BOOK REVIEW: Olav Audunsson IV: Winter by Sigrid Undset

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

The fourth and final novel in Sigrid Undset’s masterpiece of historical fiction, Olav Audunsson IV: Winter (translated by Tiina Nunnally) has recently been released. I really can’t praise this quartet enough. Please read the series in sequence — I: Vows, II: Providence;III: Crossroads, and finally, IV: Winter. This new translation manages to be both spare and beautiful.

The novels are set in 13^th-14^th century Norway, a generation before Undset’s Nobel Prize-winning Kristin Lavransdatter.

The story follows the life of Olav Audunsson from childhood until death. He is a God-fearing man. He inherits property and eventually becomes a wealthy, respected member of his community. And his whole life is centered (for good and bad, mostly bad) around his undying love for his childhood friend, Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter. Everything happens that one might expect: death of parents, unwise premarital sex, exile, war, murder, unfaithfulness, reconciliation, marriage, birth of children, death of children, estrangements, and religious agony and ecstasy. Even so, it is in many ways a quiet book, with more happening internally than externally.

The tragedy of Olav’s life rivals that of any Greek tragedy. The cascading misfortunes that follow youthful errors haunt him his entire life. His sins are visited upon his children. He is unhappy throughout his life and his actions cause others misery as well. And yet, for all my frustration with him, I also had enormous empathy for him. This medieval man truly lives and breathes on these pages.

BOOK REVIEW: Olav Audunsson III: Crossroads by Sigrid Undset

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

I’ve been following the story of Olav Audunsson (also known as The Master of Hestviken) in the new translation of Sigrid Unset’s masterpiece set in 13th-14th century Norway. (The translator is Tiina Nunnally.) The story is told in four volumes. I’ve read Book I: Vows and Book II: Providence, and reviewed them previously. The current book, Book III, is called Crossroads. I highly recommend reading them in order or the power of the story will be lost.

Book III continues seamlessly from where Book II ends. Olav is master of the profitable estate called Hestviken. He’s still young (late thirties), handsome, and healthy. However, he grieves the loss of his wife, Ingunn, who was the love of his life, despite their terrible experiences apart and together. Olav has resolved never to remarry or take a mistress because he still feels bound to her.

He has an heir, Eirik, who he has claimed as his own, although the child was fathered by a man who raped Ingunn. Eirik is growing to manhood. Although the reader can have flashes of sympathy for him, he’s not a likable boy. He’s given to whining, boasting, and lying. However, he senses that his father doesn’t like him – which is true – and that makes his desperate personality more understandable. Olav has never let on to anyone that Eirik is not his biological child. Even to himself, he accepts Eirik as his son. But there is also the question of his natural son, Bjorn, born to Torhilde, the woman who was once the housekeeper of the estate. Bjorn is a beautiful boy and Olav wishes he could have more to do with him than he does. 

Basically, Olav is a hot mess. He’s always been a deeply religious man, but he’s oppressed by the weight of his sins and wallows in conflicted feelings of unworthiness. He is deeply connected to his estate, but is bored by it. He mourns Ingunn, but still feels attracted to Torhilde. He leaves Hestviken for a short commercial voyage to London, during which he nearly sleeps with a very young married woman who reminds him of Ingunn. He has a religious experience and seriously considers becoming a monk. Yet throughout, he is incapable of making a significant change in his life and continues muddling along.

Eventually, war comes to his corner of the world and he sets off to take part. This reminds him of his soldiering days in his youth. He exhilarates in battle. He’s severely wounded. Good men are lost, but he survives and returns home. One expects that the clarity he felt in battle will not remain in peacetime, and he will return to his indecisiveness and wallowing.

It’s difficult to explain why this book is so compelling. Olav is not a particularly admirable character. In many ways, he’s rather weak. Still, the author gives such a convincing portrait of a medieval Norwegian “everyman” that I’m hooked. There is one more part to this quartet. I’m anxious to see how Olav’s story ends.

BOOK REVIEW: Olav Audunsson II: Providence by Sigrid Undset

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

I just finished reading Olav Audunsson Book II: Providence by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally. What an extraordinary achievement this work is. When I was approved for this book, I also bought Book 1: Vows because I knew I should read it first. I’m glad I did. I don’t think this volume, as wonderful as it is, would stand on its own. To fully appreciate what these characters are going through, the backstory is needed. And the story is very well worth reading as a whole.

