Sigrid Undset

Which of Sigrid Undset's Works were Burned?

All works published before May 1933

Who was Sigrid Undset?

Norwegian author Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Her works, including accounts of life in Scandinavia from the Middle Ages to the 1930s—often with feminist themes—are still widely read in many languages. Undset's unconventional novels were banned and burned in part because of her heavy public criticism of the Nazi regime.

Unlike fellow Norwegian and Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun, who collaborated with the Germans, Sigrid Undset had an early and often verbalized antipathy to the Nazis. This antipathy grew into an intense hatred after the German occupation of Norway and the subsequent killing of her oldest son. She fled first to Sweden and then to the United States, where she established herself as a writer and lecturer.

Undset returned to Norway after the war, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1947 for her courage to speak out against the Nazis before the war.