Study in Christian Realism by Andreas H. Winsnes (1953); 'Christian Ethics in a Pagan World. Sigrid Undset—Novelist of medieval Norway and ageless humanity (1928),' in The Nobel Prize Winners in Literature: 1901-1931 by Annie Russell Marble (1932); Six Scandinavian Novelists by Alrik Gustafson (1940); 'Sigrid Undset Sigrid Undset: A Nordi Moralist by Victor Vinde (1930) Selected works:
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