Norway's highest-grossing film: Liv Ullmann's Kristin Lavransdatter (1995)

'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages

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Yes, Kristin Lavransdatter is the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time. That isn't as impressive as it might sound, as the movie only brought in $3.7 million in box office receipts, but virtually all of that came from domestic sales. Pretty much unknown outside Scandinavia, the movie was a sensation when released in Norway in 1995. An estimated two-thirds of the country's population have viewed it. The movie is based on the first volume of Sigrid Undset's trilogy about the life of an ordinary woman in fourteenth century Norway, which won her the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928. Directed and written by the celebrated Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, the film is a very faithful adaptation. The production strove for historical accuracy in costume and settings, and most of the dialogue is taken directly from the novel. (Sigrid Undset is credited as co-screenplay writer.)
The reason I decided to devote a short episode to this movie and to its source novel is they both are worthy attempts to examine an aspect of the Middle Ages virtually ignored in popular culture, the life of ordinary people. Kristin Lavransdatter is the coming of age story of young woman from a prosperous family in rural fourteenth-century Norway who is seduced by and falls in love with a knight with a (justifiably) scandalous reputation. Whether Kristin's mentalité in the novel and film is really "medieval" is a matter of academic debate. But the care with which Undset in her novel and Ullmann in the film recreate the religious rituals, customs, and everyday life in early fourteenth-century Norway is impressive and worth a reading and a viewing.

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