“It’s easy to be a good Christian, Olav, as long as God makes no more demands upon you than inviting you to church to listen to beautiful songs and asking you to obey Him while He pats you with His fatherly hand. But a man’s faith can be tested on the day when God does not want the same thing he wants. Let me tell you what Bishop Torfinn said the other day when we were speaking of your case. ‘May God grant,’ he said, ‘that the boy learns to understand over time that for a man who insists on doing what he wants to do, there will soon come a day when he sees he has done what he never intended to do.’”
Sigrid Undset received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 — mostly in consideration of her Kristin Lavransdatter series which centres on the life of a headstrong woman in Medieval Norway — and now in a new English translation, her series about Olav Audunssøn (which centres on a headstrong young man in Medieval Norway and released previously as The Master of Hestviken in 1927) is evidently being rereleased, beginning with this first volume: Olav Audunssøn: I. Vows. I haven’t read Undset before and I find myself impressed by her ability to bring such a foreign time and place to breathing life without resorting to digressions on culture and customs and artefacts; everything we need to learn is organically inserted into the plot and dialogue, and it was all simply fascinating to me. The plot itself is pretty melodramatic — with murders, betrayals, seduction, and exile — but it works well to put Undset’s characters into extreme situations in order to explore Norway’s evolving religious and legal codes. This was a pleasure to read and I look forward to finding more by Undset. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
That was how things stood for Olav Audunssøn, that was his fate; he would be with Ingunn forever. That was the only certainty in his life. He and Ingunn were inextricably bound to one another. He seldom thought of that evening when he and Ingunn were promised to each other, and it had been many years since anyone had mentioned the betrothal of the two children. Yet underlying everything he felt and thought, it was there like solid ground beneath his feet: the fact that he would always live with Ingunn. The boy had no kinsmen he might turn to. No doubt he knew that Hestviken was now his property, but with every passing year his images of the estate became less and less clear. They were like bits and pieces of a dream he recalled. If he imagined that one day he would return to live there, he found it comforting and right that he would take Ingunn with him. The two of them would face the unknown future together.
When Olav Audunssøn was seven years old, his dying father implored his acquaintance Steinfinn Toressøn to take his boy in as his foster son, and in a gesture of drunken goodwill, Steinfinn agreed and also bound the boy in betrothal to his own six-year-old daughter, Ingunn. Olav and Ingunn were then raised together as brother and sister, but always aware that when they were grown, they would be wed. But when Ingunn’s parents both die while she is still underage, her father’s kinsmen refuse to acknowledge Olav’s claim to the girl, and begin seeking a more advantageous alliance. Olav — only fifteen himself at this point and uncertain of what inheritance awaits him in the south of the country — will take matters into his own hands, and always believing that he is following God’s law if not man’s, will tread an honourable path that nonetheless puts Ingunn under unbearable pressure.
Olav and Ingunn are both from Norway’s noble class, and the family they are raised in are rich landholders with crops and livestock, hired servants and thralls. The people follow ancient codes of honour — revenge can involve duels and murder, with bloodprices paid out to families and fines paid out to the Church — and while the Church is attempting to enforce a new common legal code, the noblemen themselves believe, “These new laws are as effective as a fart. The old laws work better for men of honor.” The question of whether Olav and Ingunn are legally bound is interpreted differently by the Church and the kinsmen, but appealing to the protection of the Church, Olav sets off on a very long quest while Ingunn finds sanctuary with other family members:
Shivering with cold, she realized that she was nothing more than a defenseless, abandoned, and fatherless child, neither maiden nor wife, and not a single friend did she have who would uphold her right. Olav had disappeared and no one knew where he was; the bishop was gone; Arnvid was far away, and she was unable to send word to him. There was no one to whom she could turn except her old paternal grandmother, who had now retreated into childhood, if her ruthless kinsmen should decide to take their revenge on her. A small, quivering, and trembling thing, she curled herself around the only scrap of determination within her weak and instinct-driven soul: she would steadfastly trust in Olav and remain faithful to him, even if, because of him, they should torture the very life out of her.
Like I said, melodramatic stuff, but it serves to explore the crimes and consequences attributed to men (mostly involving murder), the crimes and consequences involving women (mostly involving chastity), how the rapidly changing fates of Norway’s monarchial class affected the lives of their noblemen in the sticks, and how the Catholic Church was attempting to enforce control over folks who defaulted to their own ancient codes of honour. At its heart, this is a love story, but it so completely explores the inner lives and outer realities of people from such a different time and place from me that I don’t think it could have been done half so well without the melodrama; it’s epic and I hope to eventually learn how the story ends.
