the bridal wreath

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Our "bridal wreath" spirea bush explodes in front of the house like fireworks. Here - I darkened this photo so you could see what I mean. I think it doubled in size from last year.





I made a pretty wreath and Don took this nice photo of me wearing it that I blurred up to make me look more romantic. Maybe many brides have worn a spirea bridal wreath, which might be why it was named that, or else the bush itself just looks like a bridal wreath. Our daughter will be married here on the farm in August - too bad there won't be any spirea in bloom for a wreath for her hair. But all bridal veils "grew" from this tradition.

Down through the centuries a white floral wreath worn on a bride's head was an indication of her maidenhood - virginity. In The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg, a book that Lyndal Roper wrote to counter the belief that the Reformation was only good for women's progress in society (in fact, he argues that women’s status was actually worsened by it), is this paragraph about the bridal wreath:

The symbolic object most associated with the bride was the wreath. Denoting triumph and festivity, it was also linked with her virginity. In Augsburg, at the engagement and again at the wedding, the bride presented the groom with a wreath. During the procession to the church she wore her hair loose or uncovered save for the bridal wreath or crown. Her peer group of unmarried women distributed wreaths to all the guests. It is hard to determine whether the wreath had always symbolized the offering of the bride’s virginity to the groom, or whether this was a later development as the Church, continuing its pre-Reformation campaigns, tried to prevent the couple celebrating their sexual union until after the wedding. Certainly by the late sixteenth century, in both Protestant and Catholic regions, women who had slept with their men before the wedding were being compelled to wear a mock wreath of straw through the streets, or a wreath open at the back, in a public exhibition of their “shame.”

Yippee for Google! - as I was searching info about the bridal wreath spirea, not only did I find Roper's interesting book, I also found this treasure: a novel titled The Bridal Wreath, written in 1920 - first in a trilogy by Norwegian Sigrid Undset (born in Denmark but raised in Norway). The book's title, of course, has great importance for the story, especially in light of what the bridal wreath signified in the 14th century when the story was set a la Roper's words, above.





As an English major-come-university-English-department-adviser how did I not ever hear of 14th century Norwegian Kristin Lavransdatter, one of the great heroines of literature apparently (and title and subject of a film directed by Liv Ullman), and the book about her that has never been out of print since its first publication in 1920? (Granted, most of what we read in class was written in English, not translated into English.) How did I not hear of its author, Sigrid Undset, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1928 - "principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages"?

Sigrid Undset (b. May 20, 1882 - the same year Virginia Woolfe was born; she died in 1949 ), was a pioneer exploring aspects of life in the Middle Ages that hadn't been documented. Having grown up listening to her historian/archeologist father tell of Medieval times in Scandinavia, she developed gripping psychological studies that were erotic, and yes imaginary - but based in the historic tensions of the times. How did her own conversion to Catholicism a few years before writing the book contribute to its exploration of sexuality? What was life really like for women then? There is little evidence. But Undset apparently presents fascinating possibilities.

THE PLOT: The father of The Bridal Wreath's heroine - Kristin Lavransdatter - is a wealthy landowner (yes his name was Lavran - so "Lavran's daughter" = Lavransdatter) who has betrothed her to another respectable landowner's son. But one night at a festival Kristin meets a dark knight, they dance all night - and fall in love. Will she follow her father's wishes to marry the landowner's son? Or will she follow her passionate longing to be with the knight of ill repute? I'll found out sometime, as I've added the book to my pile of unfinished reading.

The individual novels of the trilogy Undset wrote are Kransen (The Bridal Wreath - or sometimes just called The Wreath), first published in 1920, Husfrue (Wife), published in 1921, and Korset (The Cross), published in 1922. Kransen and Husfrue have also been published in English translation under the titles The Bridal Wreath and The Mistress of Husa.


While cruising for The Bridal Wreath in the university library stacks, I couldn't resist also fingering another of Undset's novels, Våren, translated into German Fruhling - just to soak in the beauty of the old German font and the book cover with birch leaves, below.

Undset's novel Fruhling translated from Norwegian (Våren) into German
- and its cover below

young Sigrid Undset