The romance of Tristan and Isolde in Kristin Lavransdatter

During the ongoing centennial of Kristin Lavransdatter’s publication (The Wreath in 1920; The Wife, 1921; The Cross, 1922), a new generation of readers is discovering Sigrid Undset’s trilogy. Notoriously difficult to interpret, its complexities can tax even a seasoned reader to the breaking point. If, however, good imaginative writing “is ideally as ambiguous and opaque as life itself,” intentionally absent of any “swiftly expressible message,” as John Updike once described it (29), then Kristin Lavransdatter is an exemplary work. For instance, how should readers think about the story’s protagonist? Kristin is self-sacrificing and vengeful, pious and self-pitying, unforgiving and generous. Her childhood at Jørundgaard and her dotage at Rein Convent could be viewed as mere bookends, unsatisfying authorial “gestures,” bracketing what is otherwise a lifetime of struggle, marked more by moral failure than by triumph. Similarly, how should readers understand Erlend Nikulaussøn, Kristin’s husband? At one moment, he is dashing and courageous; in the next, he is reckless, imprudent, and selfish beyond belief, imperiling everyone he loves for the briefest of pleasures. Quick to overlook others’ wrongdoings, he is equally hasty in forgetting his own, exposing a moral shallowness that clouds his vision, hiding from himself the consequences of his folly. Kristin and Erlend are, of course, only the two most obvious challenges readers must face in Undset’s trilogy. Even so, grappling with such difficulties can be revelatory, and not only of the text, for in struggling with the story, readers can be led to unexplored reaches in their own souls. The stakes, then, of taking up such a work are high, for the consequences of misreading can be two-fold: a misinterpretation of the story cannot easily be separated from a misunderstanding of the self. This interpretive interplay between reader and text is relevant to this essay’s purpose, but only as a secondary concern. Its primary objective is to remain within the narrative, examining the ways that two of its characters engage with other imaginative works. In other words, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005522