The Story of Burnt Njal: The Great Icelandic Tribune, Jurist, and Counsellor

Njal's Saga is an Icelandic saga by an unknown author, supposedly written around 1280 A.D. The story tells of an unending spiral of feuds and vengeance, leading eventually to the burning of a farmstead at Bergotha in Iceland, which killed the head of the household, Njal, his wife, and a number of his sons. There are several main characters. In the first half, a man named Gunnar, who is a great warrior and often champions underdogs in legal disputes, not infrequently by challenging the other party in the dispute to a duel, causing them to concede or settle rather than face him. Gunnar fought a notable fight against attackers who greatly outnumbered him, which is mentioned in a number of other sources and was apparently a true and famous event. The burning of Njal in his farm is also a historically documented event. Eventually Gunnar is killed by a coalition of his enemies, and his death is then avenged by the sons of Njal (Gunnar and Njal were close friends), which leads to another escalating round of killings, that concludes with the burning of Njal and his farm. The final section of the saga concerns the efforts of Kari, Njal's son-in-law and the only survivor of the attack on and burning of Njal's farm, to avenge the burning by tracking down and killing many of the members of the burning-party. The saga is a powerful, building story, even by modern standards. It also provides much detail about legal proceedings in Iceland, particularly cases brought over killings, contains brief mentions of legendary Viking leader Ragnar Logbrod and several of this sons, and also contains a number of very detailed, vivid descriptions of combat as fought during the Viking period.

How is it that a work so rich and powerful is so little known by literate, well-educated people? Is it that we are programmed to reject everything outside our ultra-narrow Western European/North American bandwidth? I first read this translation of NJALS SAGA over 10 years ago. The story set off a series of reactions in me such that, this year, I am planning to visit the sites where the story of Njall, Flossi, and Gunnar actually took place a millenium ago. (Archaeologists have located a burned-out farmstead at the site of the famous conflagration that dates back to that time.) The story of Njall's restraint, and his preference to die with his family in a fire set by his enemies rather than to perpetuate a feud, has a resonance in our own times: Consider the Yugoslavia of Milosovich, or the genocides between the Tutsi and the Hutu in Central Africa. Even Njall's enemies have to be goaded into committing atrocity: One character implies that Flossi, the arsonist, is weak because he has allowed himself to be sexually used by the Svinafell troll. Times haven't changed much. The saga contains scenes of great beauty. Gunnar of Hlidarendi, outlawed by the Althing and forced to flee for his life, takes one backward look. "How fair the slopes are!" he exclaims, and then decides to stay. Under attack by his enemies, he asks his wife for a length of her hair when his bowstring breaks. The "thief-eyed" Hallgerd Long-Legs refuses because he had slapped her once, and so he goes to his doom muttering that each person chooses his or her fame. True to his prophecy, Hallgerd is the ultimate type of the treacherous and spiteful wife. We seem to think of Icelanders as the scions of degenerate Vikings who never amounted to much. And yet they created a republic in A.D. 870 (!!) and gave birth to a literature that will be read and loved by those who have the mind and heart to appreciate them long after most mass-produced "classics" are hooted off the world stage.

Of the four Icelandic Sagas I own and have read: Egil's Saga, Laxdaela Saga, Eyrbyggja Saga and this, Njal's Saga; Njal's Saga remains my favorite. It's different from the other Sagas that I've read in that it appeared to me to be surprisingly dramatized, especially moreso than the other Sagas. I found this discouraging at first, questioning the accuracy of the events told within, but nonetheless, I put these thoughts aside and decided I would simply read and appreciate the book for what it was, and in the end I was entirely pleased with it. Not only is it my own personal favorite Icelandic saga, I've found it to creep into a position of being one of my favorite texts of all time. I don't, however, recommend it to newcomers to this style of literature. This was the last of the four sagas that I read, reserving it because it seemed to me when perusing each book that it would be the best of them, and I turned out to be right in my predictions. There is a particularly large amount of events in the book held around the form of law and establishment at the time, which makes it quite heavy for someone who isn't fully understanding of these people or their society. For this reason, I would suggest Eyrbyggja Saga for starters, as it is a short and easily understandable piece of writing. Reserve Njal's Saga for when you are in a position to fully appreciate it, then you won't be sorry.

Although most of us have heard of the Greek epics and, in particular, the Illiad and Odyssey (the two most renowned epics in the western world), we have far less familiarity with the literary tradition of the old Norse folk who inhabited the lands about the Baltic and North Atlantic in early medieval times. Of course, we've heard about the vikings, coastal pirates and fighters who sprang from these folk, and about their wide-sailing adventures. Yet we are not nearly so familiar with the Norse literary tradition which is, in some ways, as compelling and profound as the literature of the ancient Greeks we so revere today. Certainly the Norse saga tradition is as powerful, reflecting stories handed down orally for generations which were finally committed to written form in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Among these works, Njal's Saga may well be the best of the lot. Like all sagas it is a prose epic (as opposed to the poetic form of the Illiad and its kind), but still possessing a uniquely poetic rhythm and perspective which only the Norse folk had to offer. It is a somewhat bleak tale of several generations of Icelandic families whose men and women lived and feuded in the ninth through eleventh centuries on the remote island of Iceland, itself only settled by fleeing Norse farmers and land holders from about 860 AD onward. Here, in Njal's Saga, is a tale of hard men in a harsh land who push and pull at one another until the only recourse, in their grim pioneering culture, seems to be the blood-feud. And once unleashed, the blood-flow is literally unstoppable as noble and not so noble heroes cut one another down until, at last, one of the most respected of all the Icelanders is himself burned alive, with most of his kinsmen, in one of the retaliatory raids which arise from the ongoing feuds. This despite the realization on the part of the burners that what they are about to do will have grim and far reaching implications. Yet they cannot pull back, for honor's sake, and must suffer the consequences which they have wittingly unleashed as a vast well-spring of revenge and justice arises to overwhelm the burners. In the end it is the wronged viking Kari who single-mindedly pursues and hunts his foes to the far corners of the earth, affording them no peace as he seeks re-payment for loss of kin until even he is spent. This, like most sagas, is a tale of many strands and several generations and so it partakes of the literary conventions of its type -- conventions which make it a little harder on the modern reader than some would like. There are extensive character genealogies (of little interest to most of us today) and very limited descriptive text (something else some of us may miss). There is also a decided lack of the subjective point of view or of interior monologue, i.e., we never get inside these characters' heads to see things as they do. Indeed, as in Hemingway at his sharpest, we must 'see' the ch

In addition to what other reviewers have added, let me state that the main plot of this saga is the attempt of the prescient Njal to save his family from the destruction that he forsees in the future by creating political and marriage alliances with other powerful families. In doing so, Njal innevitably draws more and more of Iceland into the web of his own fate, whose strands finally peter out after the Battle of Clontarf in Ireland (c.1014 ?).Although some detractors criticize the style,the reader must understand that Njal's Saga is written in typical saga style with stock characters and situations. This is NOT a modern-day novel; it is written in an idiomatic style. Conversation and narrative contain the dry wit, excellent understatement and brevity that characterizes saga style. Strict Norse traditions of hospitality (even to enemies)and the strong relationships of foster ties are also peculiar to these types of sagas.After reading Njal's Saga, one can come away not only with a great story, but also keen insights into Norse culture and tradition. I highly recommend it!