Kristin tells the life story of its eponymous protagonist, who is born into a devout and relatively wealthy farming family in a medieval Norwegian town, gets married, bears children, suffers for decades because of her choices, and struggles with her faith. To understand this odd piece of advice, we need to know a little bit about the trilogy. Her second, however, may strike readers as odd she said that the optimal time to read Kristin Lavransdatter is winter. Her first suggestion was that the novels would be much more gripping if I regularly discussed them with another reader, something that is certainly true for any great work of literature. I asked a friend who loves the trilogy if she had any tips for my endeavor. I knew that, for an inattentive, inconsistent, and ADHD-rattled person like myself, reading such a long work would require more than just willpower: I had to set myself up for success. Reading Kristin Lavransdatter in winterĪ few years ago, I decided that I would attempt to slow down and humble myself enough to work through Sigrid Undset’s mammoth tome (1172 pages in my edition). This is a shame, because if contemporary readers would dedicate the time and attention needed for Kristen Lavransdatter, they would be richly rewarded with a powerful reminder that our lives are not what we accomplish or the honor we receive-in short, our lives are not ‘what we make of them.’ They are what God makes of us. Perhaps these novels are less well-known today because they present human life with an eye to Eternity, and this may be difficult for contemporary readers to engage with because we are so caught up in the hustle and bustle of our frenetic culture. The trilogy- which celebrates its centenary this year and earned its author the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature-occupies the same space as works like Rumer Godden’s In This House of Brede, Eugenio Corti’s The Red Horse, and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited-books that were once widely read and generally revered but have since fallen into a sort of ‘Catholic ghetto.’ Yet, these are not novels that are of interest only to Catholics.

As a Catholic who attended a liberal arts college, I have heard people talk about the powerful experience of reading Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter for years.

Kristin lavransdatter catholic