[1] Nonneseter Abbey is mentioned for the first time in 1161, but was founded before that, possibly by as much as several decades earlier.
The community quickly became wealthy under the leadership of influential abbesses from some of the country's highest-born families.
The abbess Elin Jonsdatter, for example, is mentioned only between 1459 and 1476, when several documents of her financial and business transactions are preserved.
While the convent was formally dissolved during the Reformation, it seems that the nuns were allowed to remain in residence for several decades afterwards, perhaps until the end of the 16th century.
The abbey is perhaps best known as the place where the novelist Sigrid Undset set her character the young Kristin Lavransdatter in the first volume, Kransen (1920), of the eponymous trilogy, during which Kristin was placed there in a form of schooling under the abbess Groa.