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Njal's Saga
Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems-from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to the terrible consequences when decent men and women are swept up in a tide of violence beyond their control. It is populated by memorable and complex characters like Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a powerful warrior with an aversion to killing, and the not-so-villainous Mord Valgardsson. Full of dreams, strange prophecies, violent power struggles, and fragile peace agreements, Njal's Saga tells the compelling story of a fifty-year blood feud that, despite its distance from us in time and place, is driven by passions familiar to us all.
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1270
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* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author
Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.
See also: Anonymous
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August 18, 2020
”Gunnar got ready to ride to the Thing, and before he left he spoke to Hallgerd: ‘Behave yourself while I’m away and don’t show your bad temper where my friends are concerned.’
‘The trolls take your friend,’ she said.
Gunnar rode to the Thing and saw that it was no good talking to her.”
The events of Njal’s Saga took place between 960 and 1020 in Icelandic society and were written about in the thirteenth century. What was so unexpected for me was to discover, in such an ancient culture, the power that women had in, what I assumed was, a patriarchal society. Before I started reading Icelandic sagas, I had the image in my mind of the stereotypical, he-man, Viking Icelander, who ruled his home with an iron fist. That was not the case at all.
Hallgerd was famous to scholars of the sagas because she was such a diabolical character. She took any slight against her honor very seriously, meddled in others affairs without fear of impunity, manipulated, connived, and ultimately cost seven men their lives in a feud with Bergthora, the wife of Gunnar’s friend Njal. There was an inordinate amount of goading by women of their husbands in the sagas to push men into conflicts to defend family honor. The women, for the most part, did not really come off that well. They were depicted as shallow, petty, and quite willing to start an all out blood war over some perceived insult, even if the slight was unintended.
If a man did raise his hand to his wife, he risked having her burly male relatives appearing on his threshold to give him an attitude adjustment.
Most disagreements between men, some of them caused by women, were settled at a gathering called Althing. Men would get together and discuss who did what to whom and how much compensation was expected to be paid to make up for the loss of a life or of property. Again, surprisingly more civilized than anything I would have expected. Because of the alliances between people, either through blood or marriage or friendship, blood feuds were taken seriously. If things were not settled amicably between families, all of Iceland could find themselves in a civil war.
In these sagas, there were several moments when things became very precarious. As Hallgerd and Bergthora sparred with one another and convinced either their relatives or men who worked for their husbands to kill someone from the other family, the possibility of a savage blood feud erupting became precariously plausible. If not for the peaceable nature of their husbands, even more lives would have been lost as these women conducted their own bloody chess match where the pawns were men’s lives. Njal and Gunnar kept passing the same bag of silver back and forth as compensation for the deaths of their kinsmen to keep the peace.
Njal was considered one of the wisest men in Iceland, but though many came to him for consul, including Gunnar, his own sons frequently avoided asking him for advice, which eventually led to disaster. ”’I’m not in their planning’ said Njal, ‘but I am seldom left out when their plans are good.’”
Gunnar was level headed and anticipated problems before they actually materialized, but found himself often unable to stop the consequences. He was so mild mannered, but once his ire was raised he could become a fierce and formidable warrior. I really grew to appreciate his character as his story was told.
Throughout the sagas were foreshadowings or prophecies of what the future would hold. When Thorvald, son of Osvif, decided to marry Hallgerd, yes that Hallgerd, the future wife of Gunnar, his father couldn’t help but feel the match would be a costly one for his son. ”’Her laughter doesn’t seem as good to me as it does to you,’ said Osvif, ‘and the proof of this will come later.’”
Indeed, it did.
Hallgerd had a couple of marriages before Gunnar and was known for being difficult to get along with, but she was beautiful, and men continued to be dazzled by her appearance and thought they could handle her conniving and manipulations.
Despite the very civilized manner with which compensation was handled in this society, there were still plenty of points in the saga where bloody conflict broke out, and there was much lopping of hands, arms, legs, and heads off. Skulls were split. Torsos were skewered. Scars were made. One of my favorites was when:
”’This is the first time I have laughed since you killed Thrain.’
Skarphedin said, ‘Then here’s something to remember him by.’ (Terminatoresque)
He took from his purse one of the molars he had hacked out of Thrain and threw it at Gunnar’s eye [different Gunnar from the main character] and knocked it out onto his cheek. Gunnar then fell off the roof.”
Or how about this encounter with THE Gunnar.
”Gunnar saw a red tunic at the window and he made a thrust with his halberd and hit Thorgrim in the waist. The Norwegian lost his grip on his shield, his feet slipped and he fell off the roof and then walked to where Gizur and the others were sitting on the ground.
Gizur looked at him and spoke: ‘Well is Gunnar at home?’
Thorgrim answered, ‘Find that out for yourselves, but I’ve found out one thing--that his halberd’s at home.’
Then he fell down dead.”
I’ve heard that some people find these sagas tough to read. Within a few pages, I found a rhythm with the way the stories were told and within a few chapters I was caught up in the lives of Gunnar and Njal. The introduction was a great prep for reading the sagas and provided me with insights that helped me enjoy my reading even more. There were many creatively described, bloodthirsty moments as well as some detailed legal proceedings that confirmed for me the importance of laws to balance the scales between the strongest and the weakest. This Icelandic culture around 1000 AD was a society trying to evolve away from their bloody, barbaric past and move toward a civilisation where every life was precious, and the arts could be appreciated as much as the glitter of a sharp sword blade.
Also see my review of The Saga of the Volsungs
and my review of King Harald's Saga
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
‘The trolls take your friend,’ she said.
Gunnar rode to the Thing and saw that it was no good talking to her.”
The events of Njal’s Saga took place between 960 and 1020 in Icelandic society and were written about in the thirteenth century. What was so unexpected for me was to discover, in such an ancient culture, the power that women had in, what I assumed was, a patriarchal society. Before I started reading Icelandic sagas, I had the image in my mind of the stereotypical, he-man, Viking Icelander, who ruled his home with an iron fist. That was not the case at all.
Hallgerd was famous to scholars of the sagas because she was such a diabolical character. She took any slight against her honor very seriously, meddled in others affairs without fear of impunity, manipulated, connived, and ultimately cost seven men their lives in a feud with Bergthora, the wife of Gunnar’s friend Njal. There was an inordinate amount of goading by women of their husbands in the sagas to push men into conflicts to defend family honor. The women, for the most part, did not really come off that well. They were depicted as shallow, petty, and quite willing to start an all out blood war over some perceived insult, even if the slight was unintended.
If a man did raise his hand to his wife, he risked having her burly male relatives appearing on his threshold to give him an attitude adjustment.
