Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross

The Cross (1922) finds Kristin returning with her husband, Erlend, and their sons to her childhood home, Jorundgaard. As the boys grow older, Kristin is increasingly worried about their prospects, and she and Erlend become estranged. The most devastating and emotional volume in the trilogy, The Cross chronicles the trials and losses Kristin must bear, and how she finds the strength to endure them. This final chapter in her story emphasized the medieval belief that the spiritual world has primacy over the material one, a belief with which Undset herself concurred but found lacking in most of her own contemporaries.