Providence picks up where Vows left off. The ill-fated young lovers, Olav and Ingunn, have finally been reunited after years and years of separation, guilt, and despair. They suffered extreme hardship due in large part due to cruelties of their families and society, but also due to their own small errors which were compounded by even greater sins. One thing kept leading to another in that book and they really did seem cursed by Fate. But they are now in a position to find that love will conquer all.

It does not.

Providence is a powerful and devastating book. Set in medieval Norway, the landscape is frozen and harsh. Men are dragged off to war by their kings for conflicts in which they have little stake. And God is ever present in their lives as a force that is more oppressive than hopeful. Reaching out for His grace has far-reaching consequences. Neighbors are far less forgiving than God.

Olav Audunsson is now master of a wealthy estate. He brings his wife Ingunn home. He fully intends to put the past behind them and forgive her completely. (She had a child during their years of separation, a son, born after an adulterous encounter that was less her fault than she believes it to be.) She’s unable to forgive herself. When she miscarries again and again, she comes to believe that it’s God’s punishment for her adultery and, more particularly, for abandoning her son. Olav is unable to bear her misery, so he goes and retrieves the boy from the foster parents, claiming him as his own.

This means the familial inheritance will go to an illegitimate heir who is not really Olav’s offspring. If Olav’s relatives ever found out, he’d be in big trouble for allowing the estate to pass outside the family line. It also means if Olav and Ingunn ever do have a son, he’ll take second place to the older boy. For all Olav insists it doesn’t matter to him, it does. He treats the boy as decently as he can, but he just doesn’t like him. And this drives even more of a wedge between him and his wife.

Ingunn is not the only one sunk in despair over a guilty conscience. There is also the matter of Olav’s crime. He murdered the man who seduced Ingunn and hid the evidence. All to protect her honor, of course. He grows increasingly desperate to make his peace with God but if he confesses, he’ll have to do penance, the truth will come out, and everything gained by the original secrecy will be lost. Ingunn and the boy will be harmed. Ingunn insists he can’t do that to her. So he continues to live with the unconfessed sin, growing more and more taciturn and withdrawn.

Ingunn is not a healthy woman to begin with and multiple miscarriages strip her of any strength she might have had. She’s also a terrible housekeeper/female head of an estate. The only time she shows any gumption is in defense of her son. She’s a shadow of her former self. She loses all her beauty. She’s a millstone around Olav’s neck. And yet, they still love each other with the fiercely strong remnants of their original love.

Things go from terrible to unbearable as Olav and Ingunn struggle with their despair. Every once in a while, Olav is overcome by religious conviction, but it’s leached away by Ingunn’s dependency and the knowledge that her ruined life is his fault.

This book is incredibly bleak, as this pared down plot summary shows. And yet it’s beautiful in its harsh way. The characters are so realistic, so human, that it’s impossible not to empathize with their pain.

I don’t know when Book 3 will be released but I’ll certainly read it, hoping things might turn around for Olav, but expecting they won’t.

BOOK REVIEW: Olav Audunsson. I. Vows by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally

Nobel-prize winning Sigrid Undset is best known for her three-volume novel of medieval Norway, Kristin Lavransdatter, published in 1920-1922. Less well known is her four-volume epic, The Master of Hestviken, otherwise known as Olav Audunsson. It’s also set in medieval Norway, but in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, a generation before Kristin Lavransdatter.

Tiina Nunnally has undertaken a new translation of the masterwork. The first volume, Vows, was published last year.

In this superb historical novel, we meet Olav Audunsson as a boy on the verge of manhood, living with his foster family, a family headed by Steinfinn Toresson. He’s treated with a benign neglect alongside the children of the family. Steinfinn and his wife have other problems and don’t pay much attention to what the children are getting up to.

What makes Olav unique is his bond with the eldest daughter, Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter. When they were children, the two fathers betrothed them in a silly ceremony while drunk. There has been a general acceptance of the betrothal ever since, though no one takes it very seriously except the children themselves. They grow from playmates to best friends. Neither ever questions the belief that they will spend the rest of their lives together.

