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The Bridal Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter I)

Name: The Bridal Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter I)
Author: Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset

Also known as: Kristin Lavransdatter · The Wreath

1920 (English 1923) · Early 20th Century · Novel · Norwegian

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Abstract

Written: 1919-1920
Setting: Early fourteenth century; Gudbrandsdal and Oslo, Norway
Author: Sigrid Undset (trans. Charles Archer and J. S. Scott)
Country: Norway
Language: Norwegian
Genre: Historical novel
Form: Novel in three parts
Recommended: Grades 10–12 (Premarital relationship, violence and a suicide; grades 10-12.)

Valley. In medieval Norway a girl grows up on a mountain farm, adored by an upright father and shadowed by a mother marked by loss.

Friar. A kindly travelling monk teaches her that heaven grieves over all human frailty, and her small sister is lamed in a fall.

Promise. Her parents pledge her to a decent neighbour's son; after a youth dies brawling for her and a ruffian assaults her, she is sent to nuns in the capital.

Passion. There a dashing nobleman rescues her, and she gives herself to him, learning later of his long liaison with another man's wife and their children.

Price. She renounces her intended, the cast-off mistress dies by her own hand, and her father at last yields; she walks to the altar crowned as a virgin bride while carrying a child.

Reading. Undset's Nobel-winning epic offers mature readers a deep portrait of medieval faith and family; only this first volume is public domain on Gutenberg. Classes can discuss how the author makes a distant century feel immediate, and why the heroine's divided heart still speaks so strongly to modern readers.

Main characters

Kristin Lavransdatter: A strong-willed young Norwegian woman.
Lavrans Björgulfsön: Kristin's devout, honorable father.
Ragnfrid: Kristin's sorrowful mother.
Erlend Nikulaussön: A charming, reckless knight.
Simon Darre: Kristin's decent, loyal first suitor.
Brother Edwin: A gentle friar who befriends Kristin.
Eline Ormsdatter: Erlend's former mistress.

Summary

The Bridal Wreath, published in Norwegian in 1920 as Kransen, is the first volume of Sigrid Undset's trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway. This text is the 1923 English translation by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott. The later volumes, The Mistress of Husaby and The Cross, are not included. Kristin is the daughter of Lavrans Björgulfsön, a just, devout and generous landowner, and his melancholy wife Ragnfrid, who have lost three sons in infancy. The family lives at Jörundgaard in the valley of Gudbrandsdal. As a child Kristin is devoted to her father and is befriended by Brother Edwin, a gentle, wandering monk who teaches her about God's mercy. Her younger sister Ulvhild is crippled in an accident. Kristin is betrothed by her parents to Simon Darre, a good-natured young man of a respectable family. Her childhood friend Arne, who loves her, is killed in a quarrel over her, and a man named Bentein attempts to assault her, leaving her name touched by gossip. To let things settle, she is sent to the convent of Nonneseter in Oslo for a year. There she meets Erlend Nikulaussön, a handsome, reckless knight of high birth, who rescues her from danger in the town. They fall passionately in love, and Kristin, against her conscience, becomes his lover. She learns that Erlend has a past: he lived for years with a married woman, Eline Ormsdatter, and has children by her, and he has been excommunicated for it. Kristin breaks her betrothal to Simon, who discovers the truth but, generously, keeps her secret from her father. Eline confronts the lovers and dies by her own hand, and Kristin and Erlend conceal what happened. After long resistance, Lavrans gives his consent to the marriage, though he distrusts Erlend. Kristin goes to her wedding already pregnant and burdened by guilt, wearing the golden bridal wreath of a maiden. The volume ends with the great wedding feast at Jörundgaard, where Lavrans watches his daughter with mixed love and unease. Undset portrays medieval faith, family loyalty and passion with great depth.

Virtues in this work

Honor: Simon Darre honorably keeps Kristin's secret from her father.
Charity: Lavrans loves and forgives his daughter despite his sorrow.

Plot or Argument

Jörundgaard
Kristin's childhood with her loving father and grieving mother.
The Garland
At a convent in Oslo she meets Erlend and becomes his lover.
Lavrans Björgulfsön
She breaks her betrothal, and Lavrans reluctantly allows her marriage to Erlend.

