Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

  Simon accompanied her all the way up to the bridge, and as they walked, they exchanged only a few words about the weather and the farm work, repeating things they had already said back at the house. Simon said good night, but then he asked abruptly, “Do you know, Kristin, how I might have offended Gaute that the boy should be so angry with me?”

  “Gaute?” she said in surprise.

  “Yes, haven’t you noticed? He avoids me, but if he can’t help meeting me, he barely opens his mouth when I speak to him.”

  Kristin shook her head. No, she hadn’t noticed, “unless you said something in jest and he took it wrong, child that he is.”

  He heard in her voice that she was smiling; then he laughed a bit and said, “But I can’t remember anything of the sort.”

  And with that he again bade her good night and left.

  It was completely quiet at Jørundgaard. The main house was dark, with the ashes raked over the fire in the hearth. Bjørgulf was awake and said that his father and brothers had left some time ago.

  Over in the master’s bed Munan was sleeping alone. Kristin took him in her arms after she lay down.

  It was so difficult to talk about it to Erlend when he didn’t seem to realize himself that he shouldn’t take the older boys and run off with them into the woods when there was more than enough work to be done on the estate.

  That Erlend himself should walk behind a plow was not something she had ever expected. He probably wouldn’t be able to do a proper job of it either. And Ulf wouldn’t like it much if Erlend interfered in the running of the farm. But her sons could not grow up in the same way as their father had been allowed to do, learning to use weapons, hunting animals, and amusing himself with his horses or poring over a chessboard with a priest who would slyly attempt to cajole the knight’s son into acquiring a little knowledge of Latin and writing, of singing and the playing of stringed instruments. She had so few servants on the estate because she thought that her sons should learn even as children that they would have to become accustomed to farm work. It now looked doubtful that there would be any knighthood for Erlend’s sons.

  But Gaute was the only one of the boys who had any inclination for farming. Gaute was a hard worker, but he was thirteen years old, and it could only be expected that he would rather go with his father when Erlend came and invited him to come along.

  It was difficult to talk to Erlend about this because it was Kristin’s firm resolve that her husband should never hear from her a single word that he might perceive as a criticism of his behavior or a complaint over the fate that he had brought upon himself and his sons. That meant it wasn’t easy to make the father understand that his sons had to get used to doing the work themselves on their estate. If only Ulf would speak of it, she thought.

  When they moved the livestock from the spring pastures up to Høvringen, Kristin went along up to the mountains. She didn’t want to take the twins with her. They would soon be eleven years old, and they were the most unruly and willful of her children; it was even harder for her to handle them because the two boys stuck together in everything. If she managed to get Ivar alone, he was good and obedient enough, but Skule was hot-tempered and stubborn. And when the brothers were together, Ivar said and did everything that Skule demanded.

  CHAPTER 2

  ONE DAY EARLY in the fall Kristin went outside about the time of midafternoon prayers. The herdsman had said that a short distance down the mountainside, if she followed the riverbed, there was supposed to be an abundance of mulleins on a cleared slope.

  Kristin found the spot, a steep incline baking in the direct glare of the sun; it was the very best time for picking the flowers. They grew in thick clumps over the heaps of stones and around the gray stubble. Tall, pale yellow stalks, richly adorned with small open stars. Kristin set Munan to picking raspberries in among some brushwood from which he wouldn’t be able to escape without her help; she told the dog to stay with him and keep watch. Then she took out her knife and began cutting mulleins, constantly casting an eye at the little child. Lavrans stayed at her side and cut flowers too.

  She was always fearful for her two small children in the mountains. Otherwise she was not afraid of the people up there anymore. Many had already gone home from the pastures, but she was thinking of staying until after the Feast of the Birth of Mary. It was pitch black at night now, and vile when the wind blew hard—vile if they had to go outside late at night. But the weather had been so fine up in the heights, while down below, the countryside was parched this year and the grazing was poor. The men would have to stay up in the mountains during both the late fall and winter, but her father had said that he had never noticed anyone haunting their high pastures during the winter.

