Embracing the Straitjacket” was the somewhat unsavoury headline of a three-column presentation in The New York Times Book Review on June 3rd 2001 of a new Undset book.

Bruce Bawer, in his review, introduces Sigrid Undset as both “a flagrant violator and vociferous champion of the sex roles of her day, an intriguing contention. That Sigrid Undset's most important works now appear in new editions to the vast English reading public, is in itself an exciting fact.

Steerforth Press has put together a volume called The Unknown Sigrid Undset consisting of Tiina Nunnally’s new translation of Jenny, which was the novel that constituted Sigrid Undset’s breakthrough as a writer in 1911; it also includes 17 letters to her penpal Dea Hedberg, written by Sigrid Undset in her formative years between 1900 and 1913, and finally two short stories translated by Naomi Walford. These were originally published in Four Stories in 1959.  

Sigrid Undset’s novel Jenny (1911) was first published in English by Alfred A.Knopf in 1921, seven years before she won the Nobel Prize for her trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter. The medieval novels in English versions followed in 1927-30, and have since then never been out of print. Perhaps Tim Page is correct when he in his introduction to The Unknown Sigrid Undset calls her trilogy a set of “once best-selling volumes”, but the fact is that for a long time her books have been little read and less discussed in the English-speaking world. Undset’s popularity in Eastern Europe is a totally different story. When Elvi Lumet’s translation of Kristin Lavransdatter appeared in Estonia in 1989 it sold 80 000 copies in a population of 1,6 million. Elvi Lumet is an outstanding translator who has received the St.Olav medal for her work.

The English versions of Undset’s works were long overdue for revision. Tiina Nunnally has done an extremely important job in her translation of  The Wreath, The Wife and The Cross, appearing in Penguin’s Twentieth-Century Classics series in 1997, 1999 and 2000 respectively. And she has done her work extremely well. Where the older Scott/Archer editions sound “medievalese” and like a poor and foggy imitation of Sir Walter Scott, Nunnally’s language is clear and bold, like Undset’s own. On May 21st 2001 Nunnally was awarded the PEN Book-of-the Month Club Translation Prize for having “returned a masterpiece of Scandinavian literature to the English bookshelf.” Our sincere congratulations!

Publisert i årsskriftet for Sigrid Undset Selskapet,

Gymnadenia, 2001

ISSN 0909-4225