Hello, Poetry Friend
Welcome back to my occasional series, sharing poems inspired by reading and rereading Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. Today: a sonnet!
In the middle of my giant copy of the book, ordered from my favorite bookshop, Fabled in Waco, Texas, is a bookmark on page 525, marking a conversation Kristin has with her father, Lavrans. He tells her a fairy tale she already knows, about Audhild the Fair of Skjenne, who was lured into the mountain. It seems to be one of those stories everyone knows, and it’s referenced, in one way or another, many times throughout the story.
And that’s when it hit me: That’s the theme of this entire book. From chapter 1, when the elf/dwarf maiden attempts to lure Kristin, to the very next chapter, when the cathedral at Hamar is described as “like entering the mountain.” But what the mountain is and who is luring her takes the whole story to unfold, until the final chapter.
That kind of love story requires a sonnet.
Beset
What is it like in the mountain?
Where the dwarf maiden beckons below?
Where the king ever reigns in a palace of fire?
Where fire never grows cold?
If I follow you today
If I give you my golden wreath
Will they say you stole me away
To the ceilings of stone down deep?
Would you chain me or let me wander
Amid fields of flowers—no! gems!
Would I feel enclosed by Hel’s boulders
Or be happy, bound here, with him?
Oh Blessed Mother! I sit here, beset.
I promise to follow someday. Not yet.
– Megan Willome
Happy poeming!
Megan