  Kristin stopped under a solitary spruce tree in the middle of the hillside; she stood with her hands wrapped around the heavy weight of the flower stalks that were draped over her arm. From here she could look northward and see halfway to Dovre. In many places the grain was gathered in shocks in the fields.

  The hillsides were yellow and sun-scorched over there too. But it was never truly green here in the valley, she thought, not as green as in Trøndelag.

  Yes, she longed for the home they had had there: the manor that stood so high and magnificent on the broad breast of the ridge, with fields and meadows spreading out all around, extending below to the cluster of leafy woods that sloped down toward the lake at the bottom of the valley. The vast view across low, forested hills that undulated, wave upon wave, south toward the Dovre Range. And the lush meadows so thick and tall in the summer, red with crimson flowers beneath the red evening sky, the second crop of hay so succulent and green in the autumn.

  Yes, sometimes she even felt a longing for the fjord. The skerries of Birgsi, the docks with the boats and ships, the boathouses, the smell of tar and fishing nets and the sea—all those things she had disliked so much when she first went north.

  Erlend must be longing for that smell, and for the sea and the sea wind.

  She missed everything that she had once found so wearisome: all the housekeeping, the scores of servants, the clamor of Erlend’s men as they rode into the courtyard with clanging weapons and jangling harnesses, the strangers who came and went, bringing them great news from all over the land and gossip about people in the town and countryside. Now she realized how quiet her life had become when all this had been silenced.

  Nidaros with its churches and cloisters and banquets at the great estates in town. She longed to walk through the streets with her own servingman and maid accompanying her, to climb the loft stairs to the merchants’ shops, to choose and reject wares, to step aboard the boats on the river to buy goods: English linen hats, elegant shawls, wooden horses with riders that would thrust out their lances if you pulled a string. She thought about the meadows outside town near Nidareid where she used to walk with her children, looking at the trained dogs and bears of the wandering minstrels, buying gingerbread and walnuts.

  And there were times when she longed to dress in her finery again. A silk shift and a delicate, fine wimple. The sleeveless surcoat made of pale blue velvet that Erlend had bought for her the winter before the misfortune befell them. It was edged with marten fur along the deep cut of the bodice and around the wide arm-holes, which reached all the way down to her hips, revealing the belt underneath.

  And occasionally she longed for . . . oh no, she should be sensible and be happy about that—happy as long as she was free from having any more children. When she fell ill this autumn after the great slaughtering . . . It was best that it happened that way. But she had wept a little, those first few nights afterward.

  It seemed an eternity since she had held an infant. Munan was only four winters old, but she had been forced to give him into the care of strangers before he was even a year. When he came back to her, he could already walk and talk, and he didn’t know her.

  Erlend. Oh, Erlend. Deep in her heart she knew that he wasn’t as nonchalant as he seemed. This man who wa
s always restless, now he seemed always so calm. Like a stream that finally runs up against a steep cliff and lets itself be diverted, trickling out into the peat to become a calm pool with marshlands all around. He wandered about Jørundgaard, doing nothing, and then he would find one or another of his sons to keep him company in his idleness. Or he would go out hunting with them. Once in a while he would go off to tar and repair one of the fishing boats they kept at the lake. Or he would set about breaking in one of the young colts, although he never had much success; he was far too impatient.

  He kept to himself and pretended not to notice that no one sought out his company. His sons followed their father’s example. They were not well liked, these outsiders who had been driven to the valley by misfortune and who still went about like proud strangers, never inquiring about the customs of the region or its people. Ulf Haldorssøn was outright despised. He was openly scornful of the inhabitants of the valley, calling them stupid and old-fashioned; people who hadn’t grown up near the sea weren’t proper folks at all.

  As for Kristin herself . . . She knew that she didn’t have many friends here in her own valley either. Not anymore.

