By Amy Fahey.

Today marks the birth, in 1882, of Norwegian novelist and Catholic convert Sigrid Undset, whose sweeping medieval sagas, Kristin Lavransdatter and The Master of Hestviken, deserve to be read by every serious Catholic. Tomorrow I will walk a portion of the Olavsleden, the medieval pilgrimage route to the tomb of St. Olav in Trondheim.

These two events - her 1882 birth and my 2025 pilgrimage - are not unrelated. My discovery of Kristin Lavransdatter nearly two decades ago set me on a journey deeper into the life, works, and landscape of this remarkable and neglected literary artist, and into the heart of her own devotion to Norway's patron saint. Great works have the capacity to do that: to captivate you, challenge you, awaken something in your soul and spirit. "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken." (Keats on reading Chapman's Homer)

When I first looked into Kristin Lavransdatter, the translation I read was the one authorized in Undset's lifetime, by Charles Archer. In recent years, it's been eclipsed by Tiina Nunnally's version, which many readers consider more approachable and authentic. But I am glad that Cluny Media has brought Archer back into print, and not simply for nostalgic reasons.

Since the novel is set in medieval Norway, Archer chose a kind of pseudo-medieval diction for the characters' speech, rendering that world simultaneously familiar and distant. The "thees" and "thous" and "'twas's" may at first seem a tad ridiculous. Rod Dreher calls the translation "fusty"; other commentators are even less generous. But it is helpful to recall that Undset herself was taken with Middle English prose from a young age, even translating Malory's Morte D'Arthur into Norwegian. The "artificiality" of the Archer translation, like that of Malory's prose, soon falls away, so much so that the reader may even find himself beginning to think in such cadences.

In contrast, Nunnally almost always chooses a pared-down and simplified diction, often to the point of prosaicness, sometimes even in contradiction to the original. Where Kristin assesses her failings at the end of her life and accuses herself of being lat (literally lazy), Archer chooses "slothful" while Nunnally chooses "indolent"; where trådte is lyrically translated as "trod" by Archer, Nunnally chooses the more pedestrian "walked" (I am grateful Hopkins in "God's Grandeur" doesn't make a similar choice by telling us that generations "have walked, have walked, have walked.")

Slothful, trod, heartily, deemed, belike, bade - there can be too much of a good thing where poetic diction is concerned, and Archer is sometimes guilty of the charge. But an attentive Catholic reader also detects a pattern of theological downgrading in the newer translation, or at least of ambiguity and imprecision. A "sick call" in the Archer translation becomes "visiting a sick parishioner" in Nunnally. The priest carrying the Eucharist in a silver pyx shaped like a dove is, in Undset's original, literally bearing "the silver dove with God's body." This is exactly how Archer translates it, while Nunnally renders it "the silver dove with the Holy Host."

When a Catholic priest goes on a sick call, though, he is not paying a friendly visit or even simply praying with a sick parishioner. He's administering a Sacrament. Perhaps Nunnally wished to spare readers confusion; no one knows what a sick call is anymore, and frankly, calling the Eucharist "God's body" (though Holy Host is also technically accurate) might puzzle even Catholic readers, since, apparently, two-thirds of them no longer believe in the Real Presence anyway. But again and again, Nunnally's choices tend to sacrifice something rich, lyrical, and true for the sake of something that might best be described as "relatable."

Fran Maier recently expressed concern about Emily Wilson's new translation of The Odyssey, which jettisons the familiar grand summoning of the muse to "sing" for so...