Kristin Lavransdatter Quotes

No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love.

Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.

But I didn’t realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.

It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.

God will find you,” said the priest quietly. “Stay calm and do not flee from Him who has been seeking you before you even existed in your mother’s womb.

Are you so arrogant that you think yourself capable of sinning so badly that God’s mercy is not great enough? . . .

the world is just as harsh a taskmaster as any other lord, and in the end it’s a lord without mercy.

All that had happened and would happen was meant to be. Everything happens as it is meant to be.

... with the few small spots of light like golden stars in the night, the sweet stale scent of incense, and the warm smell of the burning wax. And she at rest within her own star.

For I've realized more and more with each year I've lived: There is no worthier work for the person who has been geared with the ability to see even a small part of God's mercy than to serve Him and to keep vigil and to pray for those people whose sight is still clouded by the shadow of worldly matters.

I've done many things that I thought I would never dare to do because they were sins. But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.

Yes, well... I suppose the man who owns nothing is free." Gunnulf replied, "A man's possessions own him more than he owns them.

Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to the farthest boundaries of life on this earth. Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world's end.

you mustn’t believe, Kristin, that there has ever been a priest who has not had to guard himself against the Fiend at the same time as he tried to protect the lambs from the wolf.

Help me, Gunnulf,” begged Kristin. She was white to the very edge of her lips. “I don’t know my own will.” “Then say: Thy will be done,” replied the priest softly.

I'm not to blame, Ramborg, if a man's heart is created in such a fashion that whatever is inscribed on it when it's young and fresh is carved deeper than all the runes that are later etched.

The blood that ran down from the cross in redemption for all sins and penance for all sorrows—that was the visible sign.

But man proposes, God disposes.

Stay calm and do not flee from Him who has been seeking you before you even existed in your mother’s womb.

Dear sister—all other love is merely a reflection of the heavens in the puddles of a muddy road. You will become sullied too if you allow yourself to sink into it. But if you always remember that it’s a reflection of the light from that other home, then you will rejoice at its beauty and take good care that you do not destroy it by churning up the mire at the bottom.

And I see you still don’t realize, no matter how many times you’ve witnessed it, that you can’t always manage alone everything that you’ve taken on. But I will help you to undertake this burden.

Surely she had never asked God for anything except that He should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for—for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart—not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road’s end.

Christ, you who were crucified! Now I have given up everything that could bind me. And I have placed myself in your hands, if you would find my life worthy enough to be freed from its servitude to Satan. Take me so that I may feel that I am your slave, for then I will possess you in return.

But it looked as if Brother Edvin had become so wrinkled simply from smiling at people. Kristin thought she had never seen anyone who looked so cheerful or so kind. He seemed to carry within him a luminous and secret joy, and she was able to share it whenever he spoke.

Because no one is good without God. And we can do nothing good without Him. So it's futile to regret a good deed, Ulf, for the good you have done cannot be taken back; even if all the mountains should fall, it would still stand.

Her father’s marvelous gentleness was not because he lacked a keen enough perception of the faults and wretchedness of others; it came from his constant searching of his own heart before God, crushing it in repentance over his own failings. No,

Prayers, fasts, everything he had practiced because he had been taught to do so, suddenly seemed new to him—weapons in a glorious war for which he longed. Perhaps he would become a monk—or a priest

Do you know who 'twas that first knew our Lord had caused Himself to be born? 'Twas the cock; he saw the star, and so he said–all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: 'Christus natus est!' " He crowed these words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things Brother Edvin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her heart. The monk laughed himself: "Ay, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: 'Ubi, ubi, ubi.' "But the goat bleated, and said: 'Betlem, Betlem, Betlem.' "And the sheep so longed to see Our Lady and her Son that she baa-ed out at once: 'Eamus, eamus!' "And the new-born calf that lay in the straw, raised itself and stood upon its feet. 'Volo, volo, volo!' it said.

She walked as if through a forest. The pillars were furrowed like ancient trees, and into the woods the light seeped, colorful and as clear as song, through the stained-glass windows. High overhead animals and people frolicked in the stone foliage, and angels played their instruments. At an even higher, more dizzying height, the vaults of the ceiling arched upward, lifting the church toward God ... The song cut through her like a blinding light. Now she saw how deep in the dust she lay.

He felt as if the roots of his own life were intertwined with those of his brothers and sisters, somewhere deep down in the dark earth. Every blow that struck, every injury that ate away at the marrow of one of them was felt by all.