  She straightened her back in the peat-brown homespun dress, shading her eyes with her hand against the golden flood of afternoon sunlight.

  To the north she caught a glimpse of the valley along the pale green ribbon of the river and then the crush of mountainous shapes, one after the other, grayish yellow with scree and moss-covered plateaus; toward the center, snowdrifts and clouds melded into one another in the passes and ravines. Right across from her the Rost Range jutted out its knee, closing off the valley. The Laag River had to bend its course; a distant roar reached her from the river, which cut deep through the rocky cliffs below and tumbled in a roiling froth from ledge to ledge. Just beyond the mossy slopes at the top of the range towered the two enormous Blue Peaks, which her father had compared to a woman’s breasts.

  Erlend must think this place hemmed in and hideous, find it difficult to breathe.

  It was a little farther to the south, on this same hillside, but closer to the familiar slopes, that she had seen the elf maiden when she was a small child.

  A gentle, soft, pretty child with lush silken hair framing her round, pink-and-white cheeks. Kristin closed her eyes and turned her sunburned face up toward the flood of light. A young mother, her breasts bursting with milk, her heart churned up and fecund like a newly plowed field after the birth of her child—yes. But with someone like herself there should be no danger: They wouldn’t even try to lure her inside.1 No doubt the mountain king would find the bridal gold ill suited to such a gaunt and worn-out woman. The wood nymph would have no desire to place her child at Kristin’s withered teats. She felt hard and dry, like the spruce root under her foot that curved around stones and clung to the ground. Abruptly she dug her heel into the root.

  The two little boys who had come over to their mother rushed to do as she did, kicking the tree root with all their might and then asking eagerly, “Why are you doing that, Mother?”

  Kristin sat down, placed the mulleins in her lap, and began tearing off the open blossoms to put in the basket.

  “Because my shoe was pinching my toes,” she replied so much later that the boys had forgotten what they had asked. But this didn’t bother them; they were used to the way their mother seemed not to listen when they spoke to her or the way she would wake up and give an answer after they had long forgotten their own question.

  Lavrans helped tear off the flowers; Munan wanted to help too, but he merely shredded the tufts. Then Kristin took the mulleins away from him without a word, showing no anger, completely absorbed in her own thoughts. After a while the boys began playing and fighting with the bare stalks that she had cast aside.

  They were making a loud ruckus next to her knee. Kristin looked at the two small, round heads with brown hair. They still looked much alike; their hair was the same light brown color, but from various faint little traits and hastily glimpsed signs, their mother could tell they would grow up to be quite different. Munan was going to look like his father; he had those pale blue eyes and such silky hair, which curled in thick, soft tendrils on his narrow head. It would grow as dark as soot with time. His little face was still so round in the chin and cheeks that it was a pleasure to cup her hands around its tender freshness; his face would become thin and lean when he grew older. He would also have the high, narrow forehead with hollowed temples and the straight, jutting triangle of a nose that was narrow and sharp across the ridge with thin, flaring nostrils, just as Naakkve already had and the twins clearly showed signs of having too.

  Lavrans had had flaxen, curly hair as fine as silk when he was small. Now it was the color of a hazelnut, but it gleamed like gold in the sun. It was quite straight and still soft enough, although somewhat coarser and heavier than before, close and thick when she buried her fingers in it. Lavrans looked like Kristin; he had gray eyes and a round face with a broad forehead and a softly rounded chin. He would probably retain his pink-and-white complexion long after he became a man.

  Gaute too had that fresh coloring; he looked so much like her father, with a long, full face, iron-gray eyes, and pale blond hair.