Olav reaches adolescence. He’s only a year older than Ingunn, but his hormones kick into gear. She adores him, trusts him completely, and is frighteningly innocent. After a critical battle in the adult world, one in which Olav takes part, there is much celebratory drinking and carousing, and Olav and Ingunn slip away and consummate their betrothal. Not a good idea.

Olav is years away from his majority. Ingunn is only about 15. Had the foster parents lived, the marriage might have been rushed ahead, validating the union. But Steinfinn dies of his battle wounds and his wife precedes him, dying rather mysteriously. Ingunn is now a ward of her uncles, who see her as too valuable to give to Olav who, though he may have property to inherit, has no important political connections. Thinking to improve his chances of gaining the bride he thinks of as rightfully his, Olav confesses to the local bishop that he and Ingunn have already slept together. Things go from bad to worse.

The two are parted for years while Olav tries to earn enough clout to claim Ingunn. The unfortunate Ingunn is shelved in a remote estate with an elderly aunt and even more elderly grandmother. It’s a frustrating existence for Olav and a stultifying one for poor Ingunn. 

The novel delves deep into the customs and beliefs of the times. It immerses the reader in the rhythms of their daily lives and the passing of years. It shows how lives are altered by unwise choices and how one mistake compounds another. And yet, through it all, there is a beauty in the love of this pair for one another. It is, according to the author, “the simple story of a man and the people who intervene in his life.” It is that, though Olav was much more active in shaping his own life than Ingunn was allowed to be. Her passivity is painful to a modern reader, but faithful to the historical reality, which makes the novel all that more compelling.

This is gorgeous, epic, old-fashioned historical fiction, in a beautifully fluid translation. I’m looking forward to continuing the saga in book 2.

BOOK REVIEW: To Calais, in Ordinary Time by James Meek

James Meek is a difficult writer to read. I recently reviewed The People’s Act of Love and, although I struggled with the awfulness of the characters, it’s a story that stayed with me.

His current book, To Calais, in Ordinary Time, is another historical novel that is hard to read but rewarding to have read. Set in the fourteenth century during the Black Death, it’s particularly disturbing to tackle during the pandemic. The degree of superstition, denial, resignation, and grief feels suitable to the Middle Ages, which makes its parallels to today even more frightening and sad.

There are three protagonists, all starting from England where the plague is, initially, simply a rumor, who are heading to Calais for various reasons. In France, the plague is a deadly reality. As the protagonists move toward the disease, it comes to meet them.

Lady Bernadine is a young gentlewoman who is fleeing a marriage to an old man. The marriage was arranged by her widowed father who wants to exchange his daughter for that of his friend. Thus both old men can have pretty young wives. Berna, who yearns to model her life after the Romance, Roman de la Rose, was previously courted by a handsome young lord named Laurence Hacket. He asked for her hand, was refused, and left for his own estate near Calais–much to Berna’s chagrin. Since it didn’t occur to him to carry her off, she has decided to pursue him.

There is a young ploughman from the same village, Will Quate, who is in an uncomfortable half-free, half-serf position, whose greatest wish is to have his freedom recognized by the lord. To that end, he has trained as a bowman and has earned the chance to represent his lord by helping to garrison Calais. He leaves behind his betrothed, the village beauty, to whom he is not particularly attached. Along the way, he joins a band of archers who are every bit as awful as the soldiers in The People’s Act of Love.

Finally, there is a Scots proctor, schooled in Avignon, who is being sent back to France by his superiors. He will accompany the archers as a substitute for a priest, even though he insists he is not truly a priest and not qualified to hear confession or give last rites. (He hears quite a bit of confession.)

Even though the protagonists travel together, each a product of their time and place, they may as well be from different worlds. The author gives them each unique voices that add to the feeling of immersion into the fourteenth century. In many ways, they are as foreign to each other and unable to comprehend one another’s world views as they are foreign to the reader.

Ideas about war, sex, right and wrong, religion, and impending death are explored from the different perspectives of the protagonists and the characters they interact with. It’s fascinating to see how lines are blurred.

The novel is a slow read at first, but the tension builds. Even though I found the characters hard to like, it was still tragic to watch as the plague inexorably did its work.

BOOK REVIEW: Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Hurray! I’ve completed another book for the Back-to-the-Classics challenge. This time, it was the Forgotten Classic, defined as: a lesser known work by a famous author or a classic that no one reads anymore. I think my choice, Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, fits the bill either way.

