Liv Ullmann’s Handling of Religious Themes in Her Adaptation of Sigrid Undset’s The Wreath

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In 1995 Liv Ullmann released Kristin Lavransdatter, a film adaptation of The Wreath, the first novel in Sigrid Undset’s trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, a novelistic reconstruction of fourteenth-century psychology and religious culture published between 1920 and 1922. This work was crucial to Undset’s winning the Nobel Prize in 1928 “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages”; though its historical accuracy has been challenged, the affection with which this work is held by Norwegian readers endures. So Ullmann was taking on well-known text, which had been authored by a keen Catholic apologist, when she undertook her adaptation. Her version of the story—or rather versions, since three different cuts have been released—reduces the religious dimension of the original while increasing the focus on the psychological exploration of family tensions, whether between generations, between marriage partners, between siblings—or between friends. A comparison of the two works, preceded by a brief discussion of Undset’s religious writings, illuminates each.