Luke Mohan’s Reviews > The Master of Hestviken > Status Update

Long ago he had acknowledged the truth of Bishop Torfinn‘s words: the man who is bent upon doing his own will shall surely see the day when he finds he has done that which he never willed.

Olav encounters Christ Crucified

“Suddenly he bent over his wife and cautiously touched with his lips the moist, open sores on her thin shoulder blades; he had recalled something he had heard–of holy men who kissed the sores before they bound up the lepers whom they tended…He accused her of nothing now.”

The man was not thinking so much of his child. He wept chiefly over himself–it was as though he saw the last remnant of his honour and his pride lying crushed beneath his feet.

“I know this slaying was a small matter in the beginning–had I declared it at once. But I took the wrong road at the start–and now the guilt has grown, and I see that it will go on and breed new guilt. And now I must turn about…else I shall become the worst of inhuman wretches.”

“I go to mass as often as I have the means to come thither, and two or three times a day when I am in the town. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind and all thy heart, we are told–methinks God must know I do so–I knew not that such love was within the power of man until I myself abandoned his covenant and lost Him!”

“He searched in their leather bags, did not find what he wanted, and opened another bag. There he came upon some little garments–they might have fitted a child of four years. Unconsciously his eyes fell upon his wife–Ingunn’s head was bent and her face was red as fire. Olav said nothing, packed the bag again, and went out.”

Olav’s affairs seem less significant when at war, surrounded by death and vice. Can be good and bad.

(After Benedikt describes Limbo)
Olav interrupted,”Then meseems, Sira Benedikt, that many a man might be tempted to desire he had died an infant and unbaptized.”
The priest replied:”It is so ordained, Olav, that in our baptism we are called to a great inheritance. And we must pay the price of being men.”

… For the sake of the woman who had been given into his hands while both were yet little children. And he would protect her and love her, as he had protected her when a boy and loved her since first he knew he was a man–and if he got no happiness with her, since she could never be aught but a sick and useless wife, that made no difference, he now realized–he would love her and protect her to her last hour.