The Legend of Randine: The Laerdal Letters

The Legendary Women's Ancestor Series: Book Two: The Legend of Randine: The Laerdal Letters, is a heart-warming novel about the life of a midwife in the 1820's and 30's in rural Norway. This volume is the second novel about Randine Hokenshatter Stokanes Luster Lysne, who was the author's great, great, great Grandmother who was actually a midwife in the 1820-30's. In this edition, Randine moves to Laerdal, a remote village of at the end a the Sogn og Fjord the longest fjord in all of Norway. She is wet-nursing Henrik, her adopted son, whose father Ola is from Laerdal, and who has just confessed his love for her in the last volume. Randine is young, and has apprenticed with Ursula in Bergen and is on her way with her parents who are originally from Sogndal, a town nearby. They have agreed to come with her as she is the only child, and they wish to retire back to their home village of Sogndal. The adventures Randine has; being in a secret romance with Ola; launching into her midwifery career before she enters school in Christiana (Oslo today); and learning the ways of rural life as opposed to a bustling port city of Bergen, are just some of the tensions she deals with as well as managing a baby boom that occurred in the 1820-30's all over Norway when she became a midwife. She was the first official midwife in her district, and the first to woman to have a profession outside of motherhood and she is in the sisterhood of Freya, a women's group that focuses on women's power and divinity.