Characters

Kristin Lavransdatter, heroine
A strong-willed young Norwegian woman.
Lavrans Björgulfsön, father
Kristin's devout, honorable father.
Ragnfrid, mother
Kristin's sorrowful mother.
Erlend Nikulaussön, lover
A charming, reckless knight.
Simon Darre, betrothed
Kristin's decent, loyal first suitor.
Brother Edwin, monk
A gentle friar who befriends Kristin.
Eline Ormsdatter, rival
Erlend's former mistress.

Lessons

Freedom and obligation
Kristin chooses passion over her family's plans and her own conscience.
- Why does Kristin choose Erlend?
- What does it cost her family?
- Was she right?
Related across the library
- The Prophet, Lesson: Discernment
  Discernment. The book mixes biblical cadence with ideas foreign to Christian faith.
- The Prophet, Lesson: Work as love
  Work as love. Almustafa says work is love made visible. Compare Colossians 3:23.
- Till We Have Faces, Lesson: Love that devours
  Love that devours. Orual's love for Psyche, for the Fox and for Bardia is real, but it wants to possess. Lewis shows natural affection turning jealous when it cannot bear the beloved to belong to another, even to a god. Only when Orual sees what Ansit and Tarin see does she recognise the hunger in her devotion.
- As You Like It, Lesson: Love that can bear the truth
  Love that can bear the truth. Disguised as Ganymede, Rosalind lets Orlando court her while she mocks the poses of lovers: that men die for love, that wives stay as sweet as on the wedding day. Her teasing does not kill his love but tests whether it is real. The play suggests that love worth marrying on can survive honest speech about time, temper and human weakness.
- Ain't I a Woman?, Lesson: Argument from experience
  Argument from experience. Truth builds her case from what she has done with her own hands. Her plowing, reaping and carrying answer the claim that women are too weak for equal rights.
Fathers and daughters
Lavrans's love for Kristin is a moral center of the book.
- How does Lavrans show love?
- Why does he give his consent?
- How does he feel at the wedding feast?
Related across the library
- Le Morte d'Arthur, Lesson: Divided loyalties
  Divided loyalties. Launcelot loves Arthur and loves the queen; Gawaine loves Arthur and loves his brothers; Arthur loves his queen and his fellowship. In Book XX each is forced to choose, and Arthur's lament that queens could be replaced but such a fellowship never could shows what is being lost.
- The Prophet, Lesson: Discernment
  Discernment. The book mixes biblical cadence with ideas foreign to Christian faith.
- The Prisoner of Chillon, Lesson: Freedom and habit
  Freedom and habit. At the end he has made friends with his chains. Long bondage can change how we see freedom.
- The Merchant of Venice, Full Text
  men But we ll outface them and outswear them too Away make haste Thou know st where I will tarry NERISSA Come good sir will you show me to this house Exeunt ACT V SCENE I Belmont The avenue to Portia s house Enter Lorenzo and Jessica LORENZO The moon shines bright In such a night as this When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees And they did make no noise in such a night Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls And sigh d his soul toward the Grecian tents Where Cressid lay that night JESSICA In such a night...
- The Sickness Unto Death, Medical lens
  The Sickness Unto Death is framed throughout by medical analogy: Anti-Climacus writes like a physician at the bedside, insists that almost no one is wholly healthy, and distinguishes the sufferer's self-report from the expert's diagnosis. Its concept of despair is not depression, and the book explicitly separates despair from mere mood, yet its descriptions of hopelessness, the wish to die and the inability to die, and the self-consuming quality of despair are frequently cited in psychiatry, existential psychoth...
Sin and grace
Brother Edwin's teaching frames Kristin's sense of guilt and hope.
- What does Edwin teach about God?
- How does guilt shape Kristin?
- Is forgiveness possible for her?
Related across the library
- Richard III, Lesson: Sin that pulls on sin
  Sin that pulls on sin. Each crime makes the next one necessary: Clarence's death leads to the princes', the princes' to Anne's, Anne's to the plan to marry Elizabeth. Richard admits he is so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. The play traces the logic of a soul trapped by its own choices.
- The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, The Thirteenth Remove
  my Bible; which was my guide by day, and my pillow by night. Alone for a moment, she turns again to the Bible given her after the Medfield raid.
- The Bible, Matthew 17:14–18; Mark 9:17–29
  The boy described as 'lunatick' who falls into fire and water, foams and is rigid, often read as epilepsy.
- The Bible, Lesson: Healing as social restoration
  Healing as social restoration. Gospel healings often restore outcasts, lepers, the unclean, the possessed, to community. Illness in the Bible is social and religious as well as bodily.
- Through Gates of Splendor, Lesson: Obedience without a guarantee
  Obedience without a guarantee. The five men believed God had called them to bring the gospel to the Waorani, and they went knowing the danger. Elliot does not claim their deaths made sense at once; she insists that obedience is right even when the outcome is hidden. The book asks readers to consider what faithfulness means when results are not promised.

