The Bridal Wreath
1920
Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for writing books exactly like this: novels of psychological intensity and historical magnitude that make the medieval world feel not quaint but terrifyingly alive. The Bridal Wreath opens on Kristin Lavransdatter as a girl, devoted to her father but already restive against the boundaries of her existence. When she meets the charismatic Erlend Nikulaussøn at convent school, she makes a choice that will shape the rest of her life: she defies her parents and marries for love. What follows is the beginning of an epic that spans decades, as Kristin and Erlend raise seven sons, navigate political ambition and scandal, and discover that desire and domesticity make uneasy companions. This is historical fiction that understands the past was not simpler, only differently painful. For readers who want novels that demand something of them, that linger in the mind long after the final page.
