Name: kristin lavransdatter
Item: Kristin Lavransdatter
Author: patricia

Kristin Lavransdatter →

by Sigrid Undset

kristin lavransdatter

patricia

Dec 30, 2024

Here's what I thought.

do i think this is a moral story? it's a story in which witchcraft, and prayer, dreams, premonitions, do actually have direct effects on life and death. i think these are real. and that Kristin is able to accurate interpret the signs around her in order to (for example) save a child from illness. Kristin's actions in the metaphysical realm are real and the highly symbolic outcomes (she has 7 sons) are actual manifestations of her spiritual behavior. i don't mean that Undset is writing a fable, I mean that she in fact takes the outcomes of Kristin's inner life seriously and allows them to play out in her life. which is part of what makes this book so deeply compelling.

things are happening constantly in this book. this is one for the Something is always happening crowd, like myself. everything is very alive. the people are alive, the landscape is alive, God is very alive, the political scheme is alive, stuff is always happening, sometimes on the cellular or as I said metaphysical level and sometimes in a world that the characters can only kind of peek at or hear about in rumors like with the king. (frankly I also didn't know what was going on with that - woman reading a book about a woman who also kinda doesn't know.)