Portrait of Sigrid Undset

Birthday profile

Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset, Danish-Norwegian novelist, essayist, and translator, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1949)

Born
May 20, 1882
Died
June 10, 1949
Zodiac sign
Taurus
Birth year
1882

About Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈsɪ̂ɡːɾiː ˈʉ̂nːseːt]; 20 May 1882 – 10 June 1949) was a Danish-born Norwegian novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Born in Denmark and raised in Norway, Undset had her first books of historical fiction published in 1907. She fled Norway for the United States in 1940 because of her opposition to Nazi Germany and the German invasion and occupation of Norway, but returned after the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy about life in Norway in the Middle Ages, portrayed through the experiences of a woman from birth until death. Its three volumes were published between 1920 and 1922. She was 16 years old when she made her first attempt at writing a novel set in the Nordic Middle Ages.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Sigrid Undset was born

Sigrid Undset was born in 1882. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineChinese Exclusion Act signed
  • Technology milestoneFirst hydroelectric power plant (Appleton, WI)
  • World population~1.42B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderChester A. Arthur
  • U.S. population51.9M

1882 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Sigrid Undset's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18822026
Population51.9M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.