He is a steadfast husband to Ramborg and a strong shoulder to Kristin when Erland is arrested for treason. Erland is, for all his charm, a bad husband and father, a cause of considerable frustration and anger to Kristin who is both a protective mother and a faithful wife.Īll that Erland is not, Simon is. This connection proves crucial in the narrative thread, both because it helps to reconnect Kristin to her family estate, Jorungaard, (indeed, it leads to her reconciliation with her father) and it adds an element of romantic complication. The two main narrative threads that dominate The Wife are the domestic struggles between Kristin and her husband Erland and Erland’s foolhardy political maneuvering that nearly costs him his life. Kristin, pregnant when she marries, eventually gives birth to six sons in the course of the novel, turns her reckless husband’s estate into a successful enterprise, and spends a good bit of time worrying about her soul. In one of those ironies that happen in fiction, her former fiance Simon marries her baby sister Ramborg. Kristin, against her father’s preference and, having broken the heart of her betrothed, Simon Andresson, marries her lover Erland Niklausson. The story picks up just after the events of the first novel (known as The Wreath) end. This deliberate pace also allows Undset to offer descriptions of living conditions in 14th century Norway that give Kristin Lavransdatter II the believability of history even as it offers the drama of fiction. The first of these is that this measured pace, slow as it might feel to contemporary readers, allows Undset to develop characters of great depth, characters whom the reader is able to get to know intimately. The slowness of that pace serves two useful and powerful purposes. Sigrid Undset’s epic saga of medieval Norway, Kristin Lavransdatter, moves at the pace of medieval life. Kristin Lavransdatter II: The Wife by Sigrid Undset (Image courtesy Goodreads)