Bjerkebæk — Sigrid Undset's Home

Bjerkebæk was the home of Sigrid Undset from 1919 until she fled Norway after the German invasion in 1940. Undset, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, lived and wrote here during the most productive years of her career, completing Kristin Lavransdatter and Olav Audunssøn in the house and garden. The property has been preserved as a museum and gives a vivid sense of the life of an early 20th-century Norwegian intellectual.

The house is furnished as it was during Undset's time, with her personal belongings, furniture, and books. The garden, which she designed and planted herself, has been restored. The museum organises the Norwegian Festival of Literature, which takes place in Lillehammer each spring and draws writers from across Scandinavia and internationally. The house is a short walk from the upper end of Storgata.

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A story
Sigrid Undset, who lived in Lillehammer from 1919 until she was forced to flee the German occupation in 1940, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928 for her medieval trilogy *Kristin Lavransdatter* — a monumental three-volume novel set in 14th-century Norway that remains one of the great works of Scandinavian literature. She chose Lillehammer partly for its connection to the medieval Norwegian past she was writing about; the Gudbrandsdal valley and the old farm culture she found there were direct inspiration for the novel. Her home, Bjerkebæk, is now a museum.