Most disagreements between men, some of them caused by women, were settled at a gathering called Althing. Men would get together and discuss who did what to whom and how much compensation was expected to be paid to make up for the loss of a life or of property. Again, surprisingly more civilized than anything I would have expected. Because of the alliances between people, either through blood or marriage or friendship, blood feuds were taken seriously. If things were not settled amicably between families, all of Iceland could find themselves in a civil war.
In these sagas, there were several moments when things became very precarious. As Hallgerd and Bergthora sparred with one another and convinced either their relatives or men who worked for their husbands to kill someone from the other family, the possibility of a savage blood feud erupting became precariously plausible. If not for the peaceable nature of their husbands, even more lives would have been lost as these women conducted their own bloody chess match where the pawns were men’s lives. Njal and Gunnar kept passing the same bag of silver back and forth as compensation for the deaths of their kinsmen to keep the peace.
Njal was considered one of the wisest men in Iceland, but though many came to him for consul, including Gunnar, his own sons frequently avoided asking him for advice, which eventually led to disaster. ”’I’m not in their planning’ said Njal, ‘but I am seldom left out when their plans are good.’”
Gunnar was level headed and anticipated problems before they actually materialized, but found himself often unable to stop the consequences. He was so mild mannered, but once his ire was raised he could become a fierce and formidable warrior. I really grew to appreciate his character as his story was told.
Throughout the sagas were foreshadowings or prophecies of what the future would hold. When Thorvald, son of Osvif, decided to marry Hallgerd, yes that Hallgerd, the future wife of Gunnar, his father couldn’t help but feel the match would be a costly one for his son. ”’Her laughter doesn’t seem as good to me as it does to you,’ said Osvif, ‘and the proof of this will come later.’”
Indeed, it did.
Hallgerd had a couple of marriages before Gunnar and was known for being difficult to get along with, but she was beautiful, and men continued to be dazzled by her appearance and thought they could handle her conniving and manipulations.
Despite the very civilized manner with which compensation was handled in this society, there were still plenty of points in the saga where bloody conflict broke out, and there was much lopping of hands, arms, legs, and heads off. Skulls were split. Torsos were skewered. Scars were made. One of my favorites was when:
”’This is the first time I have laughed since you killed Thrain.’
Skarphedin said, ‘Then here’s something to remember him by.’ (Terminatoresque)
He took from his purse one of the molars he had hacked out of Thrain and threw it at Gunnar’s eye [different Gunnar from the main character] and knocked it out onto his cheek. Gunnar then fell off the roof.”
Or how about this encounter with THE Gunnar.
”Gunnar saw a red tunic at the window and he made a thrust with his halberd and hit Thorgrim in the waist. The Norwegian lost his grip on his shield, his feet slipped and he fell off the roof and then walked to where Gizur and the others were sitting on the ground.
Gizur looked at him and spoke: ‘Well is Gunnar at home?’
Thorgrim answered, ‘Find that out for yourselves, but I’ve found out one thing--that his halberd’s at home.’
Then he fell down dead.”
I’ve heard that some people find these sagas tough to read. Within a few pages, I found a rhythm with the way the stories were told and within a few chapters I was caught up in the lives of Gunnar and Njal. The introduction was a great prep for reading the sagas and provided me with insights that helped me enjoy my reading even more. There were many creatively described, bloodthirsty moments as well as some detailed legal proceedings that confirmed for me the importance of laws to balance the scales between the strongest and the weakest. This Icelandic culture around 1000 AD was a society trying to evolve away from their bloody, barbaric past and move toward a civilisation where every life was precious, and the arts could be appreciated as much as the glitter of a sharp sword blade.
Also see my review of The Saga of the Volsungs
and my review of King Harald's Saga
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
June 22, 2025
I've read Icelandic sagas before and I remember enjoying them: Egil's Saga, The Saga of the People of Laxárdalr. This is the longest one they've got and considering how well it was preserved, this was a favorite for a lot of medieval Icelanders. And now I get it.
This saga is epic, it's sprawling, it reads like a novel. The character list is long and these people are not just mere names - daughter of someone, son of someone - no, a lot of them have personalities. The first thing that you notice is that even though the main characters are men, women are very present in this world. Some shape the story a lot, like Hallgerd, for better and for worse. Some women are angry, some are evil (or are they? definitely vindictive and manipulative), others are heroic and devoted and very powerful, like Njal's wife Bergthora.
Oh reading this book is definitely an interesting exercise in gender relationship and masculinity, how fragile it is. It's extremely easy to manipulate these men and start cycles of violence, it's enough to say the man weeped, or fainted. Or got forbid doesn't have a lush beard. And even if the man doesn't want to kill, he must, it's all about his honor. Fascinating fragile toxic masculinity, Marty McFly and chicken insult.
But, again, this is a storytelling in it's purest form, not obscured by fancy language, very plain. We don't get any interiority of the characters and it made me think how incredible it would be for a great novelist to use the events and characterizations and create little scenes between them and enrich their inner worlds. I am no writer and I was thinking about retelling stories from the saga. And there are a few very memorable action scenes.
So do yourself a favor and read this book.
This saga is epic, it's sprawling, it reads like a novel. The character list is long and these people are not just mere names - daughter of someone, son of someone - no, a lot of them have personalities. The first thing that you notice is that even though the main characters are men, women are very present in this world. Some shape the story a lot, like Hallgerd, for better and for worse. Some women are angry, some are evil (or are they? definitely vindictive and manipulative), others are heroic and devoted and very powerful, like Njal's wife Bergthora.
Oh reading this book is definitely an interesting exercise in gender relationship and masculinity, how fragile it is. It's extremely easy to manipulate these men and start cycles of violence, it's enough to say the man weeped, or fainted. Or got forbid doesn't have a lush beard. And even if the man doesn't want to kill, he must, it's all about his honor. Fascinating fragile toxic masculinity, Marty McFly and chicken insult.
But, again, this is a storytelling in it's purest form, not obscured by fancy language, very plain. We don't get any interiority of the characters and it made me think how incredible it would be for a great novelist to use the events and characterizations and create little scenes between them and enrich their inner worlds. I am no writer and I was thinking about retelling stories from the saga. And there are a few very memorable action scenes.
So do yourself a favor and read this book.
Read
May 23, 2019Often when thinking about the rise of the European novel there's a tendency to look to Cervantes or maybe back to "The Golden Ass". Yet longer sagas like Njal's saga seem to be very much like novels to me.
This is an amazing work. Partially based on fact and around factual events such as the coming of Christianity to Iceland the saga traces a quarrel. As it gets out of hand and men reach for weapons calmer heads build settlements between the angry parties. However the causes of unhappiness cause the quarrel to break out repeatedly, each time as more people die, other families are dragged in due to ties of kinship or obligation until one side finishes the argument with an act of simple, but extreme brutality.
