Some day—maybe soon—we will be able to unfurl our flag over every home in Norway—or over the ruins of homes to be rebuilt. Some day, little children and gawky youngsters in high school will march in procession, with flags flying and music playing our national hymns, on the Seventeenth of May. And some time—maybe sooner, maybe later than we expect—we will be able again to offer up to the wild birds of our woods and mountains the sheaf of grain at Christmas in front of our windows, the sacred gift of some thousands of years of Norwegian history to the powers of life and fertility, whatever name our ancestors gave to the Good Spiritual Forces watching over our home. And on that day, when we can again hoist the Christmas sheaves of grain at our front doors, we will finally know that Happy Times in Norway have returned to the land of our forefathers and our children.
Sigrid Undset
Brooklyn, New York
May 17, 1942
Sigrid Undset (1882—1949) was born in Kalundborg, Denmark. She is best known for her epic medieval trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter(1920—22), a masterpiece of historical fiction. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928 and two years before her death received Norway’s highest honor, the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Olav, for service to her country.
During World War II she was forced to leave Norway and lived for five years in New York City. Three books published during this period of exile—Happy Times in Norway (1942), Sigurd and His Brave Companions (1943), and the edited collection True and Untrue and Other Norse Tales (1945) —are her only works originally written for children. All are available in new editions from the University of Minnesota Press.
* Translated by Haakon Rust, Music Division, Library of Congress.
* Songs of America and Homeland, ed. by Chas. W. Johnson, published by Silver Burdett & Co., New York, Boston (1906).
Sigrid Undset, Happy Times in Norway
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