Kristin cut Erlend badly with a last short, sharp verbal thrust and Erlend got up and silently left Husaby. He went to town, he was very angry and mused that what Kristin needed was a good beating. He beat her another way. He fucked Lady Sunniva, cuckolding her older husband Sir Baard Thorolf, a powerful man.
Predictable, unlike the preceding pages. As was what was to come when Erlend returned to Husaby. Feeling deeply ugly and dirty, he sleeps in the stable or something. The next night he dares try his bed with Kristin, who knew of his fucking Sunniva, and tells him to sleep tonight where he slept last night.
Those are predictable bookends. What lay between decidedly was not.
Had Erlend, being Erlend, merely thought with his dick yet again? Always are men the thral of pussy. Erlend was like other men, only more so. Or did Sunniva use the power of the pussy to seduce Erlend, with or without Sir Baard's knowledge?; make Erlend prisoner of her own device and prisoner too of Sir Baard, for treachery deeper than cuckoldry?
On the night of their last assignation Sunniva told Erlend he had nothing to fear from her husband, "He trusts me all too well." Erlend agreed. Lady Sunniva then turned sharply on him, "Yet you trust your wife too." A verbal quarrel flared instantly.
"Is it so, asked Sunniva threateningly, "that I was to be but a whip for you to lash your wife with?"
"Beware," said Sunniva, "that that whip smite not yourself."
Erlend did not beware. Wordlessly Erlend he left a woman again without finishing a fight, this time with blue balls.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Or, had the seed of Erlend's demise been already firmly planted in Lady Sunniva?
Not a cul de sac lol.
For Erlend had been playing a sly game too for some time and for higher stakes than lashing Kristin. Erlend did not play his game slyly enough, however.
Erlend was of royal lineage He had been playing both sides in an intrigue for and against the young Norwegian king. The king of Denmark was looking on watchfully. As was Sweden. And Russia. Erlend had gone to battle and distinguished himself. He had been present at counsels, attended by Sir Baard Thorolf, among other of the powerful, on the subject of what was to be done. He had spoken at these meetings, Erlend had, but had been sly enough to quickly alter his opinions to conform with the majority. When opposed he would immediately fold with a laugh. Kristin had observed this on occasion and thought Erlend looked weak for it. Kristin thought too that despite Erlend's distinction in battle the older men viewed him the same way, not serious enough, not a leader, and that his talk was rash, youthful and half-hearted. Thus in the minds of the other counselors Erlend was nonthreatening.
But Erlend had, or thought he had, a hidden, powerful weapon, Lady Ingebjorg Haakonsdatter. After his return to Husaby he calmed the turmoil in his soul that, "Soon, soon, for sure, would he have Lady Ingebjorg's letters." Would Lady Ingebjorg make Erlend king?
Came a day like the part in the Wizard of Oz when the whole movie changes from black-and-white to color. On this day, Kristin's consistent, firm, long-held opinion of her husband, that Erlend was inconsistent, soft and a non-entity, changed from black to white. On this day Erlend and Kristin were in the armory or something, on the second floor, Kristin was on the balcony and Erlend inside when they heard a large number of horse hoofs on approach. Sigrid Undset writes the change exquisitely:
The next moment Erlend stood by her side.
"Was it so, did you say, Kristin, that the fire in the kitchen was put out this morning?"
"Aye--Gudrid upset the broth-cauldron. We must borrow a light from Sira Eiliv--"
Erlend looked across at the priest's house/
"No; he must not be mixed in this. Gaute," he called softly to the boy [the youngest of seven sons]...Come up hither, up the stairs--no farther, or they might see you."
Kristin gazed at her husband. Like this she had never seen him before--the strained, alert calm in his voice, in his face, as he spied out southward along the road--in the whole of his tall supple form as he ran into the loft and came at once with a flat packet, sewn up in linen cloth. He gave it to the boy.
Erlend then gave the youngster specific, detailed instructions on the flat packet. I excerpt Miss Undset:
Hide this in your breast--mark well what I say to you. You must save these letters--more is at stake than you can understand, my Gaute. Put your rake over your shoulder and go quietly down across the fields till you come to the alder-thickets. Keep well among the bushes till you get down to the wood...creep through the thickest brush all the way across to Skjoldvirkstad. When you get there, make sure first that all is quiet...Should you see signs of aught amiss or...strangers...then hide...But should you be sure all is safe, go down to the farm and give this to Ulf [Erlend's most trusted aide]. But if you cannot give the letters into his hands while you are sure that none is near, burn them the moment you can...But be sure that both writing and seals are altogether burnt up...God help us, my son--these be great matters to put in the hands of a boy of ten...--the lives and welfare of many good men--understand you that much is at stake, Gaute?"
"Aye, father. I have understood all that you have said to me."
