Kristin Lavransdatter

Kristin Lavransdatter is a trilogy of historical novels by the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, published in Norwegian across three volumes, The Wreath in 1920, The Wife in 1921 and The Cross in 1922, and later gathered under the single title Kristin Lavransdatter. Set in fourteenth-century Norway, the trilogy follows its title character from childhood through her passionate and difficult marriage to Erlend Nikulaussson, the raising of their family, and finally her retreat into religious life as the Black Death reaches Norway, rendered throughout with closely researched historical and ethnological detail about medieval Norwegian life. The trilogy won Undset the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, awarded principally, in the Nobel committee's words, for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages, and it remains one of the most celebrated works of twentieth-century Scandinavian historical fiction.