Sigeid Undset's conversion in 1924 aroused something like consternation in Norway. There are few Catholics in the country—not quite three thousand— and there is much prejudice and accompanying ignorance of Catholic teaching. And yet her intimate friends and those who read her books carefully had long been aware of the trend of her thoughts. As far back as 1915 she wrote to a friend that ‘the Eoman Church has at least form and is not irritating to one's intelligence’. Later on she remarks that Eoper's life of his father-in-law, Thomas More, is one of the most beautiful things she has ever read; and her preoccupation with and widening knowledge of the middle ages, the ages of faith, in Preparation for the writing of her masterpiece, Kristin Lavransdatter, no doubt played a great part in enabling her to take the final step.