I try to read Sigrid Undset's novel Kristin Lavransdatter every year. Last year I missed because I retired and moved. And with a bunch of freelance deadlines and my decision to move yet again, I'm probably not going to read it this year, either.
Happily, however, I rented the movie "Kristin Lavransdatter" from Netflix this week, and once I wade through a bunch of Tukey tables and reformat some references, I'll get to watch it. The screenplay based on the book was written by none other than the superb Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. She directed it, too. When the movie opened in Norway in 1995, more than half of the Norwegian population bought tickets to see it.
Why do I like this book so much and return to it every year? Because every year it's a new book! Every time I read it, I see new things that resonate with my entire life experience. Like this utterance by Lady Aashild: "Love makes hard rules--and breaks them all."
It also depicts a Catholic life such as was not entirely dead when I was a child. True, life in the 13th Century in Norway was far different from mid-20th Century life in Fargo, North Dakota. But there were still pockets of Catholic piety even in Fargo, whose residents were mostly Scandinavian and Lutheran when I blew on the scene at the age of 18 months. Kristin Lavransdatter, the heroine of the novel, lived before the Protestant Reformation. She didn't have to endure the taunts of the followers of Martin Luther: "Dirty Catlicker, mackerel snapper." But her religion was rooted in nature as well as in the church, and it was this that touched me as a lonely kid and moves me still.
The book is full of testaments to God's mercy, also. Mercy seems to have gone by the board in the present-day RC church. The bishop of Washington, DC, has threatened to close down the church's services for the needy in DC if the City Council passes the gay marriage act. Perhaps God is dead, after all. All the more reason for me to drink from the sweet, sustaining well of Sigrid Undset's novel, which is really three books in one.
I read Kristin Lavrensdatter a few years ago and loved it. Sitting up late at night, turning the pages, saying softly under my breath..."NO!" I didn't know there was a movie and I'll try to find it this week.
ReplyDeletesmiling...why were you saying, "NO!"??
ReplyDeletebe sure to .watch Ullman's interview on the extras when you find the DVD. seeing the quality of her work outside the Bergman films makes me wonder who depended on whom in that arrangement. i love her books, too.
Happy to hear of this (these) book(s) again. My parents had it from BOMC and I always saw it, as a kid. Then about 20 or 30 years ago decided to read and did manage to read the first book, and maybe part of the second and then life intervened and I got interrupted and never got back. I absolutely loved what I did read and had such a vivid picture of it all. Must get back. And I also had no idea there was a movie - great!
ReplyDeleteYour account of both book and movie makes this new-to-me account very attractive reading/viewing.
ReplyDeleteI need to find a copy of that book.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should add this book to my list of books to be read. I'm ashamed to say I'm not aware of it.
ReplyDeletethanks for stopping by, ronnie, joared, kay, and shammy....it's a wonderful, long book. sigrid undset won the nobel prize for literature in 1929, largely on the strength of this novel.
ReplyDelete1928, sorry.
ReplyDeleteI'm way behind, but catching up on your posts now. I read KL for the first time back in h.s. or college, I think. Fell in love with it! Oh,no, now I think I have to read it again. Thanks, XE! Love, The D.N.
ReplyDelete