Context

Undset, daughter of an archaeologist, studied medieval Norway closely; the novel is set around 1306-1320, when Norway was a Catholic kingdom.

Composition

Published in Norwegian in 1920, with The Mistress of Husaby (1921) and The Cross (1922) completing the trilogy.

Reception

Undset received the Nobel Prize in 1928, chiefly for this trilogy; she became a Catholic in 1924.

Love Desire Faith / Religion Family Guilt Sin Marriage

Comparisons

The Scarlet Letter
Another novel of passion, guilt and religious community.
Ivanhoe
A different kind of medieval historical novel.

Quotes

“Think you not,” said Brother Edwin again, “that in God’s eyes we are all children he has cause to grieve for, crippled as we are with sin?”

— Sigrid Undset, The Bridal Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter I), Book One, Chapter 5, trans. Charles Archer and J. S. Scott (1923).Quote card

Martyrs Mirror: Selections, George Wagner (1527)
others of the brethren died suddenly in the night and was found dead in his bed in the morning having thus been removed through the wrath of God NOTE It is known that Balthasar Pacimontanus opposed infant baptism and was therefore burned at Vienna A D See second part of Jacob Mehrning s History of Baptism page ex Bellarm Tom lib de Bapt cap MICHAEL SATTLER A D After a long trial on the day of his departure from this world the articles being many Michael Sattler requested that they should be read to him again and...
Babbitt, Full Text
breast-high water scraping his lather-smeared cheeks with a safety-razor like a tiny lawn-mower and with melancholy dignity clawing through the water to recover a slippery and active piece of soap He was lulled to dreaming by the caressing warmth The light fell on the inner surface of the tub in a pattern of delicate wrinkled lines which slipped with a green sparkle over the curving porcelain as the clear water trembled Babbitt lazily watched it noted that along the silhouette of his legs against the radiance on...
Legends of Charlemagne, The Battle of Roncesvalles
Orlando fixed his eyes on the hilt of his sword as on a crucifix, and embraced it, and he raised his eyes and appeared like a creature seraphical and transfigured, and bowing his head, he breathed out his pure soul. After receiving absolution from Turpin, Orlando dies on the battlefield.
A Treatise on Political Economy, Introduction
then known they have often been mistaken both as to the end as well as the means of prosecuting this study amidst a variety of useless disquisitions have only cast an uncertain and deceptive light In France the science of political economy at first was only considered in its application to public finances Sully remarks correctly enough that agriculture and commerce are the two teats of the state but from a vague and indistinct conception of the truth The same observation may be applied to Vauban a man of a sound...
The Magician's Nephew, Medical lens
The illness of Digory's mother is a steady undercurrent. She is bedridden and expected to die, cared for at home by Aunt Letty; the book never names her disease, in keeping with the sickroom reticence of its period. Digory's anticipatory grief drives the moral climax: his temptation in the garden is to save her by theft, and his request to Aslan for help meets the Lion's own tears. Her recovery after eating the apple is a miracle story rather than a medical one. Uncle Andrew supplies the book's satire on unethic...

“Simon is too good to gnaw the bare branch from which another man has broken the blossom.”

