Kristin Lavransdatter

Kristin Lavransdatter Review

Kristin Lavransdatter takes place in 13th century Norway. This is not a time period, nor even a country about which I have given much – any? – thought before. I was really excited to read it because I tend to dig historical fiction and mostly because of the truly glowing review that the Book of the Month Club gave it –

“We consider it the best book our judges have ever selected and it has been better received by our subscribers than any other book.”

I mean, that’s high praise.

So, they call the book Kristin Lavransdatter on The List but it is actually a trilogy of books, none of which is called Kristin Lavransdatter. The first book is the one about which I am talking today, since I haven’t read the other two. It is titled The Bridal Wreath.

Bridal Wreath Statistics

Year written: 1923
Number of pages: 272
Gender of Author: Female, though I didn’t realize that for a while because her name is Sigrid – does that sound masculine to anyone else?
Number of Nobel Prizes that Sigrid has: 1
Nobel Prize Fun Fact: Sigrid won the NP for literature for the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy as well as two other books. I didn’t know they gave out Lifetime Achievement awards – I thought it was just for one book…Discuss…
Number of times Sigrid fled Germany because of her opposition to Nazis: 1
Number of children Sigrid had: 3
Number of minutes I spent on Sigrid’s Wikipedia page: 7
Most exciting part: Someone tries to poison someone else…with leprosy!
Number of times I laughed out loud during Bridal Wreath: Zero

Bridal Wreath Review

This book started out pretty slowly for me. It took me awhile to get through the first 70 pages, and then I finished the last 200 in just a couple of days. It starts out with her as a very little girl and ends with her marriage to a total D-bag at the age of about 20. The book does a great job of painting a portrait of the social morals of the time. You are so entrenched in them that you begin to feel truly scandalized that Kristin would have dared to accept a gift as fine as a cloak from her lover, or break her betrothal to Simon.

I’m totally unaccustomed to such an unhappy story for the lead character and for a lead character who is herself so unlikeable. It took me off guard because I’ve been conditioned by Jane Austen to expect that the girl will retain her honor and live happily ever after. Kristen is stupid, naïve and – above all – stubborn. Her father, Larvans [sidebar, it took me a really, really long time to figure out that her last name, Lavransdatter means Lavrans’ daughter] makes a marriage match for her with a decent enough guy. He is young and not terribly attractive and Kristin’s reaction to him is pretty lukewarm. A semi-scandal happens and her name is besmirched, through no fault of her own. For this reason she is sent to a convent for a year to reflect and also to give the scandal time to cool off.

While at the convent Kristin happens to meet a man of very questionable morals and intelligence who is also hot. His name is Erlend (not to be confused with Elrond the elf, though that would have been awesome.) He has two children by the wife of another man. Though he is close kin to the King he has been disowned by the court and excommunicated from the church. Kristin is a moron and this doesn’t bother her too much. He sort of half-rapes her which of course means that her only salvation is to marry him. Plus she loves him even though he half-raped her.

As the year goes on she gets in deeper and deeper with Erlend who sets up trysts for them at a brothel. Simon eventually finds out and he puts an end to their meetings. He ends up proving himself to be a very honorable person.

At this point things just get ugly. This is not a happy story. Kristin and Simon break their engagement. Kristin’s father understands that she’s fallen in love with a cad, but doesn’t know that she’s “no longer a maid.” He refuses to let her marry him because all of his inquiries into his character prove him to be a D-bag. The standoff between her and her father literally lasts like 3 years, until finally – after some serious drama and despair – he gives his consent for them to be married.

At almost the exact moment that her father allows the marriage you get the feeling that Kristin is wondering what the hell she’s been so adamant about. Erlend continues to put Kristin at risk by insisting on meeting and having sex with her. The inevitable happens – she gets pregnant.

There really is quite a bit more to the plot, and it moves along at a reasonably good pace. I sort of lost all enthusiasm for the story when I paged ahead and realized that, yes, she really does marry Erlend and is with him – unhappily – throughout all three novels.

I appreciate that Sigrid doesn’t romanticize, but starkly tells what was probably a pretty common story for these poor 13th century Norwegian women. I think it’s kind of funny how much authors like to romanticize history when there wasn’t much to celebrate about the lives of women. If The Tudors has taught me nothing else, it’s that even the wealthiest, most powerful, prettiest women lived a life that would be intolerable to a modern US woman. This is a bleak story, which makes sense considering it won a Nobel Prize. I haven’t read a lot of Nobel Prize winning stories, but the ones I have were similarly grim and…hopeless.

Passage that I thought was cool or interesting:

After Kristin has surrendered her sacred chastity to Erland she starts to find that she really enjoys hearing about the sins other people have committed. When she goes to confess to her buddy the monk he tells her of a time that he got really pissed off at a guy who had destroyed the religious stone panel he had been carving and he threw a hammer at him. She thinks this is awesome –

“Ay, now you smile, my Kristin. But see you not that ‘tis not well with you now, since you would rather hear such tales of other folks’ frailties than of the life and deeds of good men, who might serve you as a pattern…?”

I just thought this was a pretty astute observation about how much humans suck.

And Another Thing

You find out at the very end that Kristin’s mother was “no longer a maid” when she got married either. And you find out that Simon knew about the brothel Kristin was at because he – without incurring any dishonor at all – had frequented it. So, here are a couple of observations:

1. Okay for men to have sex outside of marriage
2. Not okay for women to have sex outside of marriage – but doesn’t seem to stop them
3. Everyone is having sex outside of marriage but women are severely punished if they are found out
4. Because it’s acceptable for men to have sex outside of marriage, this means that they must be having sex with women who are outside of marriage and only the woman is looked down upon…in other words men totally fine with sacrificing women’s honor in the most hypocritical way.

Now I know these are hardly groundbreaking observations but what the hell. Did NO ONE call shenanigans on this absurd double standard???

It seems that if women could have been given the same freedom as men a whole lot of agony could have been avoided. Despite the proclamation of valuing a woman’s chastity more dearly than gold, women were “compromised” a lot – at least in Kristin’s village. And I daresay Kristin’s village was a lot like every other village in 13th century Norway.

Anyway…I don’t think it’s fair for me to judge Kristin Lavransdatter until I’ve read all three books in the trilogy. However, I will give this book a tentative && - Two Ampersands…I have to return the book to the library now so I’ll probably read something else before getting back to it. Stay Tuned…

P.S. Thanks to all of the well-wishers about my root canal. I had the second part of the procedure performed and it went well. And no, that was not my actual X-ray, though it must look a lot like what you would imagine my tooth X-ray would look cause several people asked (only CSL noted that the X-ray’s tooth had a ‘nose ring’ – hee hee)