Pause: First, I cannot follow directions. I cannot follow them at 65 and I could not follow them at 45 or 25. At TEN? Puhleaze. Second, as I was transcribing Miss Undset I put myself in Kristin's position-- as a contemporary American Black mother with baby's daddy such as Erlend and a child of TEN. "Say what? You ain't doin' no such thing with my child! Do it your own weed-smokin' ass self or run your black ass back to that side Ho you got in town!" And if Black Erlend raised his fist to Black Kristin then there'd be nothing left of Erlend but a jig zaw puzzle on the floor with a couple of pieces gone for the cops to clean up. We now return to 14th century Norway. Unpause.
Erlend ran up into the armoury...ran over to a chest...took out some written parchments. He tore the seals off and trampled them to pieces..., tore the parchments into rags...wrapped them together...and dropped [them] from the window-hole into the...nettles...and closed the shutter. The noise of hoofs came loudly now and from near by.
...
He put the fragments of the seals down in side the bosom of her dress. ["Get your Black hands away from me!"]
Are you in peril, Erlend? ["He got weed! He got weed! Beat his Black ass!"]
That is exceptionally well done by Miss Undset. Her signature writing technique is to get into her characters' minds and write their thoughts for her readers. Kristin does not know What. The. Fuck. but as semi-literate people often do she reads people better than do the educated, and Kristin just stood in awe of Erlend in this scene.
Sir Baard is with about thirty other armed men and they arrest Erlend for high treason.
"We must find forth the letters you have had from Lady Ingebjorg Haakonsdatter," said Tore Eindridesson.
But those are the ones that Erlend, quicker of mind than ever he has been all put together before entrusted to TEN YEAR OLD GAUTE.
Cherche la femme. Lady Sunniva had betrayed Erlend. Somehow she found the letters and she knew how to read.
Kristin though is wetting her panties she is so impressed with Erlend. And the great change occurs.
Erlend looked down into her face--he saw naught in it but love: [He done seen naught love in it befo!]
"Erlend--husband."
...
"When will you come back, Erlend dearest?" she whispered pleadingly.
"That must be as God will, my wife."
...He was never used to speak to her but by her christened name, and these last words of his shook her to the very heart.
...
Erlend, Erlend—
...
Erlend, beloved—!
Definite change Ho ho ho.
There is then nearly a full page of the meaningless detail that Miss Undset is intent on burying the reader under.
Kristin's epiphany was not limited to Erlend. She had the sudden realization that she had been a bitch to Erlend all of these years.
And yet she saw to-night that she was still the Kristin of Jorundgaard, who had never learned to endure an ungentle word...
Aye. Aye. Aye. 'Twas true that she had gone on storing up, year in, year out, the memory of every wound he had dealth her...She had tended the memory of each time when he had offended her, as one tends a festering sore...she knew that towards others whe was not petty-minded, but when he was concerned she grew so straightway. When Erlend was in question, she could forget nothing...
Towards him she never grew wiser, never stronger. [*star* above stronger]
And here comes, to me, a great moment in the book. She might strive to seem, in her life with him too, capable and brave and strong...but 'twas not true that she was so. Ever, ever had longing gnawed within her--the longing to be again his Kristin of the woods of Gerdarud.
She wanted, in other words, to be always the naughty, lusty 16 year-old who drove Erlend mad with desire (and which got her knocked up with child before their wedding and six times since). And that was the grudge that Kristin's mother, Ragnfrid, bore in her heart all of her life toward Lavrans. I have written before that I am not sure, and I am still not sure, exactly what the problem was, if it was situational impotence on Lavrans or if he was to young and unsure of himself to "grab Ragnfrid by the pussy" and take her, I am not sure, and Lavrans did impregnate Ragnfrid several times, at least as many as Kritsin's seven, but whatever the precise contours, Ragnfrid did not feel pursued and she desperately wanted to be pursued lustily by Lavrans and was embitterred all of their married life until Lavrans literally lay on his deathbed. So, the point is: the quirks of this in Ragnfrid were passed on to Kristin. The epiphany may have come too late for Kristin as well. I don't think she is ever going to see Erlend again. High treason will get your Black ass beat beat good and then some, today in 21 century America and then in 14th century Norway. And I am sure that I inadvertently caught while reading a review or something that Kristin ends up alone. There was law in in Norway then as there was in the English-speaking world until recently that there is no such thing as marital property. It was patrimony. The man's estate did not pass to his widow. Ragnfrid did not inherit Jorungaard, she had to leave the estate and live with another poor widow whose room and board Ragnfrid paid by taking care of the other and Ragnfrid died utterly alone. After Erlend was taken away by the gendarme Kristin sits on a hillside:
...the manor lay there in the evening light like a dream vision that might melt away...
...
