All the talk about misfortune plaguing certain estates and families. . .I’m willing to accept it may have been true in heathen times. But you are surely wise enough to place your life and fate in the hands of God the Almighty and not believe such things. May God have mercy on you, my Olav. I wish you both happiness and bliss in your marriage. And may your lineage be known as fortunate men from now on!
The second volume in Sigrid Undset’s Olav Audunssøn series, Providence shows how the title character suffers the consequences of his unrepented actions from the first volume, Vows; and suffer he does (“Providence” is an appropriate title for the theme of this volume [and is a direct translation of Undset’s original] but I find it interesting that the first translation into English in 1925 named this novel “The Snake Pit”; also metaphorically appropriate, if melodramatic). Once again, Unset’s writing is immersively informative on time and place (Thirteenth Century Norway on the Oslo Fjord) without being didactic, and the pressures she puts her characters under allow for an organic exploration of the laws and customs of the day. As a middle volume (there are four in this series), I didn’t find Providence to be quite as fascinating as the premise-building in Vows — and as most of the struggle in this book is between Olav and his conscience, there is a corresponding drop in action — but I still enjoyed this very much and am looking forward to the next in the series; I’m rounding down to three stars only in comparison to Vows. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms. Spoilers from here on.)
By now he’d given so much thought to every aspect of the matter that he could hardly remember anymore what he was thinking when he chose to remain silent and erase all trace of the deed, but he’d fooled himself into believing that the shame could be concealed. No one must know that he had gotten rid of Teit Hallssøn; then no one would find out that Ingunn had been disgraced by Teit. It seemed to Olav incomprehensible that he could have imagined anything so utterly foolhardy.
Providence picks up where Vows ended: After killing the man, in self defense, who raped Ingunn (his betrothed since childhood), Olav Audunssøn returns to his “allodial estate” of Hestviken to become its new Master. When Olav goes to retrieve Ingunn from where she had been staying with kinfolk, he learns that she had given birth to a son by her rapist and had sent the boy off to live with a foster family. Although these events had brought Ingunn much shame up in the north, Olav was able to offer her a fresh start as the Mistress of Hestviken, where no one knew of the unwed pregnancy or the “wayside bastard” that resulted. The pair is young, beautiful, finally living together as they had expected to their entire lives, and although their future seems assured of happiness, the past insists on holding them back. Anxious to continue the family line (of which Olav himself is the last living member), Ingunn suffers a series of stillbirths and miscarriages, and when Olav realises that Ingunn is pining for her missing son, he retrieves the boy and claims him as his own. Olav eventually believes that because he had killed the rapist Teit without making a confession to the priest (and risking the priest forcing him to make a public confession as well and opening himself up to legal repercussions), God was punishing him. But when Olav suggests to Ingunn that he should finally clear his conscience, the weak and wasted woman fears what consequences would befall her and her son Eirik if her husband were jailed or exiled; Ingunn makes Olav promise to never make that confession and he agrees to live with a burdened soul, watching his beloved wife slowly fade away.
It felt like he was swimming with a drowning companion clinging to his neck, and to be deemed worthy of calling himself a man, he would either have to save the other person or drown as well. Yet it was possible to feel a certain failure of courage at the thought that the end was inevitable; he would be dragged under, no matter how hard he strove to do his utmost, because a man could do no less.
While most of the action in this book takes place at Hestviken — and most of that inside the smoke-filled, sparsely-furnished main hall that served as the living quarters for this rich family of landowners — there are a few scenes of Olav fulfilling his duty to join in a leiðangr against the Danes; much history and social custom was relayed in this way, but I wish there had been a bit more about the supernatural beliefs of the people: the nøkk, the hulder, Ættarfylgja (Olav’s axe that sang before a killing), the ghost story that Olav’s aged kinsman Olav Ingolfssøn told about how he ruined his leg and which had caused another relative, Dirt Beard, to go mad. For the most part, however, the characters are trying to forget their pagan pasts and follow the teachings of the Church; and it is the disconnect between Olav’s religious beliefs and the accepted code of honour of the community that causes him so much unhappiness (that and his beloved wife wasting away in her bed with frequent bouts of diarrhea and suppurating bedsores). I am very much looking forward to the third volume (Crossroads) and hope that poor Olav finds some happiness there.
