It’s also a gripping read and an impressive feat of historical re-creation, which helped Undset win the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature. Kristin Lavransdatter, which unfolds over the course of three volumes- The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross-is a woman’s story. I was miserable, and perfecting the oatmeal made me feel better. I’d never thought being a woman mattered much, but suddenly it seemed to. Childless people found my travails boring and embarrassing. My husband was unhelpful with the children.

I had a two-year-old daughter, an infant son, and an office job, to which I fled every day in great relief to get a moment to myself and then struggled not to leak breast milk on my work clothes. I tried different combinations of milk and water. I blitzed half the oats in the baby-food blender before cooking. Mine, on the other hand, were ridiculous. The porridges in Undset’s book are good and nourishing but plain (though in one scene, a young Kristin eats hers with “thick cream” off her father’s spoon). The most common food in the medieval historical romance Kristin Lavransdatter, written by the Norwegian author Sigrid Undset (1882–1949), is oatmeal porridge, a dish I made elaborate perfection of during my children’s early years.

The wife sigrid undset