The Wreath: Kristin Lavransdatter #1

“The children sat down on the very end of a ledge, and Kristin stared with big eyes—never had she imagined that the world was so huge or so vast.”

By the end of the novel, Kristin has entered into a phase of her life where she has experienced almost all there is to experience in life; but here, at the tender age of seven, she is awed by the sight of the mountains and the world outside her little village, a clear line of demarcation where the reader is able to judge her growth as a character.

“’Are you so happy then, Kristin, to be going so far away from me, and for such a long time?’ asked her mother. Kristin felt both sad and crestfallen, and she wished that her mother had not said such a thing.”

Throughout the novel, Kristin and her mother are often at odds. From the beginning, the reader is not aware of the source of the tension, and here Ragnfrid lets her emotions get the best of her in a passive-aggressive comment that would not normally be considered appropriate to make toward one’s school-age daughter.

“Kristin saw a sight so glorious that it almost took her breath away. Directly opposite her, on the south wall of the nave, stood a picture that glowed as if it had been made from nothing but glittering gemstones.”

Kristin’s first experience in a cathedral church is vastly different than being inside her small parish church in Jørundgaard, and it is the stained-glass windows that truly mark the difference in her mind. The image of the Virgin Mary and other saints look to Kristin as though she is peering through a window into heaven, and this moment marks a core memory for her as she struggles with her faith throughout the novel.