A Source of Undset's Realism: Flowers!

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 most, due to the common human experience that life is not all sweetness and life. Terrible choices are made with terrible consequences, though redemption of these same regrettable detours remains possible.

I think this realism comes from the difficulty she experienced in her own life, particularly with the early death of her beloved father, Ingvald; the subsequent downward slide in her family's financial state; her having to work to support her mother and sisters; her unfortunate marriage to the painter Anders Svarstad. Undset sugarcoats nothing.

Another source of her realism that I might propose was her love of botany, also revealed in her vivid descriptions of the countryside and changing seasons in her fiction and other works. Undset had a particular affinity for the Swedish Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné, 1707-1778), to whom she reffered as her "secular patron saint". Linnaeus is credited as being the father of modern taxonomy, establishing the system of botanical catagories using the Aristotelian genus and species. It was some consolation to her on her 1940 escape from the Nazis and in the wake of her eldest son's death in a battle with the invaders that she could visit the Linnean Gardens at Uppsala, not too far from Stockholm.

Aristotle himself rejected - or corrected - the idealism of his mentor Plato by rooting the nature of things in things themselves. His cosmology was founded on hylomorphism, the idea that material things are informed by universal forms shared with like objects. Philosophers refer to Aristotle's position as "moderate realism", shared by Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus - and Linnaeus. From a Christian point of view, one might recognise how this opens the door to Christian anthropology, with the emphasis on the human being essentially constituted by its material element (the body) and its formal element (the soul, as the animating principle of the body).

Sigrid Undset, who was so engaged in mental and spiritual activity, always found a balance to her craft by getting her hands into the dirt of her beloved garden. Her garden at her home in Lillehammer was her pride and joy, and she delighted in rescuing endangered species of Norwegian flaura and nuturing them at Bjerkebæk. During the war, her garden went to rack and ruin thanks to the Gestapo's appropriation of her home in her absence. Her gardening was not only a source of artistic joy and a re-creating source of leisure. It quite literally kept her grounded.

I am reminded of the seminary where I studied theology. The more junior seminarians, when studying metaphysics, were tasked with cleaning out the pig manure from the farm next door. This to balance their abstract thought by keeping the lads firmly connected to the material world.

The Sigrid Undset Association (Sigrid Undsetselskapet) regularly hosts guided tours of Undset's garden in Lillehammer.