The sense of impending disaster, apparently averted at times but then back on track gives this work a bleak power, added to which it has a selection of fine feud worthy early Icelandic insults .
This is an amazing work. Partially based on fact and around factual events such as the coming of Christianity to Iceland the saga traces a quarrel. As it gets out of hand and men reach for weapons calmer heads build settlements between the angry parties. However the causes of unhappiness cause the quarrel to break out repeatedly, each time as more people die, other families are dragged in due to ties of kinship or obligation until one side finishes the argument with an act of simple, but extreme brutality.
The sense of impending disaster, apparently averted at times but then back on track gives this work a bleak power, added to which it has a selection of fine feud worthy early Icelandic insults .
March 3, 2022
"Only for a short while does the hand delight in its blow."
I originally read Njal’s Saga back in the mid-1980s, when I was in my early 20s. It absolutely blew me away at the time. I’ve just listened to it again on audiobook although I couldn’t find that edition on GR, so I’ve left this review with the edition of the book that I first read. The translations were a bit different. I originally read the 1960 translation by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson. The audiobook version is based on the 19th century translation by Sir George Webbe Dasent, although it has the word “updated” in brackets beside the details of the translation.
The saga is a medieval epic based on historical events in Iceland in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, and which relates the story of a decades-long blood feud. Other historical events are also covered, such as the arrival of Christianity in Iceland, and what appears to be a description of the Battle of Clontarf near Dublin in 1014. The action ranges across Scandinavia and the British Isles, but it’s the feuding in Iceland that is at the core of the book. There’s an enormous range of characters.
It's a fascinating insight into the way people lived in early medieval Iceland. One aspect is that there was no central law enforcement. There were laws, and the men of Iceland sought to prevent total anarchy by a system of financial compensations, banishments and other “atonements” decided at gatherings of the annual Parliament, the Althing. Mostly though, these decisions could only be enforced through goodwill or through the physical prowess of the aggrieved party. At one point in the tale there is a detailed (and rather repetitive) description of a lawsuit brought before the Althing, and just like in modern courts, clever lawyers are able to use technicalities and breaches of procedure to have cases struck down. The medieval Icelanders seem to have been a remarkably litigious lot, constantly seeking financial “atonements” from others for harm done to them.
A major feature of the story is the way patched-up quarrels flare up again, because one party is dissatisfied and wants revenge through bloodshed. The women play a big part in this. In the early part of the book the title character, Njal Ϸorgeirsson, is close friends with a man called Gunnar of Hlíðarendi. Their wives quarrel and arrange a series of killings, with Gunnar’s wife in particular breaking agreements that Njal and Gunnar have made to end the feud. To begin with the women order their slaves and servants to murder their counterparts in the other household, but later this involves kinsmen. Right through the book it is easy for women to goad their male relatives into taking blood vengeance, by accusing their menfolk of cowardice and lack of honour if they don’t. Not that women are the only manipulative agents - there are also men who promote discord through tactics like spreading false rumours. Violence is a constant undercurrent and can break out at any moment. Near the end, one of the major characters arrives at the hall of Earl Sigurd of Orkney on Christmas Day, “at drinking time” and overhears one of his enemies telling a false story of the feud.
Now that’s what I call poor table manners!
I loved listening to this again, and one great advantage of the audiobook was learning how the Icelandic names were actually pronounced!
I originally read Njal’s Saga back in the mid-1980s, when I was in my early 20s. It absolutely blew me away at the time. I’ve just listened to it again on audiobook although I couldn’t find that edition on GR, so I’ve left this review with the edition of the book that I first read. The translations were a bit different. I originally read the 1960 translation by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson. The audiobook version is based on the 19th century translation by Sir George Webbe Dasent, although it has the word “updated” in brackets beside the details of the translation.
The saga is a medieval epic based on historical events in Iceland in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, and which relates the story of a decades-long blood feud. Other historical events are also covered, such as the arrival of Christianity in Iceland, and what appears to be a description of the Battle of Clontarf near Dublin in 1014. The action ranges across Scandinavia and the British Isles, but it’s the feuding in Iceland that is at the core of the book. There’s an enormous range of characters.
It's a fascinating insight into the way people lived in early medieval Iceland. One aspect is that there was no central law enforcement. There were laws, and the men of Iceland sought to prevent total anarchy by a system of financial compensations, banishments and other “atonements” decided at gatherings of the annual Parliament, the Althing. Mostly though, these decisions could only be enforced through goodwill or through the physical prowess of the aggrieved party. At one point in the tale there is a detailed (and rather repetitive) description of a lawsuit brought before the Althing, and just like in modern courts, clever lawyers are able to use technicalities and breaches of procedure to have cases struck down. The medieval Icelanders seem to have been a remarkably litigious lot, constantly seeking financial “atonements” from others for harm done to them.
A major feature of the story is the way patched-up quarrels flare up again, because one party is dissatisfied and wants revenge through bloodshed. The women play a big part in this. In the early part of the book the title character, Njal Ϸorgeirsson, is close friends with a man called Gunnar of Hlíðarendi. Their wives quarrel and arrange a series of killings, with Gunnar’s wife in particular breaking agreements that Njal and Gunnar have made to end the feud. To begin with the women order their slaves and servants to murder their counterparts in the other household, but later this involves kinsmen. Right through the book it is easy for women to goad their male relatives into taking blood vengeance, by accusing their menfolk of cowardice and lack of honour if they don’t. Not that women are the only manipulative agents - there are also men who promote discord through tactics like spreading false rumours. Violence is a constant undercurrent and can break out at any moment. Near the end, one of the major characters arrives at the hall of Earl Sigurd of Orkney on Christmas Day, “at drinking time” and overhears one of his enemies telling a false story of the feud.
Now that’s what I call poor table manners!
I loved listening to this again, and one great advantage of the audiobook was learning how the Icelandic names were actually pronounced!
November 2, 2021
I listened to this as an audiobook and I didn't expect that a novel/story written around 1280 to be as entertaining and engaging. Was casually browsing around while listening at the end of the book but had to stop and process what I just heard. The imagination was clearly not an issue back then and had quite interesting effect. The fight scenes was a tad different from the modern ones but way more interesting. Highly recommend giving this work a try
September 8, 2011
It is one of the greatest crimes of recent literature that Penguin has replaced this -- one of the truly great English translations of any work by anyone -- with a horrendously execrable translation whose only distinguishing characteristic is that it was done more recently. Seek out Magnus Magnusson's translation (thankfully there are oodles and oodles of them second hand due to it being assigned in college courses for decades) at all costs.