As your pierced hands were stretched out on the cross, O precious Lord of Heaven. No matter how far a soul might stray from the path of righteousness, the pierced hands were stretched out, yearning. Only one thing was needed: that the sinful soul should turn toward the open embrace, freely, like a child who goes to his father and not like a thrall who is chased home to his stern master.

On her death bed: “And her tears burst forth in a swift stream, for it seemed to her that never before had she understood to the full what it betokened. The life that ring had wed her to, that she had complained against, had murmured at, had raged at and defied – none the less she had loved it so, joyed in it so, both in good days and evil, that not one day had there been when ‘twould not have seemed hard to give it back to God, nor one grief that she could have forgone without regret—

Kristin. You cannot settle for anything less than the love that is between God and the soul.

Saint Olav turned her eyes toward Christ on the cross—see, Kristin: God’s love.

But these events had touched her so little - like the echo of thunder from the mountains after a storm had passed over the countryside and was far away.

You tug and strain like a young horse when it's first tied up at the stake, whenever you are tied by your heartstrings.

His heart sang in his breast; his soul felt like a bride in the arms of the bridegroom. He realized full well that this would not last. No man could live on earth in this manner for long. And he had received each hour of that bright springtime like a pledge—a merciful promise that would strengthen his endurance when the skies darkened over him and the road led down into a dark ravine, through roaring rivers and cold snowdrifts.

But when he saw her — if he but thought of her, a sense came over him as of the first breath of the plough-lands in spring, when the snows are but now melted and gone. He knew it now — it might have befallen him too — he, too, could have loved.

Whenever she held him in her arms, she noticed that the boy’s mother would keep a jealous eye on the two of them and would come to take him away as soon as she deemed it proper and then possessively put him to her breast, hugging him greedily. Then it occurred to Kristin Lavransdatter in a new way that the interpreters of God’s words were right. Life on this earth was irredeemably tainted by strife; in this world, wherever people mingled, producing new descendants, allowing themselves to be drawn together by physical love and loving their own flesh, sorrows of the heart and broken expectations were bound to occur as surely as the frost appears in the autumn. Both life and death would separate friends in the end, as surely as the winter separates the tree from its leaves.

She had finally come so far that she seemed to be seeing her own life from the uppermost summit of a mountain pass. Now her path led down into the darkening valley, but first she had been allowed to see that in the solitude of the cloister and in the doorway of death someone was waiting for her who had always seen the lives of people the way villages look from a mountain crest. He had seen sin and sorrow, love and hatred in their hearts, the way the wealthy estates and poor hovels, the bountiful acres and the abandoned wastelands are all borne by the same earth. And he had come down among them, his feet had wandered among the lands, stood in the castles and in huts, gathering the sorrows and sins of the rich and the poor, and lifting them high up with him on the cross." (1081)

Dragons and all other creatures that serve the Devil only seem big as long as we harbor fear within ourselves. But if a person seeks God with such earnestness and desire that he enters into His power, then the power of the Devil at once suffers such a great defeat that his instruments become small and impotent. Dragons and evil spirits shrink until they are no bigger than goblins and cats and crows.

Don’t you remember, my sister, when the Devil tried to tempt Saint Martin? Then the Fiend asked Saint Martin whether he dared believe it when he promised God’s mercy to all the sinners whose confessions he heard. And the bishop answered, ‘Even to you I promise God’s forgiveness at the very instant you ask for it—if only you will give up your pride and believe that His love is greater than your hatred.

By the grace of God, we two unworthy souls were joined together in holy marriage. Branded by the flames of sin, bowed by the burdens of sin, we came together at the portals of God’s house; together we received the Savior’s Host from the hand of the priest. Should I now complain if God is testing my faith? Should I now think about anything else but that I am his wife and he is my husband for as long as we both shall live?

Many different thoughts rise up in the darkness - like those gossamer plants that grow in the lake, oddly bewitching and pretty as they bob and sway; but enticing and sinister, they exert a dark pull as long as they're growing in the living, trickling mire. ANd yet as long as they're nothing but slimey brown clumps when the children pull them in to the boat. So many strange thoughts, both terrifying and enticing, grow in the night.

Then it occurred to me that many of these people had suffered more than Christ himself. “I pondered this until I felt that my heart and mind would burst. But finally I received the light that I had prayed and begged for. And I realized that just as they had suffered, so should we all have the courage to suffer. Who would be so foolish not to accept pain and torment if this was the way to a faithful and steadfast bridegroom who waits with open arms, his breast bloody and burning with love.

