Hello, Poetry Friend
Welcome back to my occasional series, poeming my way through my favorite book, Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. Over
David Kern compared Undset to Shakespeare, so my work here is done.This poem is about the death of Kristin’s stepson, Orm, Erlend’s firstborn. Erlend is the one who narrates what happened, through his tears. Because those lemming years, they come and come again.
The poem is in Kristin’s voice.
Lemming Years
Go to sleep, my baby
Once there was a lemming year
When the rodent hordes lay rotting in every bush,
Along every path, tainting every waterway
Go to sleep, my sick sons
Rest while I sing to you of knights and horses
To carry you across the fjord
Away from the plague
Go to sleep, my stepson
Who refused to leave when sickness came
Who died, wearing the cross of the Unknown Martyr
You’d been in the ground two weeks when I finally arose
So often I longed to sleep
Feared each night would be my last, half-alive
I lay beneath wreaths of mountain pastures
Sent by the poor
I went to sleep, felled by grief
Turned gray
Did no work until the scourge returned
Then the mother in me woke up
– Megan Willome
There aren’t a lot of great moments for Erlend as a dad when his kids are young, but this chapter (chapter 3 in the Husaby section) contain one of my favorites. Kristin is pregnant (again) and in bed, and the boys are there too, along with Erlend. He “chattered nonsense and fussed over his sons, hugging them close and laughing.”
And then he gets playful. He brags that he has a secret Finnish witch in a pouch, and if the boys don’t quiet down and stop bothering their mother, he’s going to feed them to her.
“Yes, and after she’s born, this sister of yours, I’m going to let my old Finnish woman work her magic on all three of you and turn you into polar bears so you can go paddling around in the wild forest, but my daughter will in herit all that I own.”
The children shrieked and tumbled into their mother’s bed. […] Kristin complained—Erlend shouldn’t rease them so horribly. But Naakkve toppled off the bed again; in an ecstasy of laughter and fright he rushed at his father, hung on to his belt, and bit at Erlend’s hands, while he shouted and cheered.”
Erlend may not have been a good father to Orm, but he is learning to become one. Despite his many grevious faults, he will be the father these boys need in the medieval world in which they live.
Happy reading!
Megan
How interesting, the last line of the poem:
"Then the mother in me woke up"; I assume this is the man speaking?
Reminds me of a recent book by Melvin Konner:
Women after all : sex, evolution, and the end of male supremacy
A new poem for me, thanks!
Keep versing away!