At sixteen, Sigrid Undset left school to support the family income by working as an office clerk. She took up writing in her spare time and her first novel, completed when she was twenty-two, was rejected by a publisher who told her historical novels were “not her line.” [1]
Sigrid Undset was born on 20 May 1882 in Denmark, but her family moved to Oslo, Norway, when she was just two years old. Her father, Ingvald Martin Undset, was an archaeologist, while her mother, Charlotte, came from a family of merchants and shipowners. Sigrid, the eldest of three sisters, grew up in a household steeped in cultural influences, surrounded by books and art that would shape her future writing.
Her early life was marked by both intellectual richness and hardship. Her father passed away when she was only eleven, leaving her mother to support the family. Despite financial challenges, her mother was committed to Sigrid’s education, ensuring she was exposed to multiple languages and literature, which fueled her passion for writing and sharpened her literary instincts.
After completing her schooling, Undset worked as a secretary and briefly as a typist. She began to write poetry and essays, gradually gaining some recognition. It was her later turn to historical fiction, however, that established her as a literary force. In 1912, she married Norwegian painter Anders Castus Svarstad, and together they had three children. Their marriage, however, was troubled and ended in divorce in 1919—a bold and scandalous decision at the time.
Undset began writing Kristin Lavransdatter in the early 1920s, when she was already an established writer with several novels, essays, and poetry collections to her name. This epic trilogy, set in medieval Norway, follows the life of a woman from childhood to old age, delving into themes of love, faith, and society. The success of Kristin Lavransdatter earned Undset the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, making her the third woman to receive this prestigious honour.
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