In the middle of the night she woke up when her father touched her shoulder in the dark. "Get up," he said quietly. "Do you hear it?" Then she heard the singing at the corners of the house - the deep, full tone of the moisture-laden south wind. Water was streaming off the roof, and the rain whispered as it fell on soft, melting snow.

Overwhelmed, Erlend felt tears fill his eyes. He hadn’t realized himself how much these years of idleness had tormented him.

In her soul, sin continued to exist, like roots of a weed intertwined in the soil. It no longer blossomed or flared up or smelled fragrant, but it was still there in the soil.

It would be unmanly to complain against the faith I had chosen.

It’s a sin to brood over and dwell on the sins we have confessed to the priest and repented before God, reviving his forgiveness through the hand and the words of the priest.

He had been so married to her that he had grown pius himself, because he had believed in her piety.

...she had learned that the world is like a tavern - where he who has naught more to spend from is cast out at the door.

They who have loved one another with the fieriest desire come in the end to be as two vipers biting each other's tails.

He loved the holy mass and prayers spoken in Latin, and he regarded the church as the place where he felt the most joy.

God help you... You want nothing more from all your prayers and fassting than to force your will on God. Does it surprise you, then, that it has accomplished so little good?

Afterward they would go to the guild hall, which stood near Hofvin Hospice; there they would drink for five days.

A man's heart is the first thing to quicken in his mother's womb, and the last to grow still in him. But in him now it sure must soon some to rest.

Kristin held the child while the young mother went to get a drink of local ale.

God only knows how much of a man there will be left of you when you take stock of yourself twenty years from now,

Good days are granted to sensible people, but the grandest of days are enjoyed by those who dare to act unwisely.

I never thought," she went on, "that it would be so easy for me to lie. But what must be done can be done.

All fires burn out sooner or later.

... 'twas somewhat about good days falling to wise folk, but the best days of all falling to those who dare to be unwise.

They received food from the monks at the churches they visited, and when they drank the blood-red wine and broke off the golden crust from the bread made of wheat, all four priests from the barley lands understood why Christ had honored wine and wheat, which were purer than all other foodstuffs that God had given humankind, by manifesting himself in their likeness during the holy communion.

She went as through a forest -- the columns were furrowed like ancient trees, and in through the forest flowed the light, many-hued and clear as song, from the pictured windows. High up above her, beasts and men sported among the stone leafage, and angels played -- and yet far, dizzily far higher, the vaulting soared, lifting the church towards God. In a hall that lay to one side, worship was being held at an altar. Kristin sank down on her knees by a pillar. The singing cut into her like a too strong light. Now she saw how low she lay in the dust. ... Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena.

Love had always been behind her toil with earthly matters. Erlend had never given her much thanks for that; it was not the way he wanted to be loved. But she couldn't help it; it was her nature to love with great toil and care.

Good days can last a long time if one tends to things with care and caution; all sensible people know that. That’s why I think that sensible people have to be satisfied with the good days – for the grandest of days are costly indeed.

There is no worthier work for the man person who has been graced with the ability to see even a small part of God’s Mercy than to serve him and to keep vigil for the people whose sight is still clouded by the shadow of worldly matters.

Overcome and sobbing, the young woman sank down before the cross at the side of the road, where thousands of pilgrims had lain and thanked God because helping hands were extended to them on their journey through the perilous and beautiful world.

Så redo de ut från gården i första gryningen. Dimman låg vit som mjölk över bygden. Men om en stund började den lätta, och så silade solen igenom. Och drypande av dagg lyste där fram i det vita diset gräsvallar, gröna av efterslåttern, och blacka stubbåkrar och gula träd och rönn med blänkande röda bär. Fjällsidorna skymtade blåa höjande sig ur dis och ånga - så rämnade dimman och drev som molntappar mellan sluttningarna, och de redo genom dalen i det härligaste solsken, Kristin främst i skaran vid sin fars sida.

Now her path led down into the darkening valley, but first she had been allowed to see that in the solitude of the cloister and in the doorway of death someone was waiting for her who had always seen the lives of people the way villages look from a mountain crest. He had seen sin and sorrow, love and hatred in their hearts, the way the wealthy estates and poor hovels, the bountiful acres and the abandoned wastelands are all borne by the same earth. And he had come down among them, his feet had wandered among the lands, stood in castles and in huts, gathering the sorrows and sins of the rich and the poor, and lifting them high up with him on the cross. Not my happiness or my pride, but my sin and my sorrow, oh sweet Lord of mine. She looked up at the crucifix, where it hung high overhead, above the triumphal arch.

