THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 
061 
brings into play bis gift for strong colors and rapidly sketched lines. 
Si grid Undset this year has given us the second volume of her 
big historical novel Kristin Lavransdatter (Kristin Lovransdatter , 
Husfrue, Aschehoug, 1921). In the first we followed Kristin through 
her girlhood and left her at the entrance to a marriage which carried 
only a very dubious promise 
of happiness. The reader in 
the end knew no more than 
did Kristin herself of the 
real character of the man for 
whom she had sacrificed so 
much. The beginning of 
the second part is largely 
taken up with the story— 
profoundly touching it seems 
to me—of how the young 
wife, hardly more than a 
child herself, handicapped 
by the sense that everybody 
knows the breach of conven¬ 
tional morality which Erlend 
has led her into, strives to 
build up her husband’s 
wasted estate and bring to 
his house the fine standards 
of her parents’ home. It is 
the story of what Ellen Key 
calls “woman’s greatest con¬ 
tribution to culture.” As 
the story progresses, the tale 
of how Kristin bears her 
seven sons is perhaps told 
with too much fullness in its account of conception and labor, suckling 
and rearing; and yet it is well to remember that after all Sigrid Undset 
is only making us conscious of that great undercurrent of human 
experience which goes on all the time and carries all life on its bosom. 
By detaching it from modern clinics and modern reserves, and 
transporting it to a simpler age, she has managed to convey with epic 
breadth and power the sum of woman’s anguish through the centuries. 
But at the same time she reminds us of nature’s inexhaustible fountain 
of renewal from which Kristin draws strength. 
Her life with Erlend is like a turbulent stream with sunny ripples 
hiding unplumbed depths of misery and happiness. They are very 
different: she calm, sweet and steadfast, but with a divine reckless¬ 
ness in her affections; he, wayward, moody, undisciplined, but capable 
Photo by Rude 
Sigrid Undset 
