From Oslo to Santa Paula
Norwegian Bishop Offers Lecture on Novelist, Convert Sigrid Undset
(Winter 2009 Newsletter)
By some accounts, Sigrid Undset was the greatest novelist of her
time. Others argue that she was the 20th Century's most important
Catholic convert. At the very least, this Norwegian Nobel Prize
winner was one of the most prominent and beloved Catholic authors
of the last century. On November 21, the Most Reverend Bernt Ivar
Eidsvig, C.R.S.A., of Oslo, Norway, treated Thomas Aquinas College
to a lecture entitled "Sigrid Undset's War."
The audience was well-prepared for His Excellency's address. Two
weeks earlier, Miss Undset's 1909 book, Gunnar's Daughter, had been
the subject of the All-College Seminar, a semi-annual event in which
students and tutors all read and discuss in small seminars a single
work that is not part of the regular curriculum. Having just studied
Miss Undset's first historical novel, the students were eager to
learn more.
The rather remarkable story of how His Excellency came to Thomas
Aquinas College merits re-telling. It begins a few years back when
Jane (Neumayr) Nemcova ('98), the daughter of Thomas Aquinas College
founder and tutor Jack Neumayr, was working in the Czech Republic.
During that time, she would occasionally go to Vienna to visit her
friend and fellow graduate Jose Trujillo ('99), who was living in
community with the Canons Regular of St. Augustine at Klosterneuburg.
Through these visits, Jane got to know Bishop Eidsvig, who was then
the abbey's novice master.
Around that time, Jane met her future husband, Ondrej Nemec, and
the two decided to marry at Klosterneuburg's chapel, with Bishop
Eidsvig, whom Pope Benedict XVI had since named Bishop of Oslo,
officiating.
It was at the wedding reception that Dr. Neumayr and His Excellency
first met. "I asked him whether the Norwegians still remember
Sigrid Undset," Dr. Neumayr recalls. "Then he reached
into his wallet and pulled out a 500 kroner, or crown note, and
what should be on this piece of currency but the face of Sigrid
Undset!" Dr. Neumayr asked the Bishop if he would be willing
to some day lecture about Miss Undset at the College, and His Excellency
kindly agreed.
Two years later, Bishop Eidsvig seemed quite pleased to speak at
the College, despite overcoming a nine-hour time difference. "This
is the first assembly I have talked to about Sigrid Undset where
I know that everyone present has read her," he remarked.
During his lecture, at which both the Nemecs and Mr. Trujillo were
present, Bishop Eidsvig spoke of Miss Undset's "war" against
Nazism, much of which she waged while living in Brooklyn from 1940
to 1945 to escape German-occupied Norway. "You may remember
Stalin's question about the Pope: 'How many divisions has he got?'
I can tell you, Sigrid Undset was one of his divisions," Bishop
Eidsvig said.
The Bishop also spoke about Miss Undset's profound religious influence
in predominantly Lutheran Norway. "Sigrid Undset was not educated
as a theologian,  but
she was the only Catholic who was capable of expressing the Faith
so that it could be understood in the Norwegian language, and in
effect, she captured the hearts and minds of a generation of people,"
he observed.
His Excellency's comments were met with the audience's sustained
clapping. "After that applause," he smiled, "I wish
you all would move to Norway."
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2009
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