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I'm not sure I could've picked a book more contrary in style and tone to the seven-volume Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Where King is elaborate and at times overpowering in his imaginative vision, Undset is so spare in her narration that her characters are almost always surprising me with their words and actions. I once heard Cormac McCarthy's writing described as 'biblical' for its laconic tone, but in comparison to Undset, McCarthy comes across like a high school girl journaling about her sorrows (with all due apologies to high school girls... seriously, though. Get over it). And it works for Gunnar's Daughter, it really does. It's an earlier work than Kristin, and that's clear without much of a question. Yet the genius of that later masterpiece is already shining here.
As ridiculous as any comparison between Undset and King is (I'd hate to imply that I'm considering as of the same caliber), it really gets at what I love about Undset's writing. Which is not to say I did not enjoy my time spent in King's world--not at all. But as I walked beside Roland of Gilead and his band of gunslingers, my heart was elsewhere. I was measuring them against a middle-aged Norwegian woman living in separation from the father of her eight sons, waiting to find in their story of multiverses and fusion of technology and magic the same contentment-in-mysteriousness that captivated me in Undset's fjords and saeters. Much like the accursed Ljot of the story I've just read, the happiness and rest I found with them only provoked the recognition that they were only a substitute, an adulteration, of what I'd known before.