Sigrid Undset

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Sigrid Undset, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1927

Sigrid Undset (May 20, 1882 - June 10, 1949) was a Norwegian novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature for 1928.

Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was 2 years old. In 1924, she converted to Catholicism. She fled Norway for the United States in 1940 because of her opposition to Nazism, but returned after the war in 1945.

Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a monumental trilogy about life in Scandinavia in the middle ages, published 1920-1922.

She died in Lillehammer, Norway.

Kristin Lavransdatter

Sigrid Undset's best known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a modernist work set in medieval Norway that portrays the life of a woman, Kristin Lavransdatter, from birth until death. Undset experimented with modernist tropes such as stream of consciousness in her novel, although the original English translation by Charles Archer excised many of these passages. In 1997 the first volume of Tiina Nunnally's new translation of the work won the Pen-Faulkner award in the category of translation. The work is split into three volumes:

1. The Wreath
2. The Wife
3. The Cross

These are Nunally's translations of the titles. Archer's are as follows:

1. The Bridal Wreath
2. The Mistress of Husaby
3. The Cross

External links

• http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1928/
• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/undset.htm
• http://www.undset.no/susenglish2.html

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