Gunnar's Daughter (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

Gunnar's Daughter (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

More than a decade before writing <i>Kristin Lavransdatter</i>, the trilogy about fourteenth-century Norway that won her the Nobel Prize, Sigrid Undset published <i>Gunnar's Daughter</i>, a brief, swiftly moving tale about a more violent period of her country's history, the Saga Age. Set in Norway and Iceland at the beginning of the eleventh century, <i>Gunnar's Daughter</i> is the story of the beautiful, spoiled Vigdis Gunnarsdatter, who is raped by the man she had wanted to love. A woman of courage and intelligence, Vigdis is toughened by adversity. Alone she raises the child conceived in violence, repeatedly defending her autonomy in a world governed by men. Alone she rebuilds her life and restores her family's honor -- until an unremitting social code propels her to take the action that again destroys her happiness.<br>  <br> First published in 1909, <i>Gunnar's Daughter</i> was in part a response to the rise of nationalism and Norway's search for a national identity in its Viking past. But unlike most of the Viking-inspired art of its period,<i> Gunnar's Daughter</i> is not a historical romance. It is a skillful conversation between two historical moments about questions as troublesome in Undset's own time -- and in ours -- as they were in the Saga Age: rape and revenge, civil and domestic violence, troubled marriages, and children made victims of their parents' problems.