The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter #1)(4)
The prize was then worth 156,000 kroner, and Undset gave it all away. Part of the money went to the scholarship fund of the Norwegian Writers Union, but the bulk of the award was divided up to establish two foundations. The first would provide support to Norwegian families with mentally retarded children who needed financial assistance to care for their children at home. This was something that Undset had dreamed of doing for many years, and the stipend was named the Maren Charlotte Undset Svarstad Grant, in honor of her daughter. The other foundation was established to provide financial aid to needy Catholic children in Norway who wanted to attend parochial schools.
Eleven years later, when the Soviets invaded Finland, Undset would sell her gold Nobel medallion for 25,000 kroner and give the money to the relief effort for Finnish children.
During the 1930s, Sigrid Undset’s life was a whirlwind of literary activity. As a world-famous author, she was much in demand. She served two terms as president of the Norwegian Writers Union and attended an endless number of meetings and functions associated with this role. She continued to write articles and reviews, and she published four more novels, several collections of essays, and an autobiographical novel based on her childhood entitled Elleve aar (translated into English as The Longest Years).
At the same time, she continued to care for her daughter and manage the household in Lillehammer with the help of her long-time housekeeper. At Bjerkeb?k, Undset always gained some measure of peace by escaping the demands of everyday life to work in her garden. Ever since she was a child, Undset had been an avid botanist. As an eighteen-year-old she described in a letter her love of nature as “that hypnotic immersion in the corolla of a rose when you have stared at it for so long that all outlines are erased and you become dizzy with crimson.” She said that she longed to “disappear into nature so that you cease to feel or think, but with all your senses you greedily draw in the light and colors, the rustling of leaves and the trickling of underground streams, the sun and the shifting shadows—that is happiness, nirvana.”
Undset’s love of nature so permeated her world view that it became synonymous with the truth she sought to portray in her novels, the truth that her mother had enjoined her to write about. In a speech given during the 1940s she explained what she meant by a “true novel”: We often see the word “novel” defined as the opposite of “facts.” And of course those kinds of novels do exist. But even those types of novels do not necessarily have to be the opposite of “truth.” Facts may be true, but they are not truths—just as wooden crates or fence posts or doors or furniture are not “wood” in the same way that a forest is, since it consists of the living and growing material from which these things are made.... The true novel, if you understand what I mean by that term, must also make use of facts, but above all it must be concerned with the truth that lies behind them—the wild mountains that are the source of the “tame” cobblestones of the pavement or the artistically hewn stones in a work of sculpture; the living forest which provides timber for the sawmills and pulp for the billions of tons of paper which we use and misuse. Then these facts will be of secondary importance to the author... they are not original; they originate from something else.
Sigrid Undset had a remarkable ability to see beyond the “facts,” to portray the lives of her characters in realistic fashion and yet with great psychological insight. She herself said that “to be a writer is to be able to live lives that are not one’s own.” In Kristin Lavransdatter, the meticulously researched details of medieval life provide a rich backdrop for the narrative. But for modern readers, the power of the novel lies not so much in the authenticity of detail as in the author’s deep understanding of the passions and torments of the human heart.
The last years of Undset’s life were a testament to the courage and strength of her own heart. In 1939, she lost both her mother (who had been a vital presence in her life) and her daughter. Then on April 20, 1940, the Germans began to advance north through Norway, and Sigrid Undset had to flee, with barely enough time to pack a suitcase.
Undset had long been an outspoken critic of Nazism, and her books had been banned in Germany. She had offered aid to refugees from Central Europe, and she had even taken in three Finnish children, orphaned by the war. The Norwegian government feared that she might be forced to use her considerable reputation for Nazi propaganda purposes. She was advised to leave the country at once.
After an arduous journey over the mountains and by sea, Undset finally reached Stockholm on May 11, and there she received the devastating news that her eldest son, Anders, had fallen in battle at Gausdal two weeks before. At the end of July she and her younger son, Hans, left Sweden and traveled overland through Russia and Siberia to Japan, where they boarded a ship for San Francisco.
For the next five years Sigrid Undset lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn, New York. During her years of exile she often traveled around the United States on long lecture tours, speaking about the current situation in Norway, as well as literary topics. She became friends with Willa Cather and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. She was a tireless promoter of Nordic literature and wrote countless articles for newspapers and magazines. She also published essays and children’s stories in English.
By the time Undset finally returned to Norway in 1945, the long years of the war had taken a heavy toll on both her energy and her health. She had endured great personal losses, and her home in Lillehammer would never be the same. The Germans had occupied Bjerkeb?k for several years, and what they didn’t steal they chopped up for firewood, including her father’s desk, at which she had written Kristin Lavransdatter and all her other novels. Although Undset continued to write and to plan literary projects, her artistic zeal and physical strength were spent.