The book begins when Kristin is seven, and recounts the close relationship she has with her father Lavrans. And even after three centuries, most of the Catholic ritual is still in Latin rather than Norwegian and therefore unintelligible to all but the most privileged classes they pick up the slack by sticking with what they know, which are the superstitious customs and cures to ward off sickness and evil and to explain the mysteries of the universe. (Thus the Church is able to accumulate wealth.) It is understood that holy men can bring God’s word, but they are still men and therefore sin cannot be expected to be foreign to them. Sins can be prayed away or even bartered away through a trade of money and/or land. It is the Church, however, that structures social and cultural life: times of the year are marked by Holy Days, church days, and church rites and rituals. This is a culture that is manifestly Catholic, but still deeply wedded to pagan beliefs.
Plot Summary of Volume Iįirst published in 1927, this is Book I of a trilogy that follows the fictional life of Kristin Lavransdatter in 14th Century Norway. In the third post, for Volume III, I will examine some additional elements of the plot as part of my overall impressions. I also read Dooms Day Book by Connie Willis to serve as a comparison at the end. I read Volume I in both translations but decided to stick with the Nunnally. I also thought that having an idea of the entirety of the book would give me a better perspective by which to evaluate each volume. III figuring out, e.g., which Sigurd was which. I didn’t want to have to waste a lot of time floundering around in Vol.
Participants are to post their reviews of each section around the end of the month, and we will compare notes. It’s available from Penguin in both omnibus and three individual editions.” I signed up for the Kristin Lavransdatter Readalong, sponsored by Richard of Caravana de Recuerdos and Emily from Evening All Afternoon.Īs Emily pointed out, “we’ll be reading the Tina Nunnally translation, which won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize in 2001 and apparently restored a number of the more experimental passages, which had been excised from the original English translation.
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