© Opale

Sigrid UNDSET

Nobel Prize 1928

 

"Principially for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages"

 

Sigrid Undset was born on the 20th of May 1882 in Denmark. She was the first daughter of Anne Charlotte Gyth, a Dane, and Ingvald Unset, a famous Norwegian archeologist. It was her father who introduced her as a child to the sagas of the Middle Ages. She spent her first years in Denmark. In 1884 the Undset family left to live in Kristiana (now Oslo) in Norway.

Suffering from ill health, Sigrid’s father reduced the frequency of his travels. At the age of 8, Sigrid entered into the Ragna Nielson School, a mixed establishment that was patriotic in outlook, refusing the union of Norway and Sweden. Many left-wing leaning parents would send their children there.

Sigrid’s father died when she was 11 years old. It was a terrible shock, particularly for her as she was very close to her father. Her mother, who, up until that point, had been her husband’s secretary, found herself in financial difficulties. She would wait two years for a state pension. Ragna Nielson offered to educate her three daughters for free.

Sigrid was a solitary child of acute sensitivity. At a young age she began to paint and created a puppet theatre, she founded a newspaper called “the four leaf clover” with her only friend Emma. She wrote poems. She refused to take her baccalaureate and left Ragna Nielson when she was 16. Her studies certificate bears nonetheless the mark “excellent”. As the oldest child, she decided she wanted to contribute to the household; her mother refused the help of relatives. She thus went to a professional school, but came out a year later. The boredom that she experienced at school was ten times worse at this college. She began working as a secretary at the AEG, a German company. She continued to read extensively notably, The Book of all Books, a collection of Danish ballads, and began writing.

By the age of 23 she had finished her first novel, Aage Nielsson d’Ulvholm, the story of which takes place in the middle ages. It was refused by Gyldenthal publishing in Copenhagen with the comment: “Don’t try and write historical novels – it isn’t for you!"

She thus wrote Madame Marthe Oulie, that Aschehoug Publications rejected. Her sister Signe proposed that she take the manuscript to the writer Gunnar Heiberg. He recommended it to Aschehoug, who accepted it, when Unset was 25 years old.

In 1908, she published her second novel The Happy Age in which she examined the plight of women working alone in towns at the beginning of the century, dreaming of Prince Charming. The following year Gunnar’s Daughter appeared, a novel inspired by Icelandic sagas. The heroine of this novel prefigured Kristin Lavransdatter. Vigdis is just 15 when Viga Ljot, an Icelandic sailor falls in love with her, and rapes her. Vigdis flees. In solitude and shame, she gives birth to a boy. It is her son who she will later ask to avenge her by placing the head of Viga on her knees.

In 1909, Undset obtained a writer’s grant. She thus left her work to go traveling, first to Germany, then to Italy, where her parents had lived before her birth. There she met Anders Svarstad, a well-known painter who she fell madly in love with. He was 13 years older than her and married with three children. They met again in Paris where they lived together. In August 1910, Sigrid went back to Norway to see to her sister who was ill. Youth came out as she was beginning her fourth novel, Jenny, dedicated to the painter Jenny Winge. In 1911 Jenny was a considerable success, even if some critics complained about its immorality. At the age of 29, Jenny, a young artist, has never been in love. When she meets Helge, a young Norwegian student in Rome, she thinks she has found her soul mate. When she returns to Norway she discovers she has been wronged and takes refuge in the arms of Helge’s father. The originality of this novel lies in the fact that the reader believes that the liaison between Jenny and the young man’s father will cause a scandal in society. In fact, it does nothing of the sort.

In 1912, Anders and Sigrid got married. She was already pregnant. The child, Anders, born in Rome, was a very poorly baby. Sigrid returned with him to Norway believing it would be better for the health of the baby. Her boy survived. Charlotte, nicknamed Mosse, was born the following year. The little girl had fits of convulsions and she was diagnosed as suffering from a mental handicap.

From 1916 onwards Sigrid welcomed the three children from the first marriage of her husband, Trond, Ebba and Gunhild, into the family home. But her husband preferred to be alone rather than among the children. Sigrid realised with disappointment that he did not do enough to help her.

