Sigrid Undset brought to her writing an extensive knowledge of the Middle Ages and a sharp sense of the contradictions in the life of the modern individual. She wrote poetry and drama, but prose was the principal form in which she expressed herself. Undset's many essays and articles on history, literature, and religion offer important insights into her ideas, but the artistic voice of Undset's fiction distinguishes her as one of the most significant authors of twentieth-century Norway. From 1907 to 1939 she produced more than twenty novels and collections of short stories; her novel Jenny (1911; translated, 1920) and her medieval trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-1922; translated, 1923-1927) are classics of Norwegian literature. In 1928, in recognition of her novels set in the Middle Ages, Undset followed Selma Lagerlöf as the second Scandinavian woman, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Knut Hamsun as the third Norwegian, to receive the...