Sigrid Undset Archives

The Sigrid Undset Archives at the National Library of Norway contain manuscripts, articles, lectures and other materials created by Danish-Norwegian author Sigrid Undset (1882–1949). She was born in Denmark but moved to Oslo, Norway, at the age of two with her family. She began writing as a teenager and soon became a successful and internationally recognized writer, whose masterpiece Kristin Lavransdatter (1920–1922) depicts women’s life in Norway during the Middle Ages and has been translated into numerous languages. Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 but was vocally anti-fascist and was thus forced to escape her country in 1940 when it was invaded by Nazi Germany. As a prominent political refugee in the United States, Undset was highly proactive in her efforts to support the Norwegian cause and to draw attention to the plight of the European Jews, both through her writing and through lectures and interviews. The bulk of material in the Sigrid Undset Arkiv dates from the period of Undset’s exile in the United States, 1940–1945. Most of Undset’s correspondence is preserved in Brevs. 348, but some letters can also be found in the Sigrid Undset Archives.