So now you know, Kristin, that I have compromised much, both my land and my honor. You would certainly be much better served if you stayed with Simon Andressøn.” Kristin put her arms around his neck. “We will stand by what we swore to each other last night, Erlend—if you feel as I do.

as she was when they first met: gentle and seemly, intelligent enough that a man would gladly seek her counsel even on important matters, a bit headstrong about petty things, but otherwise amenable, accustomed as she was to accepting from her father’s hands guidance and support and protection.

Så blev allting borta i en mörkröd dimma och ett brus, som först tilltog skrämmande, men så dog dånet småningom bort, och den röda dimman blev tunnare och ljusare, och till sist var den som ett lätt morgondis, innan solen bryter igenom, och det var alldeles ljudlöst, och hon visste att nu dog hon -

Surely she had never asked God for anything except that He should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for - for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road's end. She had not come to God with her wreath or with her sins and sorrows, not as long as the world still possessed a drop of sweetness to add to her goblet. But now she had come, after she had learned that the world is like an alehouse: The person who has no more to spend is thrown outside the door.

Feelings of longing seemed to burst from her heart; they ran in all directions, like streams of blood, seeking out paths to all the places in the wide landscape where she had lived, to all her sons roaming through the world, to all her dead lying under the earth. She wondered: Had she turned cowardly? She had never felt this way before.

The way our Lord Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he said. He told me that the true wilderness for a Christian man’s soul was when his sight and senses were blocked—then he would follow the footsteps of the Lord out of the wilderness, even if his body was still with his brothers or kinsmen. He read to me from the books of Saint Bernard about such things. And when a soul realizes that God has chosen him for such a difficult test of his manhood, then he shouldn’t be afraid that he won’t have the strength. God knows my soul better than the soul knows itself.” He continued to talk to his mother in this manner, consoling her with a wisdom and strength of spirit that seemed far beyond his years.

And I don’t believe any maiden of good family and with an honorable and Christian upbringing would part so easily with her honor, or her life. No, this is the kind of thing people write ballads about. I think when a man or a maiden is tempted to do something like that, they make up a ballad about it, which helps them, but they refrain from actually doing it.

No, God had not forsaken her. In His mercy, He had heard her cries for help when she called on him as she sank more and more into her misery. - even when she called without believing she could be heard It felt as if the black sea were rushing over her; now the waves lifted her toward a bliss so strange and so sweet that she knew it would carry her out of life.

Human beings could not have done this work on their own. God’s spirit had been at work in holy Øistein and the men who built the church after him. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Now she understood those words. A reflection of the splendor of God’s kingdom bore witness through the stones that His will was all that was beautiful.

One year, thought Kristin, and she could hardly remember when she had last given Arne a thought. It gave her a fright—maybe she was a loose, vile woman. A year since she had seen him lying on the bier in the death chamber, when she thought she would never be happy again. She whimpered silently in fear at the inconstancy of her own heart and at the transitory nature of all things. Erlend, Erlend—would he forget her? But worse yet was that she might ever forget him.

And now I almost regret, priest, that I have been such a pious man - toward her.' 'It's useless to waste your time over such futile regrets,' replied the priest. 'What do you mean?' 'I mean that it's only a man's sins that it does any good for him to regret.' 'Why is that?' 'Because no one is good without God. And we can do nothing good without Him. So it's futile to regret a good deed, Ulf, for the good you have done cannot be taken back; even if all the mountains should fall, it would still stand.

It was true that all this time she had remembered, year after year, every wound he had ever caused her—even though she had always known that he never wounded her the way a grown person intends harm to another, but rather the way a child strikes out playfully at his companion. Each time he offended her, she had tended to the memory the way one tends to a venomous sore. And with each humiliation he brought upon himself by acting on any impulse he might have—it struck her like the lash of a whip against her flesh, causing a suppurating wound. It wasn’t true that she willfully or deliberately harbored ill feelings toward her husband; she knew she wasn’t usually narrow-minded, but with him she was.

Kristin hadn’t been close to her mother. Her sisters were mere children when she was already a grown maiden, and she had never had companions to play with. She was brought up among men; she was able to be gentle and soft because there had always been men around to hold up protective and shielding hands between her and everything else in the world. Now it seemed reasonable to her that she gave birth only to sons—boys to nurse with her blood and at her breast, to love and protect and care for until they were old enough to join the ranks of men. She remembered that she had heard of a queen who was called the Mother of Boys. She must have had a wall of watchful men around her when she was a child.