Mother, Gaute says to Kristin upon his return from his errand, know you what they [the letters] say? They say that father--would have been King--" [original emphasis]
But Gaute had had to burn them all.
Predictable, unlike the preceding pages. As was what was to come when Erlend returned to Husaby. Feeling deeply ugly and dirty, he sleeps in the stable or something. The next night he dares try his bed with Kristin, who knew of his fucking Sunniva, and tells him to sleep tonight where he slept last night.
Those are predictable bookends. What lay between decidedly was not.
Had Erlend, being Erlend, merely thought with his dick yet again? Always are men the thral of pussy. Erlend was like other men, only more so. Or did Sunniva use the power of the pussy to seduce Erlend, with or without Sir Baard's knowledge?; make Erlend prisoner of her own device and prisoner too of Sir Baard, for treachery deeper than cuckoldry?
On the night of their last assignation Sunniva told Erlend he had nothing to fear from her husband, "He trusts me all too well." Erlend agreed. Lady Sunniva then turned sharply on him, "Yet you trust your wife too." A verbal quarrel flared instantly.
"Is it so, asked Sunniva threateningly, "that I was to be but a whip for you to lash your wife with?"
"Beware," said Sunniva, "that that whip smite not yourself."
Erlend did not beware. Wordlessly Erlend he left a woman again without finishing a fight, this time with blue balls.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Or, had the seed of Erlend's demise been already firmly planted in Lady Sunniva?
Not a cul de sac lol.
For Erlend had been playing a sly game too for some time and for higher stakes than lashing Kristin. Erlend did not play his game slyly enough, however.
Erlend was of royal lineage He had been playing both sides in an intrigue for and against the young Norwegian king. The king of Denmark was looking on watchfully. As was Sweden. And Russia. Erlend had gone to battle and distinguished himself. He had been present at counsels, attended by Sir Baard Thorolf, among other of the powerful, on the subject of what was to be done. He had spoken at these meetings, Erlend had, but had been sly enough to quickly alter his opinions to conform with the majority. When opposed he would immediately fold with a laugh. Kristin had observed this on occasion and thought Erlend looked weak for it. Kristin thought too that despite Erlend's distinction in battle the older men viewed him the same way, not serious enough, not a leader, and that his talk was rash, youthful and half-hearted. Thus in the minds of the other counselors Erlend was nonthreatening.
But Erlend had, or thought he had, a hidden, powerful weapon, Lady Ingebjorg Haakonsdatter. After his return to Husaby he calmed the turmoil in his soul that, "Soon, soon, for sure, would he have Lady Ingebjorg's letters." Would Lady Ingebjorg make Erlend king?
Came a day like the part in the Wizard of Oz when the whole movie changes from black-and-white to color. On this day, Kristin's consistent, firm, long-held opinion of her husband, that Erlend was inconsistent, soft and a non-entity, changed from black to white. On this day Erlend and Kristin were in the armory or something, on the second floor, Kristin was on the balcony and Erlend inside when they heard a large number of horse hoofs on approach. Sigrid Undset writes the change exquisitely:
The next moment Erlend stood by her side.
"Was it so, did you say, Kristin, that the fire in the kitchen was put out this morning?"
"Aye--Gudrid upset the broth-cauldron. We must borrow a light from Sira Eiliv--"
Erlend looked across at the priest's house/
"No; he must not be mixed in this. Gaute," he called softly to the boy [the youngest of seven sons]...Come up hither, up the stairs--no farther, or they might see you."
Kristin gazed at her husband. Like this she had never seen him before--the strained, alert calm in his voice, in his face, as he spied out southward along the road--in the whole of his tall supple form as he ran into the loft and came at once with a flat packet, sewn up in linen cloth. He gave it to the boy.
Erlend then gave the youngster specific, detailed instructions on the flat packet. I excerpt Miss Undset:
Hide this in your breast--mark well what I say to you. You must save these letters--more is at stake than you can understand, my Gaute. Put your rake over your shoulder and go quietly down across the fields till you come to the alder-thickets. Keep well among the bushes till you get down to the wood...creep through the thickest brush all the way across to Skjoldvirkstad. When you get there, make sure first that all is quiet...Should you see signs of aught amiss or...strangers...then hide...But should you be sure all is safe, go down to the farm and give this to Ulf [Erlend's most trusted aide]. But if you cannot give the letters into his hands while you are sure that none is near, burn them the moment you can...But be sure that both writing and seals are altogether burnt up...God help us, my son--these be great matters to put in the hands of a boy of ten...--the lives and welfare of many good men--understand you that much is at stake, Gaute?"
"Aye, father. I have understood all that you have said to me."
