Yes, Stella the two of them indeed see confession as not only in a legalistic way, but, it also helps them gain favor back from those who hold them accountable for their bad behavior and sins. I can't see Erlend going to the priest and confessing all he has done. He is a man with an alter ego, and on a mission to rise up to the levels of King and ruler. Most men with those aspirations will not allow Christianity and all it's spiritual beliefs get in his way. He may have gotten his absolution from the Bishop and Archbishop, but the one person he will never be able to get to see him in the eyes he wishes, will be Kristin. She knows they have done things terribly wrong against man and God, and her feelings for Erlend will forever be marred by this knowing at what expense their happiness has come from.
pg. 258 "I am thinking," said Kristin, cold with dread," on all them we have brought to sorrow that we might see this day"
"I am thinking on her who had to pay with her life, because she held Erlend dear," she whispered shivering."
"Well if you come not to pay with your life yourself, ere you are half a year older," said Lady Aashild harshly. "Be glad while you may__ "What shall I say to you, Kristin?" said the old woman in a while, despairingly. "Have you clean lost courage this day of all days?" Soon enough will it be required of you twain that you shall pay for all you have done amiss__have no fear that it will not be so."
But when she and Erlend knelt together in the wedding_mass, all around her seemed but some trickery of the sight__the tapers, the pictures, the glittering vessels, the priests in their copes and white gowns. All those who had known her where she had lived before__they seemed like visions of a dream, standing there, close-packed in the church in their unwonted garments. But Sir Bjorn stood against a pillar, looking at those two with his dead eyes, and it seemed to her that that other who was dead must needs have come back with him, on his arm.
She tried to look up at Saint Olav's picture__he stood there red and white and comely, leaning on his axe, treading his own sinful human nature underfoot__but her glance would ever go back to Sir Bjorn; and nigh to him she saw Eline Ormsdatter's dead face, looking unmoved upon her and Erlend. They had trampled her underfoot that they might come hither__and she grudged it not to them.
It seemed to her she was kneeling with Erlend on a cold stone. He knelt there with the red, burnt patches on his pale face; she knelt under the heavy bridal crown, and felt the dull, crushing weight within her__the burden of sin that she bore. She had played and wantoned with her sin, had measured it as in a childish game. Holy Virgin__now the time was nigh when it should lie full-born before her, look at her with living eyes; show her on itself the brands of sin, the hideous deformity of sin; strike in hate with misshapen hands at its mother's breast. When she had borne her child, when she saw the marks of her sin upon it and yet loved it as she had loved her sin, then would the game be played to an end.
It gave me chills reading: Soon enough will it be required of you twain that you shall pay for all you have done amiss.
Sir Bjorn stood against a pillar, looking at those two with his dead eyes
"The dead woman had shaken herself free of them all. He would have me and I would have him; you would have him and he would have you, said Eline. I have paid__and he must pay and you must pay when your time comes. When the time of sin is fulfilled it brings forth death. . ."
And then this....He lifted up her face a moment, looked down into it, and drew his hand down over her face and body, with a strange haste and roughness, as though he tore away a covering. "Forget," he begged, in a fiery whisper," forget all, my Kristin__all but this, that you are my own wife, and I am your own husband. . . " With his hand he quenched the flame of the last candle, then threw himself down beside her in the dark__he too was sobbing now: "Never have I believed it, never in all these years, that we should see this
day. . ."
I have great fear for what is in store for Kristin and possibly her baby, I feel she has been a part of Lady Aashild and Erlend's plan all along. There is something Lady Aashild has out for Kristin, that could have to do with her past, and Ragnfrid's. Lady Aashild said to Kristin, "Think on your own child," said the lady, "Be glad that you are drinking at your wedding with him who is its father."
This reminded me of Ragnfrid's confession of being pregnant on her wedding day, not knowing who the father of her baby was. Is Erlend truly just a nephew of Lady Aashild's, or could he secretly be her son? Something just feels off here.
PatH., This occasional mention of the pagan element seems to lurk about the story like the sight of wolves in the forest.
Yes, we are told by scripture to always be on guard,
Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
A few wolves I am seeing are, Lady Aashild, Sir Bjorn, and Erlend.
Barb, I fear Kristin's headstrong, stubbornness, may have gotten herself into more than she could ever imagine.
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