Ragnfrid was seen so seldom that people soon stopped talking about her altogether. When she first returned home to Gudbrandsdal, many were surprised, since they remembered her from the time when she lived at Sundbu. She had never been beautiful, but in those days she seemed gracious and happy; now she had lost her looks so utterly that one might think she was ten years older than her husband instead of three. People thought she took the deaths of her children unreasonably hard, because in other ways she was far better off than most women—she had great wealth and position and she got on well with her husband, as far as anyone could tell. Lavrans did not take up with other women, he always asked for her advice in all matters, and he never said an unkind word to her, whether he was sober or drunk. And she was not so old that she couldn’t have many more children, if God would grant her that.
They had some difficulty finding young people to serve at J?rundgaard because the mistress was of such a mournful spirit and because they observed all of the fasts so strictly. But the servants lived well on the manor, and angry or chastising words were seldom heard. Both Lavrans and Ragnfrid took the lead in all work. The master also had a lively spirit in his own way, and he might join in a dance or start up singing when the young people frolicked on the church green on sleepless vigil nights.2 But it was mostly older people who took employment at J?rundgaard; they found it to their liking and stayed for a long time.
One day when the child Kristin was seven years old, she was going to accompany her father up to their mountain pastures.
It was a beautiful morning in early summer. Kristin was standing in the loft where they slept in the summertime. She saw the sun shining outside, and she heard her father and his men talking down in the courtyard.3 She was so excited that she couldn’t stand still while her mother dressed her; she jumped and leaped after she was helped into every garment. She had never before been up to the mountains, only across the gorge to Vaage, when she was allowed to go along to visit her mother’s kinsmen at Sundbu, and into the nearby woods with her mother and the servants when they went out to pick berries, which Ragnfrid put in her weak ale. She also made a sour mash out of cowberries and cranberries, which she ate on bread instead of butter during Lent.
Ragnfrid coiled up Kristin’s long golden hair and fastened it under her old blue cap. Then she kissed her daughter on the cheek, and Kristin ran down to her father. Lavrans was already sitting in the saddle; he lifted her up behind him, where he had folded his cape like a pillow on the horse’s loin. There Kristin was allowed to sit astride and hold on to his belt. Then they called farewell to her mother, but she had come running down from the gallery with Kristin’s hooded cloak; she handed it to Lavrans and told him to take good care of the child.
The sun was shining but it had rained hard during the night so the streams were splashing and singing everywhere on the hillsides, and wisps of fog drifted below the mountain slopes. But above the crests, white fair-weather clouds climbed into the blue sky, and Lavrans and his men said it was going to be a hot day later on. Lavrans had four men with him, and they were all well armed because at that time there were all kinds of strange people in the mountains—although it seemed unlikely they would encounter any such people because there were so many in their group, and they were only going a short way into the mountains. Kristin liked all of the servants. Three of them were somewhat older men, but the fourth, Arne Gyrds?n of Finsbrekken, was a half-grown boy and Kristin’s best friend. He rode right behind Lavrans because he was supposed to tell her about everything they saw along the way as they passed.
They rode between the buildings of Romundgaard and exchanged greetings with Eirik the priest. He was standing outside scolding his daughter4—she ran the house for him—about a skein of newly dyed yarn that she had left hanging outdoors the day before; now it had been ruined by the rain.
On the hill across from the parsonage stood the church; it was not large but graceful, beautiful, well kept, and freshly tarred. Near the cross outside the cemetery gate, Lavrans and his men removed their hats and bowed their heads. Then Kristin’s father turned around in his saddle, and he and Kristin waved to her mother. They could see her out on the green in front of the farm buildings back home; she waved to them with a corner of her linen veil.
Kristin was used to playing almost every day up here on the church hill and in the cemetery; but today she was going to travel so far that the child thought the familiar sight of her home and village5 looked completely new and strange. The clusters of buildings at J?rundgaard, in both the inner and outer courtyards, seemed to have grown smaller and grayer down there on the lowlands. The glittering river wound its way past into the distance, and the valley spread out before her, with wide green pastures and marshes at the bottom and farms with fields and meadows up along the hillsides beneath the precipitous gray mountains.
Kristin knew that Loptsgaard lay far below the place where the mountains joined and closed off the valley. That was where Sigurd and Jon lived, two old men with white beards; they always teased her and played with her whenever they came to J?rundgaard. She liked Jon because he carved the prettiest animals out of wood for her, and he had once given her a gold ring. But the last time he visited them, on Whitsunday, he had brought her a knight that was so beautifully carved and so exquisitely painted that Kristin thought she had never received a more marvelous gift. She insisted on taking the knight to bed with her every single night, but in the morning when she woke up he would be standing on the step in front of the bed where she slept with her parents. Her father told her that the knight got up at the first crow of the cock, but Kristin knew that her mother took him away after she fell asleep. She had heard her mother say that he would be so hard and uncomfortable if they rolled on top of him during the night.