The Master of Hestviken, Volume I: The Axe

The Master of Hestviken tetralogy, set in thirteenth-century Norway, is the story of Olav Audunsson, a man whose life is a chronicle of conflict: between the brutal facts of the fading pagan order and the ascendant light of Christianity, between violence and peace, fidelity and betrayal, transgression and redemption. The Axe follows Olav from his childhood days with the family of Steinfinn Toresson.

Foster-son to Steinfinn, Olav is also his prospective son-in-law―having been im-pulsively betrothed to Steinfinn’s daughter Ingunn when both were yet children. As youth gives way to adulthood, so does friendship to passion, and the couple―Olav, headstrong and proud; Ingunn, fair and serene―heedlessly pledge themselves to each other.

Little do they reckon that their betrothal is no guard against sin and their life together, if it is to be, is now beset by disgrace, dishonor, and even death.

Considered by Undset to be her best work―surpassing even Kristin Lavransdatter, inspiration for her Nobel Prize in Literature―The Master of Hestviken captures the manners, morals, and spirit of its age, firmly grasping the basic realities of human character and history and creating a protagonist and a world of intense reality.

Hailed as a triumph of fiction, The Master of Hestviken typifies Undset’s talent for seeing far into past and future alike and rendering “both the darkness which lies before them and the way through to the light beyond.”