The Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) was internationally acclaimed for the historical novel Kristen Lavransdatter. She won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1928.

Sigrid Undset was born on May 20, 1882, in Kalundborg, Denmark, the daughter of a distinguished Norwegian archeologist and a Danish mother. She grew up in Oslo in a closely knit family where her interest in history and literature was early awakened. Her father died when she was 11, leaving the family in financial difficulties. Her first 11 years are movingly described in the autobiographical novel The Longest Years (1934). She had intended to study painting but was forced to work in an office for 10 years, until she began to earn enough from her books to quit and devote herself to writing.

Sigrid Undset's authorship was a reaction against the Norwegian literature of her contemporaries. On the basis of her experiences among the working women of Oslo--whose rootless lives seemed...