This book is really in a class by itself. It might be an epic poem in Icelandic, but in English it behaves like a real novel, which is jaw-dropping, considering it was written about 750 years ago -- 350 years before DON QUIXOTE, which is generally considered the first "real novel" -- and is in contrast to other poetic epics such as THE ILIAD which even in prose translations can hardly be mistaken for "real novels".
Using more-or-less factual events that took place between 960 AD and 1020 AD, the book is a long but utterly enthralling history of a few families (mostly about two in particular) and the cycle of violence and murder that self-perpetuates between them, unable to be quelled because of the way the legal system and ethics are instituted in pagan Iceland. It isn't until Christianity is brought to Iceland in 1000 AD and its precept of forgiveness is introduced to the islanders' morality that the violence can at long last end. The last scene of the book, when both sides have forgiven each other, is incredibly moving.
[Oh, and a good portion of the plot is a courtroom legal thriller. I know, right?]
This book is really in a class by itself. It might be an epic poem in Icelandic, but in English it behaves like a real novel, which is jaw-dropping, considering it was written about 750 years ago -- 350 years before DON QUIXOTE, which is generally considered the first "real novel" -- and is in contrast to other poetic epics such as THE ILIAD which even in prose translations can hardly be mistaken for "real novels".
Using more-or-less factual events that took place between 960 AD and 1020 AD, the book is a long but utterly enthralling history of a few families (mostly about two in particular) and the cycle of violence and murder that self-perpetuates between them, unable to be quelled because of the way the legal system and ethics are instituted in pagan Iceland. It isn't until Christianity is brought to Iceland in 1000 AD and its precept of forgiveness is introduced to the islanders' morality that the violence can at long last end. The last scene of the book, when both sides have forgiven each other, is incredibly moving.
[Oh, and a good portion of the plot is a courtroom legal thriller. I know, right?]
December 6, 2010
I really enjoyed this one. There's some likeable characters -- even from my soft-hearted modern point of view -- who I really got to care about, which isn't always the case with sagas. I was kind of sad when they went out of the saga. The translation is good, clear and easy to read, and there's helpful footnotes, a good introduction, and other helpful supplementary material. As with all sagas, there's an awful lot of names, but it's still pretty easy to follow.
I found some of it amusing in a somewhat macabre way -- especially at the beginning, with Hallgerd's bloodthirsty nature. In the end, the "eye for an eye" mentality of the characters becomes amusing because of the excess of it, to me. Gunnar and Njal are refreshing in their refusal to feud with each other.
A lot of the saga is based on the points of the law, as well as the killing, which is interesting. Someone compared it to a John Grisham book for the Norse, which... well, I can see their point.
ETA: I can confirm from doing my own translations that the Penguin edition has a very good translation: reasonably accurate, and idiomatic while keeping a good flavour of the original style.
I found some of it amusing in a somewhat macabre way -- especially at the beginning, with Hallgerd's bloodthirsty nature. In the end, the "eye for an eye" mentality of the characters becomes amusing because of the excess of it, to me. Gunnar and Njal are refreshing in their refusal to feud with each other.
A lot of the saga is based on the points of the law, as well as the killing, which is interesting. Someone compared it to a John Grisham book for the Norse, which... well, I can see their point.
ETA: I can confirm from doing my own translations that the Penguin edition has a very good translation: reasonably accurate, and idiomatic while keeping a good flavour of the original style.
February 19, 2022
This took me way too long to read. The Goodreads police put a warrant out for me for the number of in-progress books on my Currently Reading shelf.
I flew through the beginning and hit an oil slick somewhere in the middle and slid into the rough. This book is very different from the Edda I read right before it. It is full of wild characters living action-packed lives, experiencing the full range of human emotion in a Shakespearean panoply of power struggles, rich with cultural details. You have gripping encounters like Gunnar's epic last stand and hallgerd's stubbornness, which is the stuff of legends. I never appreciated the Monty Python sketch (Njorl's Saga). I still don't.
Get ready for betrayal, business dealings, blackmail, threats both public and private, blatant thefts, assassinations, and impromptu poetry. As a picture of how the vikings lived, it conveys much of the antique goings ons, how they navigated the anger, processed their resentment, and justified their actions, held grudges, how characters hatched plans and acted on impulse, fighting for the love of women and the love of property, which ends up being the same thing sometimes, how much of our humble lifespans are consumed by quibbling over money, land, and high maintenance family members. Where is peace to be found? Is it a glorification of revenge or a condemnation of it?The theme of loss of control, and the system of interrelated killings foreshadowed the mafia. Here, paltry insults will get you wacked. All they gotta do after they de-map you is pay off your lord and report the murder like we might report expired tags on our Hummer.
Its sophisticated and convoluted narrative, despite the appearance of fetches, is grounded in life's gritty realism. Love, war, what people wore, traded in, how they spoke, fought, made amends, sailing, marriage, divorce, courtship, duels, procedures of law, contemplation of the far-reaching consequences of a tragic series of events limited to Njal's bloodline and the interloping clans he dealt with. The nymphomaniac queen was a nice touch, her subtle witchcraft, the undying curse—these tricks build tension throughout each plot development, and the accumulation of resentment and vendettas over generations, growing like a world tree, branching into every family, gripping every member, soon grew wearying for me. The repetitiveness of behavior, the fact that no one seemed interested in setting aside pride or living a humble, unremarkable life in peace among their neighbors. But of course, there is no drama in pastoral serenity. Coveting one's neighbor's crap makes up the majority of literature's immoral core. I was struck by the coldness of Hrut's marriage, and the constant, ruthless ambitions of everyone in the book. The old themes here are explored by all of the great writers who came later, like Shakespeare and Knut Hamsun, in most cases with greater facility and variety. This book is primordial, might have been written in 3000 BC as well as 1260 AD. The details of pre-christian codes of conduct, secular law, of cunning merchant landowners, and sly, conniving wives may interest adventurous readers, but most of us will probably skim the finer details, forget the endless stream of proper names. Take away one motto: "the hand is soon sorry it has struck."
I flew through the beginning and hit an oil slick somewhere in the middle and slid into the rough. This book is very different from the Edda I read right before it. It is full of wild characters living action-packed lives, experiencing the full range of human emotion in a Shakespearean panoply of power struggles, rich with cultural details. You have gripping encounters like Gunnar's epic last stand and hallgerd's stubbornness, which is the stuff of legends. I never appreciated the Monty Python sketch (Njorl's Saga). I still don't.
