Set in 13th-century Norway,  The Axe  is the first volume in Undset's epic tetralogy,  The Master of Hestviken . In it, we meet Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, who were betrothed as children and raised as brother and sister. In the heedlessness of youth, they become lovers, unaware that their ardor will forge the first link in a chain of murder, exile, and disgrace. Undset's novel is also a meticulous re-creation of a world...

It is Norway in the thirteenth century, a land rent by unremitting warfare and feebly lit by Christianity. Olav Audunsson was once an outlaw; now he is a man of wealth and stature. But he is haunted by the memory of crimes for which there is no easy atonement and by losses that may never be redeemed.