“You shouldn’t stand for it, Master Olav,” said the priest angrily. “You shouldn’t allow your son to spend time with those folks you deemed it wise to settle at Rundmyr. What the boy learns there is not to his benefit.” Olav didn’t know what to say in reply. When he remained silent, the priest told him what Eirik had said about his father. “The whole village is laughing at that son of yours because he lies so often, and they’re such stupid lies.” By now they had reached the crossroads. Sira Hallbjørn reached up to take hold of the horse’s bridle and held on to it as he looked up at Olav’s face. There was still a glimmer of daylight in the fog that was again growing heavy. Olav was surprised to see that the priest seemed deeply distressed.
I’m really enjoying Tiina Nunnally’s new English translations of Sigrid Undset’s The Master of Hestviken (originally published in 1927), and this third of the series’ four volumes set in 13th century Norway — Crossroads — sees Olav Audunssøn continue his struggle to reconcile his conflicting duties to traditional ways and to the Church. Piling on grief to guilt, Olav trudges through his life as the Master of his allodial estate — denying himself creature comforts and the salve of the sacraments — and despite his ersatz son and heir, Eirich, becoming a laughingstock in the community, Olav is too consumed by the past to worry about the future, or for that matter, the necessities of the present. Once again, Undset flawlessly employs Olav’s struggles to demonstrate the time and place, and this time around, Olav is beset by spirits and visions as he attempts to find meaning at midlife in what has been an existence made more challenging by his own burdened conscience. As the title implies, Olav finds himself at a crossroads in this volume, and the path he ends up choosing was both surprising and satisfying for me. This series is a fascinating epic of mediaeval Norway and I can’t wait to see how it all ends. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Cattle die,
kinsmen die,
the man himself dies,
yet one thing I know
that never dies:
the judgment upon each death!
A very short summary of what has happened in the series so far: (After many roadblocks, Olav had married the love of his life, Ingunn; secretly killing the man who had raped her and claiming the child resultant of that rape as his own. Olav and Ingunn moved south to take over Olav’s ancestral homestead on the Oslo fjord, and as Olav worked to improve his holdings [always tormented by guilt over the mortal sin he had committed without publicly confessing, in accordance with Ingunn’s pleading], Ingunn slowly wasted away, only giving birth to a daughter who survived infancy.) As Crossroads begins, Olav is numbed by grief, sleepwalking through his duties as the Master of Hestviken; not even able to rouse himself to discipline the lying, fabulist son who will inherit the estate. Early in Crossroads, Olav is asked to accompany a merchant ship to England (a country he had visited in his youth), and escaping his own life seems to be just the solution he hadn’t known he’d be craving. Several temptations (carnal and monastic) present themselves on this trip, but it is overhearing the fighting songs of a band of English soldiers that reminds Olav of a time in his life when he felt purpose and happiness; this epiphany is profound in the moment but will prove to be short-lived.
He had pretended that he was afraid of losing his life — he who had been so weary of his own life for such a long time that if it hadn’t been for Ingunn’s sake, he would have declined to stay among the living for even one more day. He refused to go back to that. His sacrifices would mean nothing if he now chose obedience, poverty, celibacy, and, in the end, thralldom and a martyr’s death — for he placed no value on what he would have to give up. But what lay ahead of him promised gains beyond measure — adventures and lengthy travels and finally peace and God’s forgiveness, so that he would be admitted, once again, into the legions of the Lord. Yet now he understood, at long last, that he had to choose. Not between God and one thing or another on this earth, not even his own mortal existence, but between God and himself.
Choosing between God and himself is the “crossroads” of the title, and Olav will continue to sleepwalk through his life with this choice over his head for a dozen more years until, once again, the fighting songs of battle wake him from his torpor. When a Swedish duke leads a group of mercenaries into Norway — and the nearly fifty-year-old Olav is appointed a chieftain in the resistance — he will swing his forefathers’ singing axe, Ættarfylgja, and remember what it is to be alive:
When the boy saw that the master of the estate was dressed for battle, he had asked to stay with him. Suddenly something resembling unrestrained joy flared up inside Olav, as if shackles had been thrown off him. Darkness behind him, darkness in front of him. And here he stood, utterly alone except for two armed strangers, and he had no idea what tomorrow would bring.
This pivot from consuming grief, domestic conflict, and mystical visions into an exciting battle tale was a surprising and satisfying swing, but if I had a complaint, it would be that I lost some of the excitement as characters explained why this duke was set against that duke due to recent and historical factors — and while I completely appreciate that many readers of historical fiction would want all of the facts of the setting included, the backdrop was less interesting to me, personally, than staying focussed on the frontlines. Still, as the series heads into its final volume, I can’t wait to see how this invigorated Olav lives out the rest of his life.