Get ready for betrayal, business dealings, blackmail, threats both public and private, blatant thefts, assassinations, and impromptu poetry. As a picture of how the vikings lived, it conveys much of the antique goings ons, how they navigated the anger, processed their resentment, and justified their actions, held grudges, how characters hatched plans and acted on impulse, fighting for the love of women and the love of property, which ends up being the same thing sometimes, how much of our humble lifespans are consumed by quibbling over money, land, and high maintenance family members. Where is peace to be found? Is it a glorification of revenge or a condemnation of it?The theme of loss of control, and the system of interrelated killings foreshadowed the mafia. Here, paltry insults will get you wacked. All they gotta do after they de-map you is pay off your lord and report the murder like we might report expired tags on our Hummer.
Its sophisticated and convoluted narrative, despite the appearance of fetches, is grounded in life's gritty realism. Love, war, what people wore, traded in, how they spoke, fought, made amends, sailing, marriage, divorce, courtship, duels, procedures of law, contemplation of the far-reaching consequences of a tragic series of events limited to Njal's bloodline and the interloping clans he dealt with. The nymphomaniac queen was a nice touch, her subtle witchcraft, the undying curse—these tricks build tension throughout each plot development, and the accumulation of resentment and vendettas over generations, growing like a world tree, branching into every family, gripping every member, soon grew wearying for me. The repetitiveness of behavior, the fact that no one seemed interested in setting aside pride or living a humble, unremarkable life in peace among their neighbors. But of course, there is no drama in pastoral serenity. Coveting one's neighbor's crap makes up the majority of literature's immoral core. I was struck by the coldness of Hrut's marriage, and the constant, ruthless ambitions of everyone in the book. The old themes here are explored by all of the great writers who came later, like Shakespeare and Knut Hamsun, in most cases with greater facility and variety. This book is primordial, might have been written in 3000 BC as well as 1260 AD. The details of pre-christian codes of conduct, secular law, of cunning merchant landowners, and sly, conniving wives may interest adventurous readers, but most of us will probably skim the finer details, forget the endless stream of proper names. Take away one motto: "the hand is soon sorry it has struck."
May 26, 2017
_Njal’s Saga_ is one of the classics of the medieval genre of the Family Saga, if not perhaps the classic. It has everything you could want in a saga: extended genealogies of multiple families, inter-family conflict between said families through the generations, shifting loyalties, intrigue, bloody battles, crazy nicknames, sardonic witticisms, and enough legal jargon to keep Perry Mason happy. It is populated with characters that seem real and often multidimensional even when they are larger than life and gives an intriguing insight into the way of life of medieval Iceland with its unique culture and political & legal system.
Despite being named after Njal Thorgeirsson, the saga is wide-ranging and seems to support a fair number of protagonists. We start, not uncommonly for a saga of this kind, a generation prior to the ‘main events’ and see how the marriages and relationships of a completely different set of families will come to bear the seeds of destruction for others. After this brief introduction centring around the families of Mord Fiddle and the brothers Hoskuld and Hrut (and more importantly their daughters Unn and Hallgerd) we meet the titular Njal, a man known for his keen legal mind, tendency towards prescience, and the fact that he cannot grow a beard, and his best friend Gunnar Hamundarson. This segment of the saga could actually be said to be about Gunnar who is in many ways the consummate saga hero: good-looking, rich, and unbeatable on the field of combat (think Chris Hemsworth as Thor). Many adventures and events ensue, but the most important part is that Gunnar is smitten with the aforementioned Hallgerd (a beauty known also for her ‘thieves’ eyes’) and her pride and enmity with Njal’s much more staid wife Bergthora leads to a feud (not to mention a few murders) that tests, but does not break, the friendship of the two men. Hallgerd is an intriguing figure, a woman of wit and complexity, generally something of a villain, though not without cause or some elements of sympathy. She is also an excellent motivator for much of the action in this section of the saga, sowing the seeds for the ultimate climax.
We come to see that both Gunnar and Njal are pre-eminent men: no one can beat Njal in the law courts (a fact that he often uses to his and his friends advantage) while Gunnar is a peerless warrior of high reputation. In the end they are virtually unbeatable when they work together and this of course leads to jealousy, especially given the fact that neither of them is an actual chieftain despite the fact that they effectively lord it over their region (and much of Iceland). The tensions this causes can only bear so much strain and in the end Gunnar is made to pay with his life for his high position when he refuses to abide by the terms of an exile imposed upon him.
The next section of the saga centres more firmly on Njal and his family, especially his sons, and their feuds and (mis)adventures. Suffice it to say that these boys do not lack in pride and manage to make enemies enough to bring trouble down upon their house. Add to this the manipulations of the wily Mord Valgardsson, the enduring spite of Hallgerd, and the jealousy and enmity of large and powerful factions and we have the makings of a tragic end for the family.
This is barely scratching the surface of everything that is going on in the saga and the number of interesting characters is impressive (most noteworthy to me were Njal’s ill-starred and sardonic son Skarp-Hedin who you would *not* want to meet in a dark alley and Njal’s son-in-law Kari Solmundarson a swashbuckling hero much in the mould of Gunnar). The main storyline is peppered with many side adventures and digressions, some of which a reader will likely find entertaining, while a few others…not so much (such as a fairly long digression on the introduction of Christianity to Iceland or the chapters at the Althing centring on the legal minutiae of the case against the burners of Njal and his family). Characters come and go and things can occasionally feel disjointed and take away from the narrative pace, but overall this is an excellent read and for the most part the narrative pulls you along with it. If you’re looking for a saga to read you probably won’t find a better one than _Njal’s Saga_.
Despite being named after Njal Thorgeirsson, the saga is wide-ranging and seems to support a fair number of protagonists. We start, not uncommonly for a saga of this kind, a generation prior to the ‘main events’ and see how the marriages and relationships of a completely different set of families will come to bear the seeds of destruction for others. After this brief introduction centring around the families of Mord Fiddle and the brothers Hoskuld and Hrut (and more importantly their daughters Unn and Hallgerd) we meet the titular Njal, a man known for his keen legal mind, tendency towards prescience, and the fact that he cannot grow a beard, and his best friend Gunnar Hamundarson. This segment of the saga could actually be said to be about Gunnar who is in many ways the consummate saga hero: good-looking, rich, and unbeatable on the field of combat (think Chris Hemsworth as Thor). Many adventures and events ensue, but the most important part is that Gunnar is smitten with the aforementioned Hallgerd (a beauty known also for her ‘thieves’ eyes’) and her pride and enmity with Njal’s much more staid wife Bergthora leads to a feud (not to mention a few murders) that tests, but does not break, the friendship of the two men. Hallgerd is an intriguing figure, a woman of wit and complexity, generally something of a villain, though not without cause or some elements of sympathy. She is also an excellent motivator for much of the action in this section of the saga, sowing the seeds for the ultimate climax.
