"It seemed to her a mystery that she could not comprehend, but she was certain that God had held her firmly in a pact which had been made for her, without her knowing it, from a love that had been poured over her — and in spite of her willfulness, in spite of her melancholy, earthbound heart, some of that love had stayed inside her, had worked on her like sun on the earth, had driven forth a crop that neither the fiercest fire of passion nor its stormiest anger could completely destroy"

There is plenty of tragedy in this final book of the trilogy. Kristin loses several family members to death, even before the black plague comes to Norway. She and Erland still have a tumultuous relationship. He continues to be lackadaisical about protecting his sons' inheritances, and she continues to hold a hatred and resentfulness towards him. She finally makes peace with Erland, and let's go of her resentment towards him on his deathbed. From there she works only to secure the welfare of her sons. After this is done she becomes a nun, and she nurses those with the black plague. This was actually the most interesting part of the book to me. Kristin eventually gets the black plague, herself, and dies. Even though this novel ends with her death, she finally let's go of her guilt, learns to trust in God, and dies in peace. This book moved a lot faster for me than The Wife. Like the previous books in the trilogy, The Cross is beautifully written, despite being a bit wordy and repetitive in some areas, with a strong theme of love and redemption. This trilogy is not an easy read, but it's definitely worth it.

CAWPILE Rating:
C- 10
A- 10
W- 8
P- 8
I- 9
L- 9
E- 9
Avg= 9= ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#backtotheclassics (Classic Tragic Novel)
#mmdchallenge (three books by the same author) ( )

[This is my review of all three volumes, not simply the last]
Kristin Lavransdatter is the epic story (over 1,100 pages) of a woman from birth to death in early 14th century Norway. The title character wrestles throughout the work with pride and passion; she is extraordinarily determined, but her determination is often expressed as willful pigheadedness. She marries for love, defying her parents, and raises a large family of sons. The work addresses—in highly detailed, completely believable descriptions—her relationships: with her parents and siblings, with her husband, and with her sons. The level of detail is astonishing—Undset’s depictions of everything from daily life to customs to religious practices have understandably won admiration from scholars. I found that one of the great successes of the work is its wholly believable setting: Undset creates a universe and her writing is so accessible that the reader is completely absorbed very early on. Characters are fully developed, completely human, and their relationships thoroughly convincing.
The other major theme of the work is Kristin Lavransdatter’s relationship to her church and her religion; the work is saturated in Undset’s own crisis of faith that resulted in her conversion to Catholicism in 1924 (the book came out in three volumes between 1920 and 1927). (Undset had a largely secular upbringing in Norway, a overwhelmingly Lutheran country.) There was occasionally too much emphasis on this aspect of the story for me (portions can read as if a sermon was being preached) and it seemed to reflect a bit too vividly Undset’s own struggles, but she succeeds in tying everything together in the end. Considering Undset was in her late 30s and early 40s when she wrote this, there is a remarkable perceptiveness, a “worldly” wisdom, that wouldn’t be expected of a writer so young. No doubt her own personal circumstances heavily influenced much of the writing, but the work is exceptional under any circumstances. ( )

With [b:The Cross|6219|The Cross (Kristin Lavransdatter, #3)|Sigrid Undset|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1446567677l/6219._SY75_.jpg|1069914], I have now completed the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy of [a:Sigrid Undset|4203|Sigrid Undset|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1352776655p2/4203.jpg], and my reaction to the end of this book was to want to pick up book one and start all over again. What an amazing story this turned out to be. By the time I reached the final section of this installment, I felt I knew Kristen intimately. Along the way, I fell in love with her father, Lavrens; her jilted lover, Simon; her reckless and charming husband, Erlend; several of her sons, a couple of priests, and numerous smaller characters.

This is a book about self-realization, about relationships and how they shape us, and about our relationship with God and how He carries and sustains us.

Then had it been the burden of her burning prayer, that might this poor, unhappy child but be made whole in body and in wits, she would crave for naught more...She thought of Gaute, sitting his great iron-grey, a brave and goodly horseman. And she herself--not many women of her age night to half a hundred years, were blessed with such health; she had marked it well on her journey across the mountains. Lord, give me but this and this and this--then will I thank Thee and crave no more than this and this and this--

Never, it seemed to her, had she prayed to God for aught else than that He might grant her her own will. And she had got always what she wished--most. And now she sat here with a bruised spirit--not because she had sinned against God, but because she was miscontent that it had been granted her to follow the devices of her own heart to the journey’s end.

How many of us are guilty of this? Always wanting our own way, always promising God not to ask any other boon if he grants us this one.

These books are religious in the finest kind of way, because they explore the spiritual side of man and his need for God and because, in this historical context, they are perfectly accurate. There was law and religious law, both imposed on the people and often completely overlapping, religious leaders sitting in judgement of both civil and moral trespasses.

Think you, woman, child that you still are in your old age, that ‘tis God punishing for the sin, when you must reap sorrow and humiliation because you followed your lusts and your overweening pride over paths that God has forbidden His children to tread? Would you say that you had punished your children if they scalded their hands when they took up the boiling kettle you had forbidden them to touch, or if the slippery ice broke under them that you had warned them not to go upon? Have you not understood, when the brittle ice broke beneath you--that you were drawn under each time you let go of God’s hand, and you were saved from out the deep each time you called on Him?

This tale of Kristen’s stepping on the ice and being saved time and again, is one of the most gripping I have ever encountered. If you don’t mind a book that breaks your heart to the extent that you have to take breaks to wash away the tears, this might be a book for you.
( )

En underbar serie om Kristin Lavransdotter. Så fantastiskt Välskrivet och man känner verkligen tidsandan. Riktigt bra litteratur. ( )

The concluding part of the iconic Norwegian medieval trilogy, opening with Kristin already entering her own middle age. She's the mother of seven sons ranging from toddler to near-adult and is managing a large farm. But there are still all sorts of unresolved problems from her past to deal with, and it's not long before her relative happiness starts unravelling. Also, we're heading into the mid-14th century, and we all know what that means in plot terms...

I think this is the part of the trilogy where Kristin's character gets most interesting, as Undset reshapes some rather 20th-century ways of looking at the problems of marriage and motherhood into terms that fit together (apparently) seamlessly with very medieval approaches to law, custom and Christian belief. At times it comes uncomfortably close to being Freud in a wimple, but it just about manages to remain plausible, whilst making us see the absurdity of a lot of romantic ideas about medieval life. Nowadays we're quite used to thinking of the Middle Ages as a time of mud, smells, frightening diseases and sudden, arbitrary violence between men who went around fully armed all the time, where unhappy marriages cannot have been any less common than they are now. But in 1922, if you'd grown up on Walter Scott, that must have been quite a shocking thought. ( )