The late Norwegian author Sigrid Undset won many prizes and honours in her lifetime, not least the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. Now the bishop of Oslo has launched a process that he hopes will make her a saint in the Catholic Church.
Undset, best known for her Nobel-winning trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, lived a remarkable if relatively short life, from her birth in Denmark in 1882 to her death at 67 at her home in Lillehammer (now a national historic site) in 1949. She overcame illness in her family, the loss of her father at a young age and years supplementing her mother’s small pension in Oslo as a secretary while writing novels on the side.
She debuted with Fru Maarta Oulie in 1907, and could finally become a full-time author in her mid-20s. She wrote a novel a year, with Jenny in 1911 viewed as her breakthrough and ultimately the trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, released from 1920-1922 and based on life in the Middle Ages for a young Norwegian woman. That won her the Nobel Prize, and in the meantime, she’d decided she wanted to become a Catholic.
She’d been married long before that, in 1912, after falling in love with the already-married Norwegian artist Ander Svarstad whom she’d met while on a stipend and living in Italy. They had three children but separated in 1919 and she moved home to Norway and Lillehammer. She converted to Catholicism in 1924, joined the Dominicans and took the name of Sister Olave.
Undset had, meanwhile, become politically active, denouncing both Adolph Hitler and his Nazi movement and supporting Jewish rights. When Germany invaded Norway, Undset felt compelled to flee, setting off on a harrowing escape through Northern Norway and into Sweden, then crossing Russia and spending time in Japan before managing to sail to California and travel on to New York. She spent the war years in the US, urging US involvement in the war against Nazi Germany. She could finally return to Norway when the war ended in 1945, and lived in Lillehammer until her death in 1949.
Now the Bishop of Oslo, Fredrik Hansen, wants Undset to be declared a saint in the Catholic Church. He announced last week that he was “starting the process” towards sanctifying Undset, declaring in a public announcement in Oslo that she “is much more than an author and Nobel Prize winner. For us, she is a mentor within the Christian faith and a life in the search for holiness.”
Her early years, especially after meeting Svarstad and then divorcing him, don’t seem in keeping with a saint’s, but Hansen stresses how Undset was a model for showing care for the poor and downtrodden. She also devoted much of her own life to helping others. She was the first woman to be royally honoured with the Storkors av St Olav, the bishop noted, and inspired “so many of the faithful” to a Christian life and wrote about saints from the Middle Ages. He admitted that the process of becoming a saint can take many years. She’s also supposed to have carried out at least two miracles in her lifetime, though, and proving that can be difficult.
Reaction to the bishop’s initiative has varied, with one Norwegian literature professor calling it a “gimmick” and another finding it “exciting” if difficult. “It seems like this has come as a surprise to many,” another professor of religion, Dag Øistein Endsjø, told newspaper Klassekampen. He thinks the bishop is acting on his own initiative to sanctify Undset.
Endsjø stressed that the process of making someone a saint is thorough, can take many years and must meet strict demands of the Catholic Church. What might Undset fans who are atheists think? “If they don’t tolerate the religious perspective, they wouldn’t be reading Undset at all,” he said.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