In addition Anders’s children rebelled against their step-mother. At the end of the war Sigrid decided to leave their apartment and took her children to Lillehammer. Her third child Hans was born in the month of August of the same year, 1919. The father was not present. Weary of an era where individuals and materialism reigned, Sigrid plunged herself back into her love of the Middle ages, but finished up with The Point of View of a Woman. Her husband came to see her with the children, but they did not speak of the future. Sigrid still hoped that he might live with her. During this period she turned towards Catholicism.

The first volume of Kristin Lavransdatter, The Bridal Wreath, came out in 1920. Undset used the Scandinavian Middle ages to depict the life of Kristin Lavransdatter, a young woman who dared to live without fear of breaking the religious and social taboos of the time. Defying the authority of the well-respected father, Kristin refuses to marry the man chosen for her because she is in love with Erlend, a knight with a scandalous past. From that point on nothing can separate her from this man, who she gives herself to with no hesitation. But the relationship formed by Kristin and Erland will have to withstand the test of reality.

Undset traveled around her country in order to visit the places featured in the book. She then bought the house that she had been renting since her arrival at Lillehammer. The rupture with her husband was complete. She named her house Bjerkeboeg.

In 1921 The Mistress of Husaby came out and in 1922 The Cross, the second and third volumes of Kristin Lavransdatter respectively. Kristin, at the age of 16 a passionate lover, a wife and mother at the age of 17, finds herself the mistress of the house of Husaby. Very quickly she learns to run it. But her sons, who become men soon enough, reject the yoke of maternal tenderness. One after the other they leave, and Erlan too will leave her. In this novel, as in the rest of the oeuvre of Undset, nature occupies an important position. The trilogy would meet great success, which allowed her to employ someone to look after Mosse day and night.

Undset received the salary of a writer for the rest of her life from the Norwegian state. The following year, she translated three Icelandic sagas. She bought a new house that was next to her own - it would serve as her office.

In 1924 she converted to Catholicism according to the council of 30. She published another trilogy, The Master of Hestiken – the main character of which was Olav Aundunsson. In 1928 she entered as a Dominican of the third order under the name of Sister Olave, before receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. With the prize money, she created two foundations, one in the name of her daughter to help parents of children with mental disabilities, so that they could have their children near them, and the other, the Saint-Gudmund foundation that allowed poor children to have an education in Catholic schools.

She returned to a contemporary subject with The Wild Orchid that appeared in 1929, Saint Olav, the King of Norway, and The Burning Bush in 1930. In 1930 she traveled to Gotand and to Iceland, following a translation of The Eternal Man of Chesterton. In 1932 she published Ida Elisabeth, in 1933 Stages and in 1934, Sagas of the Saints and 11 years, which retraced her childhood.

In 1935 she participated in the defense of the German edition and pacifist Carl Von Ossietsky against Knut Hamsun. Sigrid Undset was on the list of prescribed authors drawn up by the Nazis. She was elected President of the Association of Writers in Norway. In 1936 The Faithful Wife appeared. In 1937, she traveled in England, Scotland and in the Orkneys.

In 1939, her daughter died at the age of 23. The Second World War broke out and she sheltered Finnish children in her home. The same year she published Madame Dorothea. In 1940, when the Germans invaded Norway, she fled to Sweden. On the 27th of April, her eldest son was killed on the bridge of Segalstad and on the 14th of July, she left with her other son Hans to the USA, via Moscow, Vladivostock and Japan. She settled in New York and traveled the country giving lectures on how the war had torn her country apart. She became what she called a “Soldier of Information.” In 1942 she published Return to the Future in English. The same year she was elected as the Association Free Norway. Her husband, Anders Svarstad, died in 1943. The following year, Sigrid was a member of The American Commission for the Protection and Saving of Historical and Artistic documents and in zones of military operations. At the end of the war she left New York with regret, leaving behind cherished friendships that she had managed to create there. She returned to Norway where many of her Norwegian friends had died and her house had been inhabited by the Nazis. Return to the Future was forbidden by the Soviet embassy. In 1947 Happy Days appeared in Norway. She was the first woman to be decorated with the Grand Cross of Saint Olav.
She died on the 10th June 1949.