Set in thirteenth-century Norway, a land racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas, The Axeis the first volume in Sigrid Undset's epic tetralogy, The Master of Hestviken. In it we meet Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, who were betrothed as children and raised as brother and sister. Now, in the heedlessness of youth, they become lovers, unaware that their ardor will forge the first link in a chain of murder, exile, and disgrace. Soaringly romantic and psychologically nuanced, Undset's novel is also a meticulous re-creation of a world split between...
Set in thirteenth-century Norway, a land racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas, The Axeis the first volume in Sigrid Undset's...
Powerfully written and filled with magnificent vignettes of the daily life of a medieval estate, The Son Avenger suggests a Greek tragedy whose vision of fate coexists with a Christian sense of suffering and forgiveness. And in the somber, twilight figure of Olav the Bad, Undset has created an antihero as moving as Oedipus or King Lear.
Powerfully written and filled with magnificent vignettes of the daily life of a medieval estate, The Son Avenger suggests a Greek tragedy whose...
