Editing Sigrid Undset (section)

==Marriage and children==
In Rome, Undset met [[Anders Castus Svarstad]], a Norwegian painter, whom she married almost three years later. She was 30; Svarstad was thirteen years older, married, and had a wife and three children in Norway. It was nearly three years before Svarstad got his divorce from his first wife.

Undset and Svarstad were married in 1912 and went to stay in London for six months. From London, they returned to Rome, where their first child was born in January 1913.<ref name=Kristeligdagblad>{{cite news|url=https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/kultur/k%C3%A6rlighedens-fryd-og-fortvivlelse|publisher=Kristelig Dagblad|author=Kirsten Boas|title=Kærlighedens fryd og fortvivlelse|date=22 September 2007|access-date=9 April 2025|language=da}}</ref> A boy, he was named after his father. In the years up to 1919, she had another child, and the household also took in Svarstad's three children from his first marriage. These were difficult years: her second child, a girl, was [[mentally handicapped]],<ref name=Kristeligdagblad /> as was one of Svarstad's sons by his first wife.

She continued writing, finishing her last realistic novels and collections of [[short stories]]. She also entered the public debate on topical themes: [[women's emancipation]] and other ethical and moral issues. She had considerable [[polemical]] gifts, and was critical of emancipation as it was developing, and of the moral and ethical decline she felt was threatening in the wake of the [[First World War]].

[[File:Sigrid Undset at Bjerkebæk.jpg|thumb|right|Undset at work at Bjerkebæk]]
[[File:Bjerkebæk Lillehammer.jpg|thumb|right|Bjerkebæk, Undset's home, now part of [[Maihaugen]] museum]]

In 1919, she moved to [[Lillehammer]], a small town in the [[Gudbrand Valley]] in southeast Norway, taking her two children with her, while her husband stayed in Italy.<ref name=Kristeligdagblad /> She was then expecting her third child. The intention was that she should take a rest at Lillehammer and move back to Kristiania as soon as Svarstad had their new house in order. However, the marriage broke down and a divorce followed.<ref name=Kristeligdagblad /> In August 1919, she gave birth to her third child, at Lillehammer. She decided to make Lillehammer her home, and within two years, Bjerkebæk, a large house of traditional Norwegian timber architecture, was completed, along with a large fenced garden with views of the town and the villages around. Here she was able to retreat and concentrate on her writing.<ref name="bjerkebæk">{{cite web|url=http://snl.no/Bjerkeb%C3%A6k|title=Bjerkebæk|date=28 September 2014|website=Snl.no|access-date=11 November 2017|via=Store norske leksikon}}</ref>