It seems to me no other subject inspires writers to greatness than does nature. Fenimore Cooper wrote stilted prose, his dialogue was preposterous, his story-telling was strained to fit the literary a la mode, but my God, his description of Bess' coming home in her father's sleigh, the mountains, the lake, the cold, the frost--if The Pioneers had not opened with that demonstration of writerly ability noone would have read the book.

Sigrid Undset was a more careful writer than Cooper, Kristin Labransdatter is already subtly colored, one would know Kristin on the streets of Oslo, and, to digress a moment, there really does seem to be truth to the criticism that men, generally, (Dickens specifically) do not write women well (Larry McMurtry a notable exception); I am not far along enough into Kristin Labransdatter to know for sure women, or this woman, at any rate, writes men less well than she writes women, in fact I have just started a chapter on the main male character, Kristin's father, but so far, he has been drawn as a type, the no-man-can-ever-be-as-great stereotype of an adoring daughter, and, ending our digression, it may be indication that women, specifically Undset, has this gender difficulty as well that Lavrans Bjorgulfson opens with a description of nature:

'Twas as though the gleams of light had a voice of their own, and joined in the river's song...

Small threads of water shone high up on the fell-sides, that stood wrapped in blue haze...The heat brooded and quivered [Making the inanimate animate is an effective, if standard literary device.] the meadows...shimmered like silk where the breaths of wind passed over...as soon as the sun was down...the strong, cool, sourish breath of fap...--it was as though the earth gave out a long, lightened sigh.

That's pretty doggone good.