The Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, Sigrid Undset’s most famous work, is the story of an ordinary woman’s life in fourteenth-century Norway. It received immediate and worldwide appreciation as an exemplar of historical fiction and spiritual sensibility: hailed as the “noblest work of fiction ever to have been inspired by the Catholic art of life”; ranked amongst the greatest novels in world literature; compared favorably to Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov; and applauded for its revelation of the medieval world “with the richness and fullness of indisputable genius.”

At the heart of Kristin Lavransdatter, the source of its dramatic power and poignant beauty, is religion―the relationship between creature and Creator. Leaving no gap between this world and God’s world, Undset tells her trilogy with unwavering courage and conviction in the facts of man’s freedom and God’s mercy.