The Mistress of Husaby by Sigrid Undset

Author:Sigrid Undset [Undset, Sigrid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80766-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

6

ONE of the first things Kristin had marked at her old home was that all the old heads of men, that had stood where the vergeboards crossed at the house-gables, were gone now. Instead there had been set up spires with carven birds and foliage-work, and the new storehouse had a gilded weather-vane. The old posts of the high seat in the hearth-room house, too, had been changed for new. The old ones had been carved in the likeness of two men; ugly enough — but ’twas thought they had been there ever since the house was built, and the custom had been to smear them with fat and bathe them with ale at festivals. On the new posts her father had carved out two men with helms and shields marked with the Cross. ’Twas not St. Olav himself, said he, for it seemed to him unmeet that a sinful man should have images of the holy ones in his house, except to pray before them — but they might, he thought, be two warriors of Olav’s guard. All the old carvings Lavrans had himself cut up and burnt — the serving-men dared not touch them. It was with some doubt he still let them bear out food to the great stone at Jörund’s grave-mound on holy eves — but yet he deemed ’twere sin and shame to deny to the tenant of the mound what he had been used to be given ever since folk had dwelt upon the place. He had died long before Christendom had come to Norway, so it was not his fault that he was a heathen.

Folks liked these new-fangled doings of Lavrans’ but little. ’Twas well enough for him, who could afford to buy himself protection in other quarters. What he got seemed, indeed, to have all the virtue needed, for he had the same good fortune in husbandry as before. But there were those who asked whether yonder folk would not avenge themselves when there came a master to the manor who was less pious and not so open-handed towards the Church and all her belongings. And for small folk ’twas cheaper to give the old ones what they were used to have, rather than make foes of them and trust wholly to the priests.

Besides, it was none too sure, folk deemed, how ’twould go with the friendship between Jörundgaard and the parsonage when Sira Eirik should pass away. The priest was grown old and weakly now, so that he had need of a chaplain to help him. He had first spoken to the Bishop of his daughter’s son Bentein Jonssön — but Lavrans, too, spoke to the Bishop, who was a friend of his of old. Folks deemed this misjudged. Truly it might well be that the young priest had been too forward with Kristin Lavransdatter that evening and maybe frighted the girl — but none could know that she might not herself have given some cause for the fellow’s boldness. It had come out plainly enough since that she was none so coy as she had seemed.

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