"Sigrid Undset's gift was to take readers inside the hearts and minds of people who lived and worked, struggled and connived in the fjords, villages, farms, and estates of thirteenth-century Norway. Tiina Nunnally's gift is to bring these characters to today's readers in clear, lyrical prose. Here we have the story of Olav Audunssøn and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, betrothed as children and constantly challenged by people who turn their sweet and simple love story into a fraught, twenty-year journey to that final kiss. No one but Undset could have written Olav Audunssøn, and no one but Nunnally could do it justice in translation. Read it—and spend time in the thirteenth century as it really was."—Nicola Griffith, author of Hild"Tiina Nunnally is that rarest phenomenon: a translator whose translations sound entirely natural, idiomatic, and true. This new translation of the first volume of Sigrid Undset's Olav Audunssøn is a heroic undertaking, which Nunnally has accomplished with her accustomed elegance and flair."—John Banville, author of Mrs. Osmond"This tetralogy, less known and less beloved than Kristin Lavransdatter, may be Sigrid Undset’s masterwork. Arthur G. Chater’s translation is now nearly a century old. Calculatedly archaic and smoothly florid, it retains the charms of its time and place. This new version by Tiina Nunnally performs Undset in a blunter and terser style which would not be out of place in one of those Norse sagas whose grim ethos lives on in the midbrains of the characters. It is a style entirely in keeping with the bleakness of this story of an honorable man whose loving self-sacrifice calcifies his heart."—William T. Vollmann, author of The Lucky Star