We come to see that both Gunnar and Njal are pre-eminent men: no one can beat Njal in the law courts (a fact that he often uses to his and his friends advantage) while Gunnar is a peerless warrior of high reputation. In the end they are virtually unbeatable when they work together and this of course leads to jealousy, especially given the fact that neither of them is an actual chieftain despite the fact that they effectively lord it over their region (and much of Iceland). The tensions this causes can only bear so much strain and in the end Gunnar is made to pay with his life for his high position when he refuses to abide by the terms of an exile imposed upon him.
The next section of the saga centres more firmly on Njal and his family, especially his sons, and their feuds and (mis)adventures. Suffice it to say that these boys do not lack in pride and manage to make enemies enough to bring trouble down upon their house. Add to this the manipulations of the wily Mord Valgardsson, the enduring spite of Hallgerd, and the jealousy and enmity of large and powerful factions and we have the makings of a tragic end for the family.
This is barely scratching the surface of everything that is going on in the saga and the number of interesting characters is impressive (most noteworthy to me were Njal’s ill-starred and sardonic son Skarp-Hedin who you would *not* want to meet in a dark alley and Njal’s son-in-law Kari Solmundarson a swashbuckling hero much in the mould of Gunnar). The main storyline is peppered with many side adventures and digressions, some of which a reader will likely find entertaining, while a few others…not so much (such as a fairly long digression on the introduction of Christianity to Iceland or the chapters at the Althing centring on the legal minutiae of the case against the burners of Njal and his family). Characters come and go and things can occasionally feel disjointed and take away from the narrative pace, but overall this is an excellent read and for the most part the narrative pulls you along with it. If you’re looking for a saga to read you probably won’t find a better one than _Njal’s Saga_.
September 2, 2019
Samo za jednu sagu potrebno je oko 100 telećih koža. Do XIV veka na islandu ih je sačuvano oko 700, od kojih čak 24 predstavljaju varijante „Sage o Njalu”. Pokolj teladi je, reklo bi se, opravdan. A i ima neku simboličku dimenziju. Sve sage obeležene su posebnim viđenjem herojstva koje je neraskidivo povezano sa tragikom. Surovosti i sirovosti severa neraskidivo su povezani sa osećajem pravde, odnosno, pravednosti. Večni ping-pong osvete množi upečatljive povesti o prkosu, otporu, dostojanstvu, o posebnom običaju razmene. Svaka žrtva je zahtevala kompenzaciju – dakle, smrt ima konkretnu materijalnu vrednost; svako ožalošćeno lice ima pravo na dobit tog tipa. Ko je to regulisao? Godari (nordijski svetlonošci), koji su lokalni upravitelji i Alting, inače, najstarija skupština u Evropi (iz X veka). Međutim, Islanđani nisu imali mehanizme izvršne vlasti, javni i privatni pravni domet bio je umnogome odvojen. Zanimljivo je da je najveća kazna biti „stavljen van zakona” i da je ubistvo tek pravi zločin ako se sakrije (tzv. „tajno ubistvo”).
A Njal je možda prvi heroj-mudrac-pravnik-savetodavac. Čuveni ćosavac koji će mi sigurno ostati jedan od upečatljivijih književnih junaka. Saga o njemu je punokrvna epika, krvava, zakrvavljena, ponekad duhovita, dirljiva, ali pre svega neverovatno živa tvorevina. Malo čudo svetske književnosti. Ona je i hronika, magični rodoslov, proto-courtroom-drama, priča o osveti, reljef severnih gudura na čijem obodu izviruju estonski zmajevi, trolovi, veštice i magijski dozvane magle. Žene saga su neverovatno snažne, prave delatne junakinje, nezajažljive herojine, namćori, čak i pravni subjekti i politička bića! Tako, ukoliko se muž ogreši o brak, žena dobija celu imovinu, a i sam muž mora priložiti neku vrstu miraza. A zbog šamara određenim ženama, neki očevi su spremni i da ubiju sekirom. I svi su karakteristični, uglasti, plavi i izuzetno često dugokosi.
Podsetiću, Njal je zabeležen u 13. veku, a odnosi se na događaje između 9-11. veka. Kao što Stevan Majstorović ističe u briljantnom predgovoru (koji prati ne manje dobar prevod), islandski seljak bio je umnogome slobodniji od evropskog kmeta. I to slobodarstvo baštiniće do dana današnjeg. Koga interesuje, zna gde da pogleda.
I samo još dve zanimljivosti. Danas goli Island nekada je imao šume. Dakle, treba da plaćaju danak svojim ekološki neodgovornim precima (tako se civilizacija Uskršnjih ostrva uništila – više podataka o tome u „Istoriji napretka” Ronalda Rajta). I druga – pripovedanje nekad zaista izmami osmeh. Pripovedač je sveznajući, ali, nekako, „narodski pošten”. Tako često napominje kako se neki lik više neće pojavljivati u delu, ili kako nema posebnog značaja. Međutim, jedan mi je privukao posebnu pažnju – govori se o Gunarovoj braći, navodi se prvi, drugi i naposletku treći narovoj braći, navodi se prvi, drugi i naposletku treći „Orm Nos Kao Drvo, koji je bio kopile i koji u ovoj sagi nema nikakvu ulogu.” Hoću sagu o Ormu!
A Njal je možda prvi heroj-mudrac-pravnik-savetodavac. Čuveni ćosavac koji će mi sigurno ostati jedan od upečatljivijih književnih junaka. Saga o njemu je punokrvna epika, krvava, zakrvavljena, ponekad duhovita, dirljiva, ali pre svega neverovatno živa tvorevina. Malo čudo svetske književnosti. Ona je i hronika, magični rodoslov, proto-courtroom-drama, priča o osveti, reljef severnih gudura na čijem obodu izviruju estonski zmajevi, trolovi, veštice i magijski dozvane magle. Žene saga su neverovatno snažne, prave delatne junakinje, nezajažljive herojine, namćori, čak i pravni subjekti i politička bića! Tako, ukoliko se muž ogreši o brak, žena dobija celu imovinu, a i sam muž mora priložiti neku vrstu miraza. A zbog šamara određenim ženama, neki očevi su spremni i da ubiju sekirom. I svi su karakteristični, uglasti, plavi i izuzetno često dugokosi.
Podsetiću, Njal je zabeležen u 13. veku, a odnosi se na događaje između 9-11. veka. Kao što Stevan Majstorović ističe u briljantnom predgovoru (koji prati ne manje dobar prevod), islandski seljak bio je umnogome slobodniji od evropskog kmeta. I to slobodarstvo baštiniće do dana današnjeg. Koga interesuje, zna gde da pogleda.
