She looked out across the green slopes, down at her beautiful estate with the meadows and fields and the glistening curve of the river winding through the valley. The mountains rose up in a blue shimmer of heat. The sky was filled with billowing summer clouds. It was madness. There, with his sons, was where he belonged. He was no mountain knight. He was a Christian man, no matter how full he was of wild ideas and foolish whims. Her lawful husband, with whom she had endured both good and bad – beloved, beloved, no matter how sorely he had tormented her with his unpredictable impulses. She would have to be forbearing, since she could not live without him; she would have to strive to bear the anguish and uncertainty as best she could.

Sigrid Undset (1882-1949)
Author of Kristin Lavransdatter

“The beautiful large estate lay below her on the hillside, like a jewel on the wide bosom of the slope. She gazed out across all the land she had owned along with her husband. Thoughts about the manor and its care had filled her soul to the brim. She had worked and struggled. Not until this evening did she realize how much she had struggled to put his estate back on its feet and keep it going – how hard she had tried and how much she had accomplished. She had accepted it as her fate, to be borne with patience and a straight back, that this had fallen to her. Just as she had striven to be patient and steadfast no matter what life presented, every time she learned she was carrying yet another child under her heart – again and again. With each son added to the flock she recognized that her responsibility had grown for ensuring the prosperity and secure position of the lineage. Tonight she realized that her ability to survey everything at once and her watchfulness had also grown with each new child entrusted to her care. Never had she seen it so clearly as on this evening – what destiny had demanded of her and what it had given her in return with her seven sons. Over and over again joy had quickened the beat of her heart; fear on their behalf had rent it in two. They were her children, these big sons with their lean, bony, boy’s bodies, just as they had been when they were small and so plump that they barely hurt themselves when they tumbled down on their way between the bench and her knee. They were hers, just as they had been back when she lifted them out of the cradle to nurse them and had to support their heads, which wobbled on their frail necks the way a bluebell nods on its stalk. Wherever they ended up in the world, wherever they journeyed, forgetting their mother – she thought that for her, their lives would be like a current in her own life; they would be one with her.”

Sigrid Undset (1882-1949)
Author of Kristin Lavransdatter