Pause: First, I cannot follow directions. I cannot follow them at 65 and I could not follow them at 45 or 25. At TEN? Puhleaze. Second, as I was transcribing Miss Undset I put myself in Kristin's position-- as a contemporary American Black mother with baby's daddy such as Erlend and a child of TEN. "Say what? You ain't doin' no such thing with my child! Do it your own weed-smokin' ass self or run your black ass back to that side Ho you got in town!" And if Black Erlend raised his fist to Black Kristin then there'd be nothing left of Erlend but a jig zaw puzzle on the floor with a couple of pieces gone for the cops to clean up. We now return to 14th century Norway. Unpause.
Erlend ran up into the armoury...ran over to a chest...took out some written parchments. He tore the seals off and trampled them to pieces..., tore the parchments into rags...wrapped them together...and dropped [them] from the window-hole into the...nettles...and closed the shutter. The noise of hoofs came loudly now and from near by.
...
He put the fragments of the seals down in side the bosom of her dress. ["Get your Black hands away from me!"]
Are you in peril, Erlend? ["He got weed! He got weed! Beat his Black ass!"]
That is exceptionally well done by Miss Undset. Her signature writing technique is to get into her characters' minds and write their thoughts for her readers. Kristin does not know What. The. Fuck. but as semi-literate people often do she reads people better than do the educated, and Kristin just stood in awe of Erlend in this scene.
Sir Baard is with about thirty other armed men and they arrest Erlend for high treason.
"We must find forth the letters you have had from Lady Ingebjorg Haakonsdatter," said Tore Eindridesson.
But those are the ones that Erlend, quicker of mind than ever he has been all put together before entrusted to TEN YEAR OLD GAUTE.
Cherche la femme. Lady Sunniva had betrayed Erlend. Somehow she found the letters and she knew how to read.
Kristin though is wetting her panties she is so impressed with Erlend. And the great change occurs.
Erlend looked down into her face--he saw naught in it but love: [He done seen naught love in it befo!]
"Erlend--husband."
...
"When will you come back, Erlend dearest?" she whispered pleadingly.
"That must be as God will, my wife."
...He was never used to speak to her but by her christened name, and these last words of his shook her to the very heart.
...
Erlend, Erlend—
...
Erlend, beloved—!
Definite change Ho ho ho.
There is then nearly a full page of the meaningless detail that Miss Undset is intent on burying the reader under.
Kristin's epiphany was not limited to Erlend. She had the sudden realization that she had been a bitch to Erlend all of these years.
And yet she saw to-night that she was still the Kristin of Jorundgaard, who had never learned to endure an ungentle word...
Aye. Aye. Aye. 'Twas true that she had gone on storing up, year in, year out, the memory of every wound he had dealth her...She had tended the memory of each time when he had offended her, as one tends a festering sore...she knew that towards others whe was not petty-minded, but when he was concerned she grew so straightway. When Erlend was in question, she could forget nothing...
Towards him she never grew wiser, never stronger. [*star* above stronger]
And here comes, to me, a great moment in the book. She might strive to seem, in her life with him too, capable and brave and strong...but 'twas not true that she was so. Ever, ever had longing gnawed within her--the longing to be again his Kristin of the woods of Gerdarud.
She wanted, in other words, to be always the naughty, lusty 16 year-old who drove Erlend mad with desire (and which got her knocked up with child before their wedding and six times since). And that was the grudge that Kristin's mother, Ragnfrid, bore in her heart all of her life toward Lavrans. I have written before that I am not sure, and I am still not sure, exactly what the problem was, if it was situational impotence on Lavrans or if he was to young and unsure of himself to "grab Ragnfrid by the pussy" and take her, I am not sure, and Lavrans did impregnate Ragnfrid several times, at least as many as Kritsin's seven, but whatever the precise contours, Ragnfrid did not feel pursued and she desperately wanted to be pursued lustily by Lavrans and was embitterred all of their married life until Lavrans literally lay on his deathbed. So, the point is: the quirks of this in Ragnfrid were passed on to Kristin. The epiphany may have come too late for Kristin as well. I don't think she is ever going to see Erlend again. High treason will get your Black ass beat beat good and then some, today in 21 century America and then in 14th century Norway. And I am sure that I inadvertently caught while reading a review or something that Kristin ends up alone. There was law in in Norway then as there was in the English-speaking world until recently that there is no such thing as marital property. It was patrimony. The man's estate did not pass to his widow. Ragnfrid did not inherit Jorungaard, she had to leave the estate and live with another poor widow whose room and board Ragnfrid paid by taking care of the other and Ragnfrid died utterly alone. After Erlend was taken away by the gendarme Kristin sits on a hillside:
...the manor lay there in the evening light like a dream vision that might melt away...
...
Mother, Gaute says to Kristin upon his return from his errand, know you what they [the letters] say? They say that father--would have been King--" [original emphasis]
But Gaute had had to burn them all.