  Bjørgulf was the only one in whom she could see no resemblance. He was the tallest of her sons, with broad shoulders and heavy, strong limbs. Curly locks of raven-black hair fell low over his broad white forehead; his eyes were blue-black but oddly without luster, and he squinted badly when he looked up. She didn’t know when he had actually started doing this, because he was the child to whom she had always paid the least attention. They took him away from her and gave him to a foster mother right after his birth. Eleven months later she had Gaute, and Gaute had been in poor health during the first four years of his life. After the birth of the twins she had gotten out of bed, still ailing and with a pain in her back, and resumed caring for the older child, carrying him around and tending to him. She barely had time to look at the two new children except when Frida brought her Ivar, who was crying and thirsty. And Gaute would lie there screaming while she sat and nursed the infant. She hadn’t had the strength . . . Blessed Virgin Mary, you know that I couldn’t manage to pay more attention to Bjørgulf. And he preferred to keep to himself and do things alone, solitary and quiet as he always had been; he never seemed to like it when she caressed him. She had thought he was the strongest of her children; a young, stubborn, dark bull is how she thought of him.

  Gradually she realized that his eyesight was quite poor. The monks had done something for his eyes when he and Naakkve were at Tautra, but it hadn’t seemed to help.

  He continued to be taciturn; it did no good for her to try to draw Bjørgulf closer. She saw that he was just the same with his father. Bjørgulf was the only one of their sons who didn’t warm to Erlend’s attention the way a meadow receives the sunlight. Only toward Naakkve was Bjørgulf any different, but when Kristin tried to talk to Naakkve about his brother, he refused to say anything. She wondered whether Erlend had any better luck in those quarters, since Naakkve’s love for Erlend was so great.

  Oh no, Erlend’s offspring readily bore witness to who their father was. She had seen that child from Lensvik when she was in Nidaros the last time. She had met Sir Baard in the Christ Church courtyard. He was coming out the door, accompanied by many men and women and servants; a maid carried the swaddled infant. Baard Aasulfssøn greeted Kristin with a nod of his head, silent and courteous, as they walked past her. His wife was not with him.

  She had seen the child’s face, just a single glance. But that was enough. He looked like the tiny infant faces that she had held to her own breast.

  Arne Gjavvaldssøn was with her, and he couldn’t keep from talking—that’s just the way he was. Sir Baard’s other heirs were not pleased when the child was born the previous winter. But Baard had had him baptized Aasulf. Between Erlend Nikulaussøn and Fru Sunniva there had never been any other friendship than what everyone knew; that’s what Ba
ard claimed never to doubt. Indiscreet and reckless as Erlend was, he had probably let too much slip when he was bantering with Sunniva, and it was nothing more than her duty to warn the king’s envoys when she became suspicious. But if they had been too friendly, then Sunniva must have also known that her brother was involved in Erlend’s plans. When Haftor Graut took his own life and forfeited his salvation in prison, she was greatly distraught. No one could know how much she blamed herself during that time. Sir Baard had placed his hand on the hilt of his sword and stared at everyone as he spoke of this, said Arne.

  Arne had also mentioned the matter to Erlend. One day when Kristin was up in one of the lofts, the men were standing beneath the gallery, unaware that she could hear their conversation. The Lensvik knight was overjoyed about the son his wife had given birth to the winter before; he never doubted that he himself was the father.

  “Yes, well, Baard must know best about that,” Erlend had replied. She knew that tone of voice of his; now he would be standing there with lowered eyes and a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  Sir Baard bore such rancor toward his kinsmen who would have been his heirs if he had died childless. But people were now saying this was unfair. “Well, the man himself must know best,” said Erlend again.

  “Yes, yes, Erlend, but that boy is going to inherit more than the seven sons you have with your wife.”

  “I will provide for my seven sons, Arne.”

  Then Kristin went downstairs; she couldn’t bear to hear them talk anymore about this subject. Erlend was a little startled when he saw her. Then he went over and took her hand, standing behind her so that her shoulder touched his body. She understood that as he stood there, gazing down at her, he was repeating without words what he had just affirmed, as if he wanted to give her strength.

  Kristin became aware that Munan was staring up at her a bit anxiously. She had apparently smiled, though not in a pleasant way. But when his mother looked down at him, the boy smiled back, hesitant and uncertain.