Doyle is, of course, the author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories. However, he had a lot of other literary credits to his name, including seven historical novels (which he and many critics consider to be his best work.)

Sir Nigel, loosely based on the English knight Nigel Loring, is set during the early years of the Hundred Years War (appx 1350.) It follows the career of the gallant Squire Nigel Loring, an impoverished gentleman whose family lands have nearly all been stolen away by a neighboring abbey. Nigel lives with his aged mother, a formidable woman who has brought him up with the old ideals of chivalry. After a series of adventures, proving what a capable and romantic figure he is, he’s plucked up by one of King Edward’s best knights to be his squire. Nigel is to follow him off to war against the French.

After saying his farewells to a neighbor’s daughter, a serious, loyal damsel who loves him well, he pledges to return home to marry her. She doesn’t want to tie him down or hold him back, but he turns that to advantage by promising to do three honorable deeds proving his worth, entirely for her.

There are more adventures all along the way, and Nigel rises in the king’s favor as he completes more and more bold deeds. He is always chivalrous and true to his nature, sometimes impetuous to the initial dismay of knights around him, but he always prevails.

The novel is written as an old-fashioned romantic adventure, sounding in tone like medieval knights-of-yore stories. It is episodic, one thing after another, with the overarching goal to be to complete the three deeds, above and beyond the call of duty, to prove his honor and win his love. The story is battle-heavy and occasionally tension-filled, but there is never really doubt that he’ll succeed. Even when the action is not particularly realistic, it’s entertaining.

Several years ago, I was looking for medieval-type non-fantasy historical fiction for my son, who loved that kind of thing. This would have been a great one for him then. I fear he may be a bit too cynical for it now. But I recommend it for its innocent look at the notion of chivalry.

BOOK REVIEW: The Towers of Tuscany by Carol M. Cram

Most of the medieval historicals I read are set in England or France, so I was excited to get my hands on this review copy of Carol M. Cram’s wonderful novel set in Italy in the 1300s: The Towers of Tuscany.

Disclaimer: I received this ebook for free from Netgalley. This did not influence my review.

Sofia Carelli is the talented daughter of a painter, Maestro Antonio Barducci. Having had no son, he passed on his skills to his daughter–not exactly the wisest move, since it is apparently forbidden for a woman to engage in a commercial artistic endeavor. Had she hidden away in her father’s home, she might have continued to work for him in secret, but she was a beautiful and willful young lady, who fell in love with a handsome, charming young man.

Sofia gets her way. (Sofia always gets her way.) She and Giorgio Carelli were married, against her father’s better judgement. It didn’t take long for Sofia to regret her choice. Giorgio drinks and gambles. And if he knew she snuck away to the tower in their home to paint, he would punish her severely.

The marriage is a disaster, but things get worse when her father dies during a fracas at a wedding feast. (Medieval Italy=dangerous family rivalries.) Giorgio is partly to blame for the fracas. Before dying, Sofia’s father commands her to take a panel she has painted and go to Siena to seek out a friend of his, who will take her in and help her continue her work.

It’s no mean feat to run away from your husband. And it’s no more permissible in Siena for a woman to work as a painter than it is in San Gimignano (Sofia’s hometown.) But Sofia is willing to undertake any hardship, accept any risk, in order to paint.

This is a vividly written story of a headstrong woman determined to follow her muse. She refuses to be bound by the conventions of her time. She’s also a passionate woman with an eye for a handsome face. So in spite of the fact that she tells herself she won’t make the same mistake twice. . .

The storyline is compelling and the details of each of the settings and particularly of the work of painting made this a particularly enjoyable read. I could have some sympathy for Sofia; she was trapped in a time and place where it was impossible to reconcile what she wanted to do with the options available to her. However, although I understood what she was up against and admired her talent, I couldn’t like Sofia. Her arrogance I could accept. Her high opinion of her art was deserved since she was not the only one praising it. But her blithe disregard for anyone else’s feelings, the excuses she made for the hurt she caused, and her willingness to put others in danger so that she could paint made me sympathize more with her friends and family. And yet. . .aren’t great artists always self-centered like that? Still, it isn’t necessary to like Sofia to love this book. There are characters enough to admire in The Towers of Tuscany.