SIGRID UNDSET was born in Denmark in 1882, the eldest daughter of a Norwegian father and a Danish mother, and moved with her family to Oslo two years later. She published her first novel, Fru Marta Oulie (Mrs. Marta Oulie) in 1907 and her second book, Den lykkelige alder (The Happy Age), in 1908. The following year she published her first work set in the Middle Ages, Fortællingen om Viga-Ljot og Vigdis (later translated into English under the title Gunnar’s Daughter and now available in Penguin Classics). More novels and stories followed, including Jenny (1911, first translated 1920), Fattige skjæbner (Fates of the Poor, 1912), Vaaren (Spring, 1914), Splinten av troldspeilet (translated in part as Images in a Mirror, 1917), and De kloge jomfruer (The Wise Virgins, 1918). In 1920 Undset published the first volume of Kristin Lavransdatter, the medieval trilogy that would become her most famous work. Kransen (The Wreath) was followed by Husfrue (The Wife) in 1921 and Korset (The Cross) in 1922. Beginning in 1925 she published the four-volume Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken (translated into English under the title The Master of Hestviken), also set in the Middle Ages. In 1928 Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize in Literature. During the 1930s she published several more novels, notably the autobiographical Elleve aar (translated as The Longest Years, 1934). She was also a prolific essayist on subjects ranging from Scandinavian history and literature to the Catholic Church (to which she became a convert in 1924) and politics. During the Nazi occupation of Norway, Undset lived as a refugee in New York City. She returned home in 1945 and lived in Lillehammer until her death in 1949.

TIINA NUNNALLY has translated all three volumes of Kristin Lavransdatter for Penguin Classics. She won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for the third volume, The Cross. Her translations of the first and second volumes, The Wreath and The Wife, were finalists for the PEN Center USA West Translation Award, and The Wife was also a finalist for the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. Her other translations include Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales; Undset’s Jenny; Per Olov Enquist’s The Royal Physician’s Visit (Independent Foreign Fiction Prize); Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow (Lewis Galantière Prize given by the American Translators Association); Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Niels Lyhne (PEN Center USA West Translation Award); and Tove Ditlevsen’s Early Spring (American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize). Also the author of three novels, Maija, Runemaker, and Fate of Ravens, Nunnally holds an M.A. in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

BRAD LEITHAUSER is the author of several novels, including Darlington’s Fall, A Few Corrections, The Friends of Freeland, and Equal Distance, as well as poetry and essays. His work appears regularly in The New York Review of Books, his awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, and he is Emily Dickinson Lecturer in the Humanities at Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches courses in writing and literature.