— Sigrid Undset, The Bridal Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter I), Book Two, Chapter 5, trans. Charles Archer and J. S. Scott (1923).Quote card

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysander.
could ever read Could ever hear by tale or history The course of true love never did run smooth But either it was different in blood HERMIA O cross Too high to be enthrall d to low LYSANDER Or else misgraff d in respect of years HERMIA O spite Too old to be engag d to young LYSANDER Or else it stood upon the choice of friends HERMIA O hell to choose love by another s eyes LYSANDER Or if there were a sympathy in choice War death or sickness did lay siege to it Making it momentany as a sound Swift as a shadow shor...
The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, CRITICAL PRESENTATION OF THEORETICAL VIEWS ON THE
all culture disappears being replaced by the crudest lack of consideration THE EMOTIONAL COMPLEX fear if it observes a dog even at a distance People who have received a painful message will thereafter open all their mail with apprehension etc These complex effects which under certain conditions will extend over long periods leads us to the consid- eration of the CHRONIC EFFECTS OF THE COMPLEX There are two kinds to be differentiated There is a complex-action which extends over a very long period and which is oft...
Sermons on the Song of Songs, Summary
Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs are among the central monuments of medieval monastic spirituality. They do not offer a continuous modern commentary on every verse. Instead, Bernard lingers over phrases from the biblical love poem and turns them into meditations on the soul's desire for God, the church's relation to Christ, humility, contemplation, temptation, and charity. The erotic language of the Song becomes a disciplined vocabulary for spiritual longing. Bernard speaks to monks who have renounced ordi...
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysander.
with our needles created both one flower Both on one sampler sitting on one cushion Both warbling of one song both in one key As if our hands our sides voices and minds Had been incorporate So we grew together Like to a double cherry seeming parted But yet a union in partition Two lovely berries moulded on one stem So with two seeming bodies but one heart Two of the first like coats in heraldry Due but to one and crown d with one crest And will you rent our ancient love asunder To join with men in scorning your...
Orlando: A Biography, Full Text
new brilliantly coloured pictures of real things like streets umbrellas apples were hung in frames or painted upon the wood There was something definite and distinct about the age which reminded her of the eighteenth century except that there was a distraction a desperation--as she was thinking this the immensely long tunnel in which she seemed to have been travelling for hundreds of years widened the light poured in her thoughts became mysteriously tightened and strung up as if a piano tuner had put his key in...

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

Kristin's childhood bond with her father.
Brother Edwin's teaching.
Kristin's first meeting with Erlend.
Simon's response when he learns the truth.
The wedding feast at Jörundgaard.

Key terms and names

Betrothal: A formal promise of marriage arranged between families.
Convent: A community of nuns; here also a school for young women.
Excommunication: Exclusion from the sacraments of the Church.
Historical novel: Fiction set in a past period and drawing on historical research.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension To whom is Kristin first betrothed?
Comprehension Why is Kristin sent to Nonneseter?
Comprehension What does Kristin learn about Erlend's past?
Interpretation What does the bridal wreath symbolize?
Interpretation Why does Simon keep Kristin's secret?
Big Question Should love or duty guide marriage?

Faith Connections

Luke 15:11-32 (Scripture)
The prodigal returns; a pattern of sin and mercy in the trilogy.
Exodus 20:12 (Scripture)
Honour thy father and thy mother.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Passion pursued against conscience and family brings lasting guilt, yet grace and love remain possible.

Rhetorical device: symbolism. The maiden's wreath Kristin wears at her wedding marks the gap between appearance and truth.

Debate: Resolved: that Lavrans should have refused his consent.

Memory Work

Think you not,” said Brother Edwin again, “that in God’s eyes we are all children he has cause to grieve for, crippled as we are with sin?
Book One, Chapter 5, trans. Charles Archer and J. S. Scott (1923). Brother Edwin's words on God's grief for sinners.

Writing Prompts

Essay: How does Undset portray the conflict between Kristin's will and her faith?

Comparison with The Scarlet Letter: Compare Kristin with Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter.

Creative Prompts

Essay
Is Kristin a heroine or a cautionary figure?
Fiction
Write Lavrans's thoughts on the night of the wedding.
Classroom
Discuss how Undset makes the medieval Church part of daily life.