Yes. Yes. Yes. It was true that all this time she had remembered, year after year, every wound he had ever caused her—even though she had always known that he never wounded her the way a grown person intends harm to another, but rather the way a child strikes out playfully at his companion. Each time he offended her, she had tended to the memory the way one tends to a venomous sore. And with each humiliation he brought upon himself by acting on any impulse he might have—it struck her like the lash of a whip against her flesh, causing a suppurating wound. It wasn’t true that she willfully or deliberately harbored ill feelings toward her husband; she knew she wasn’t usually narrow-minded, but with him she was.

When Kristin realized that Haftor was quite serious about the intentions behind his request as they lay there and talked, she was so astonished that she failed to be either frightened or suitably indignant. They were both married, after all, and they both had children with their spouses. She had never truly believed that such things actually went on. In spite of all she herself had done and experienced-no, she hadn't believed that such things happened. Haftor had always been merry and affectionate and full of laughter. She couldn't say that what he wanted was to try to seduce her; he hadn't been serious enough for that. And yet he wanted her to commit the worst of sins. He got off the bed the minute she told him to go. He had turned submissive, but he seemed more surprised than ashamed. And he asked in utter disbelief: Did she truly think that married people were never unfaithful? But she must know that few men could admit to never having a paramour. Women were perhaps a little better than the men, and yet... "Did you believe everything the priests preach about sin and the like even back when you were a young maiden?" he asked. "Then I don't understand, Kristin Lavransdatter, how Erlend ever managed to have his way with you." Then he looked into her eyes- and her eyes must have spoken, although she wouldn't have discussed this matter with Haftor for any amount of gold. But his voice rang with amazement as he said, "I thought that was only something they wrote about- in ballads.

she had striven to be patient and steadfast no matter what life presented, every time she learned she was carrying yet another child under her breast—again and again. With each son added to the flock she recognized that her responsibility had grown for ensuring the prosperity and secure position of the lineage. Tonight she realized that her ability to survey everything at once and her watchfulness had also grown with each new child entrusted to her care. Never had she seen it so clearly as on this evening—what destiny had demanded of her and what it had given her in return with her seven sons. Over and over again joy had quickened the beat of her heart; fear on their behalf had rent it in two. They were her children, these big sons with their lean, bony, boy’s bodies, just as they had been when they were small and so plump that they barely hurt themselves when they tumbled down on their way between the bench and her knee. They were hers, just as they had been back when she lifted them out of the cradle to her milk-filled breast and had to support their heads, which wobbled on their frail necks the way a bluebell nods on its stalk. Wherever they ended up in the world, wherever they journeyed, forgetting their mother—she thought that for her, their lives would be like a current in her own life; they would be one with her, just as they had been when she alone on this earth knew about the new life hidden inside, drinking from her blood and making her cheeks pale. Over and over she had endured the sinking, sweat-dripping anguish when she realized that once again her time had come; once again she would be pulled under by the groundswell of birth pains—until she was lifted up with a new child in her arms. How much richer and stronger and braver she had become with each child was something that she first realized tonight.

There is no worthier work for the person who has been graced with the ability to see even a small part of God’s mercy than to serve Him and to keep vigil and to pray for those people whose sight is still clouded by the shadow of worldly matters.

nothing left of the bond but the bleeding wound that would never heal.

Water dripped and trickled off the roofs, and smoke whirled and danced in the little, warm gusts of wind.

In one place he was an infant sitting on his mother’s knee; he had turned away from the breast she offered him, for he was so holy, even in his cradle, that he refused to nurse more than once on Fridays.

God bless you, little Kristin, I've been to Paris and traveled elsewhere in the world as well, and yet you mustn't think me any better for it, for I fear the Devil and love and desire this world like a fool.

Cara sorella, ogni altro amore è solo un riflesso del cielo nelle pozzanghere di una strada fangosa. Sarai macchiata anche tu se permetti a te stessa di sprofondarci dentro.

Human beings could not have done this work on their own. God’s spirit had been at work in holy Øistein and the men who built the church after him. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Now she understood those words. A reflection of the splendor of God’s kingdom bore witness through the stones that His will was all that was beautiful. Kristin trembled. Yes, God must surely turn away with scorn from all that was vile—from sin and shame and impurity.