In the Wilderness (The Master of Hestviken, Vol. 3)

Originally published in Norwegian in 1927, this translation by Arthur G. Chater first published in 1929, public domain. It is Norway in the thirteenth century, a land rent by unremitting warfare and feebly lit by Christianity. Olav Audunsson was once an outlaw; now he is a man of wealth and stature. But he is haunted by the memory of crimes for which there is no easy atonement... In the third volume of her medieval epic, Sigrid Undset plunges readers into a world that is at once profoundly alien yet inhabited by men and women as recognizable as our own kin. Heartbroken by the death of his wife and estranged from a son who may not be his, Olav leaves Hestviken on a journey of adventure, temptation, and remorse that leads him to a bloody reckoning at the gates of Oslo. Vividly, poignantly, and with the fierce grandeur of a Norse folktale, ''In the Wilderness'' portrays the terrible conflicts of a man who is both sinner and penitent in an age that lies on the cusp of savagery and faith.