Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross (Volume III)

By Sigrid Undset | Translated by Charles Archer

The Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, Sigrid Undset’s most famous work, is the story of an ordinary woman’s life in fourteenth-century Norway. 

The Cross―Volume III of Kristin Lavransdatter―follows Kristin as she returns to her childhood home of Jörundgaard, weathering destitution, disrepute, and strife―even in her marriage. The one constant for Kristin is the Cross: bearing the weight of life, joy mixed grief, in the face of inevitable death. When that inevitability does arrive in the terrible form of the Black Death, Kristin’s response provides a fittingly magnificent conclusion to Undset’s medieval masterpiece.

Kristin knelt down upon the stone and laid her folded hands  upon the base of the cross: “Holy Cross, strongest of masts,  fairest of trees, bridge for the sick to the fair shores of health…”

Kristin Lavransdatter received immediate and worldwide appreciation as an exemplar of historical fiction and spiritual sensibility: hailed as the “noblest work of fiction ever to have been inspired by the Catholic art of life”; ranked amongst the greatest novels in world literature; compared favorably to Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov; and applauded for its revelation of the medieval world “with the richness and fullness of indisputable genius.” At the heart of Kristin Lavransdatter, the source of its dramatic power and poignant beauty, is religion―the relationship between creature and Creator. Leaving no gap between this world and God’s world, Undset tells her trilogy with unwavering courage and conviction in the facts of man’s freedom and God’s mercy.

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) was a Norwegian novelist and essayist and a convert to the Catholic faith. In 1928, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A number of Undset’s books are available from Cluny, including The Wild Orchid, The Burning Bush, and Saga of Saints.

Paperback: 382pp.

ISBN: 978-1685953980