O God, Heavenly Father, Whose faithful servants reveal Your love and holiness by reflecting the light of Christ in our world, we give thanks for the life and witness of Your servant Sigrid Undset, who served You with unwavering faith, generosity and courage in challenging times and brought inspiration and strength to those around her. If it be according to Your holy will, for the greater glory of Your Name and the good of Your Church, grant that she may one day be numbered am

When modern readers think of Sigrid Undset, they usually picture the fjells and fjords of Kristin Lavransdatter or the austere scenes in Olav Audenssøn. It would be easy to write off her vision of medieval Christendom as a piece of brilliant historical nostalgia and literary escapism into an age when cathedral spires dominated the skyline and life revolved around the liturgical bell. However, if you read her non-fiction essays, you quickly discover that Undset was in no sense

Although this blog is dedicated to Sigrid Undset, I thought I would link this article by Joseph Pearce in the National Catholic Register about one of Undset's primary influences. Even if she was a great Chesterton fan, I always considered her more Bellocian in temperament. Both enjoyed a good old fashioned scrap! I also recommend Pearce's book, Literary Converts. It is a fascinating survey of the many well known author-converts in the English speaking world, and Sigrid Undset

By Lauretta Brown, published July 29, 2026 in OSVNews Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo When Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo, Norway, first encountered Sigrid Undset’s writing in junior high school, it was through her famous novel trilogy “Kristin Lavransdatter.” It did not catch his attention at the time, as he was not yet Catholic and not particularly interested in medieval Norwegian history. However, in returning to the trilogy as a Catholic priest years later, Bishop Hansen saw

One of the things that makes Sigrid Undset most attractive to modern readers (and indeed, her contemporary readership) is her realism. Her earlier novels end in tragedy. One particularly thinks of Marta Oulie, Vigdis and Jenny. From Kristin onwards, her heroines - and Paul Selmer - end on notes of hope, though not separated from sacrifices that had to be made. Her literary works are filled with crises of conscious that can be offputting to some, but that strike a chord with m

Mgr. Robert Hugh Benson, convert, priest and novelist Sigrid Undset's stridency in writing on subjects pertaining to religion and the Catholic faith was a characteristic shared by many Catholic commentators throughout the period of post- Reformation Catholicism until the advent of the Second Vatican Council. Particularly in those places where the state religion was Protestant and Catholics were in a minority, lay Catholic intellectuals and leading cultural lights who had embr

These are the first lines of the introduction to my thesis (sparing you of the footnotes!): Statue of Sigrid Undset by Hanne Varming in her place of birth (Kalundborg, Denmark) Norwegian author Sigrid Undset (1882-1949), winner of the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature, was a novelist known for her profound insights into the human condition, patterns of behaviour and their consequences, the yearning for fulfilment, transcendence, happiness and peace. She is something of a nation

After several years of hard work, my doctoral thesis has finally been received and approved by the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, Australia. I offer my heartfelt thanks to the readers of this blog who have contributed their thoughts on the various posts and their support for this project. The next phase of my work on Sigrid Undset is to turn my thesis into a book and to see if I can publish the many articles I translated. Given that Bishop Hansen of Oslo has announced his

I imagine that readers of this blog will have already heard the news: Bishop Fredrik Hansen, the bishop of the Diocese of Oslo, recently announced his intention to formally open the cause for Sigrid Undset's sainthood. I wonder how this is being and will be received in secular Norway, which already has a somewhat ambivalent view of the soon to be Servant of God! Here follows the press release from the diocese: Bishop to Open Canonisation Cause for Sigrid Undset From Selje Isl

In Undset's foreword to her own translation of Chesterton's Everlasting Man, she wrote of the challenge of rendering the master of paradox into Norwegian: "What some Frenchman said about translation particularly applies to translations of Chesterton: namely that they are like women - if they are beautiful, they are not faithful, but if they are faithful, they are not beautiful. I myself have time and again been at a loss as to how faithfully I should follow Chesterton's text,

It's extraordinary, really. Very occasionally I look at the email of analytics I get sent that shows me there are a relatively high number of readers that come to this page - I presume in the hope of some profound insights into Undset. What is even more extraordinary is that despite no posts in such a long time, the visits are fairly stable. Hello to anyone who has stopped by over the last twelve months. Apologies if you dropped by twice, hoping for new content. The truth is

An excerpt from Undset's 1941 article "Kristen Kultur". We know that states built on democratic foundations are far from perfect – they...

"Positioning Undset has been a difficult task for researchers, because her Catholicism and realism fall outside the liberal-national,...

From the earliest times of Christianity, the Catholic Church has raised women to the highest honours by their veneration as saints....

Undset compares this biblical episode with paganism contemporary with and after Abraham. She derides the already fashionable idea of...

Here Sigrid writes of the book which had the greatest influence on her in childhood, and in fact helped shape her epic writing in the...

It's been almost a month since I returned from a recent four weeks' stay in Norway. The purpose of the visit was to improve my fluency in...

From Sigrid Undset's The Wild Orchid. While studying geology at university, Paul decides to move into the city from his mother Julie's...

Synopsis of the sequel to The Wild Orchid. In this second part of the Paul Selmer duology, Paul finally becomes a Catholic, he and Bjørg...

Here is my synopsis of the first part of Undset's tale of Paul Selmer, a young man in early twentieth century Christiania [Oslo] who is...