I samo još dve zanimljivosti. Danas goli Island nekada je imao šume. Dakle, treba da plaćaju danak svojim ekološki neodgovornim precima (tako se civilizacija Uskršnjih ostrva uništila – više podataka o tome u „Istoriji napretka” Ronalda Rajta). I druga – pripovedanje nekad zaista izmami osmeh. Pripovedač je sveznajući, ali, nekako, „narodski pošten”. Tako često napominje kako se neki lik više neće pojavljivati u delu, ili kako nema posebnog značaja. Međutim, jedan mi je privukao posebnu pažnju – govori se o Gunarovoj braći, navodi se prvi, drugi i naposletku treći narovoj braći, navodi se prvi, drugi i naposletku treći „Orm Nos Kao Drvo, koji je bio kopile i koji u ovoj sagi nema nikakvu ulogu.” Hoću sagu o Ormu!
January 13, 2019
I have had this book on my waiting list for ages, ever since it was recommended to me by my GR friend J.Boo after I mentioned in a review that I was becoming interested in the sagas. Thanks, J.Boo! It took me forever to get to and almost forever to get through, but I liked it, learned a lot, and want to read others Someday!
This book at Gutenberg is a 1900 edition of two volumes that were published in 1861. Here is a short paragraph from the editor's preface:
The present reprint has been prepared in order that this incomparable Saga may become accessible to those readers with whom a good story is the first consideration and its bearing upon a nation's history a secondary one—or is not considered at all. For Burnt Njal may be approached either as a historical document, or as a pure narrative of elemental natures, of strong passions; and of heroic feats of strength. Some of the best fighting in literature is to be found between its covers. Sir George Dasent's version in its capacity as a learned work for the study has had nearly forty years of life; it is now offered afresh simply as a brave story for men who have been boys and for boys who are going to be men.
They abridged the translator's preface and introduction, and left out the maps and such that were part of the original publication. But even with the editing, these pieces are full of information which is important to know in order to understand the action of the story, the why of it all. In his introduction, the translator explained a great deal about Iceland society in the 8-9 hundreds. He covered how the northmen arrived in Iceland, some superstitions they carried with them, their social principles, and their daily life. All of this made it possible for me to see what was happening in the context of the times, and any future readers of this edition need to be sure not to skip this section. The events will make much more sense if you have this background in your mind as you read.
But even so, it can be confusing at times. I lost track more than once of who was who, but I also was not able to spend much concentrated time with the book. So when I would get back to it, I had to keep reviewing where I was and who was doing what.
I also lost a bit of my interest about halfway through, after one major character was killed off. It seems that Njal was not as active a man as I had expected hi to be in his own saga, and I had latched onto Gunnar as my hero. But after he was killed, and the story shifted to what happened to his sons and Njal's own sons and the ongoing blood feuds that had escalated because of Gunnar's wife's behavior, I had more trouble staying involved. There were more new people and I was getting more and more lost. But I hung in there, although I admit to beginning to skim here and there.
It is, as the quoted preface says, "a pure narrative of elemental natures". And sometimes I wondered how any families from those days managed to survive at all! But I'm glad I read this, and I would like to read more sagas. I imagine Gutenberg will have some in their listings so I'll just mosey on over and see what titles I can find to add to my Someday Lists.
This book at Gutenberg is a 1900 edition of two volumes that were published in 1861. Here is a short paragraph from the editor's preface:
The present reprint has been prepared in order that this incomparable Saga may become accessible to those readers with whom a good story is the first consideration and its bearing upon a nation's history a secondary one—or is not considered at all. For Burnt Njal may be approached either as a historical document, or as a pure narrative of elemental natures, of strong passions; and of heroic feats of strength. Some of the best fighting in literature is to be found between its covers. Sir George Dasent's version in its capacity as a learned work for the study has had nearly forty years of life; it is now offered afresh simply as a brave story for men who have been boys and for boys who are going to be men.
They abridged the translator's preface and introduction, and left out the maps and such that were part of the original publication. But even with the editing, these pieces are full of information which is important to know in order to understand the action of the story, the why of it all. In his introduction, the translator explained a great deal about Iceland society in the 8-9 hundreds. He covered how the northmen arrived in Iceland, some superstitions they carried with them, their social principles, and their daily life. All of this made it possible for me to see what was happening in the context of the times, and any future readers of this edition need to be sure not to skip this section. The events will make much more sense if you have this background in your mind as you read.
But even so, it can be confusing at times. I lost track more than once of who was who, but I also was not able to spend much concentrated time with the book. So when I would get back to it, I had to keep reviewing where I was and who was doing what.
I also lost a bit of my interest about halfway through, after one major character was killed off. It seems that Njal was not as active a man as I had expected hi to be in his own saga, and I had latched onto Gunnar as my hero. But after he was killed, and the story shifted to what happened to his sons and Njal's own sons and the ongoing blood feuds that had escalated because of Gunnar's wife's behavior, I had more trouble staying involved. There were more new people and I was getting more and more lost. But I hung in there, although I admit to beginning to skim here and there.
It is, as the quoted preface says, "a pure narrative of elemental natures". And sometimes I wondered how any families from those days managed to survive at all! But I'm glad I read this, and I would like to read more sagas. I imagine Gutenberg will have some in their listings so I'll just mosey on over and see what titles I can find to add to my Someday Lists.
May 10, 2008
One of the best sagas, without a doubt. Epic in scale, but still intensely human, the story of burnt-Njal is dramatic, moving and highly entertaining. The saga style takes some getting used to if you've never experienced it before. It is terse, to the point, characterisation and description is kept to a bare minimum, the plot races along at break-neck speed, there's a plethora of characters (a lot of whom have very similar names). It requires... concentration, and you'll almost certainly have to resort to consulting the family trees so thoughtfully included. It made me laugh when I saw a family tree included in One Hundred Years of Solitude. "Six generations!" I scoffed, "That's nothing, even if they do all have the same names." Njal's Saga has seven Thorsteins, eight Thorkels, six Thorgeirs, six Thorgerds and about forty other characters whose names begin with Thor. Although to readers of modern literature, the difficult style can be off-putting, it is definitely worth perservering because this is one of the greatest stories ever told.
September 15, 2016
3.5/5
There are a lot of written works out there that were never composed solely for the sake of entertainment. Today, these are customarily churned through for philosophical/social/religious/historical/various other noble concerns. All very well, but more rare are the ones through which one can get a firm grip on the origin of 'How to Get Away with Murder' in all its sordid glory: abusing circumstantial technicalities, citing obscure parts of archaic rulings, fighting fire with fire, all in the effort to, leastwise in terms of the main story, continue the toppling dominoes of a revenge tragedy. I won't pretend I didn't find the TV show far more engaging than the saga, but that's a natural consequence of modern taste and modern law. You won't find habeas corpus or DNA evidence or drone surveillance in the world of Njal. Instead, you'll get outlaws, premonitions, fifty bajilliion witnesses, hundreds of judges, gigantic religious shifts, lawyers, and the kind of evidence based foresight that Sherlock would kill to have if he ever found himself the head of an 10th-11th century Icelandic household. One would think having multiple instances of a character uttering a string of events that are later replicated exactly in the narrative would dull rather than sharpen the intensity of the events, but often the logic is so strangely engaging that you wouldn't be surprised if such crafty plots of social manipulation had actually worked all those centuries ago.
The great thing about anonymous narratives is that the entire point is no one is supposed to know who wrote them. This isn't a case of an Unknown, of course. One could take the onanistic route and assume that a narrative filled with characters that look like you was necessarily written by someone who looks like you (bear in mind both characters and writer were composed/writing in the era before White People™ were invented), but that would turn a conscious denial of obsession with the individual into indoctrination. The common route is commonly taken by those who confuse common sense with anything but the current hegemony of a dominant paradigm, which is why I subvert it when I can by reading anonymous works during Women in Translation Month of the Summer of Women. You could argue with this if you really wanted to, but then you'd have to take on the OED as part of your set of claims, although from the looks of it, their staff is too uniformly incompetent to give 'anonymous' as pure and self-effacing definition as it deserves. This all has very little to do with Vikings and blood feuds and clairvoyance and everything to do with my own reasons for reading really old stuff, but as long as I'm prolonging its survival by reading it, no one has any credible reason to complain.
As much as I am intrigued by and have been advised to pursue, my heart lies in literature, not law. This is why I liked Beowulf more, as it is, in one simplistic sense, prettier, as well as more poignant. One can admittedly extract far more juicy material from this saga's treasure trove of sociocultural norms of the period both written of and writing, but that would have been best served by reading this in academia, and I already spent my one work classes on Middlemarch, Paradise Lost, and The Canterbury Tales. I would love to come back however, to see what I could see. Grad school, perhaps.
There are a lot of written works out there that were never composed solely for the sake of entertainment. Today, these are customarily churned through for philosophical/social/religious/historical/various other noble concerns. All very well, but more rare are the ones through which one can get a firm grip on the origin of 'How to Get Away with Murder' in all its sordid glory: abusing circumstantial technicalities, citing obscure parts of archaic rulings, fighting fire with fire, all in the effort to, leastwise in terms of the main story, continue the toppling dominoes of a revenge tragedy. I won't pretend I didn't find the TV show far more engaging than the saga, but that's a natural consequence of modern taste and modern law. You won't find habeas corpus or DNA evidence or drone surveillance in the world of Njal. Instead, you'll get outlaws, premonitions, fifty bajilliion witnesses, hundreds of judges, gigantic religious shifts, lawyers, and the kind of evidence based foresight that Sherlock would kill to have if he ever found himself the head of an 10th-11th century Icelandic household. One would think having multiple instances of a character uttering a string of events that are later replicated exactly in the narrative would dull rather than sharpen the intensity of the events, but often the logic is so strangely engaging that you wouldn't be surprised if such crafty plots of social manipulation had actually worked all those centuries ago.
The great thing about anonymous narratives is that the entire point is no one is supposed to know who wrote them. This isn't a case of an Unknown, of course. One could take the onanistic route and assume that a narrative filled with characters that look like you was necessarily written by someone who looks like you (bear in mind both characters and writer were composed/writing in the era before White People™ were invented), but that would turn a conscious denial of obsession with the individual into indoctrination. The common route is commonly taken by those who confuse common sense with anything but the current hegemony of a dominant paradigm, which is why I subvert it when I can by reading anonymous works during Women in Translation Month of the Summer of Women. You could argue with this if you really wanted to, but then you'd have to take on the OED as part of your set of claims, although from the looks of it, their staff is too uniformly incompetent to give 'anonymous' as pure and self-effacing definition as it deserves. This all has very little to do with Vikings and blood feuds and clairvoyance and everything to do with my own reasons for reading really old stuff, but as long as I'm prolonging its survival by reading it, no one has any credible reason to complain.
As much as I am intrigued by and have been advised to pursue, my heart lies in literature, not law. This is why I liked Beowulf more, as it is, in one simplistic sense, prettier, as well as more poignant. One can admittedly extract far more juicy material from this saga's treasure trove of sociocultural norms of the period both written of and writing, but that would have been best served by reading this in academia, and I already spent my one work classes on Middlemarch, Paradise Lost, and The Canterbury Tales. I would love to come back however, to see what I could see. Grad school, perhaps.
February 15, 2022
Reading for an upcoming podcast episode at A Good Story is Hard to Find.
This has one of literature's great buddy stories, featuring Njal and Gunnar. There are also several no-good women who I can't believe the men are so patient with. I also have to love a culture that follows pitched battles with legal suits and some sarcastic poetry. These people embrace a broad variety of problem solving.
This has one of literature's great buddy stories, featuring Njal and Gunnar. There are also several no-good women who I can't believe the men are so patient with. I also have to love a culture that follows pitched battles with legal suits and some sarcastic poetry. These people embrace a broad variety of problem solving.
August 26, 2025
This saga is full of smiles and laughter, and they are never simple, never happy. Men smile when they see others failing (Gunnar “did it incorrectly; Hrut smiled” or when they anticipate violence (Skarphedin “stretched his lips into a grin”). Hallgerd laughs at her first wedding to a man she does not love (“she laughs at everything I say” “Her laughter doesn’t seem as good to me as it does to you”). Then again when is murdered (copious scholarly ink has been spilled about this curious instance). Hildigunn laughs while goading her uncle into committing an act of vengeance (“Hildigunn laughed a cold laugh”). Death in general is met with a lot of humor, whether the enemy’s or one’s own, and the smack talk is 10/10. See, for instance, Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings.
PS According to someone who counted, there are 221 murder victims in this saga. My edition was 311 pages -- that’s roughly a murder victim every 2 out of 3 pages!
PS According to someone who counted, there are 221 murder victims in this saga. My edition was 311 pages -- that’s roughly a murder victim every 2 out of 3 pages!
February 10, 2017
An amazing, tragic family drama and one of the greatest works I read in college. In fact, as you will note from my shelving, it's one of my favorite books of all time. This has everything: romance, heartbreak, action, legal drama. And it introduced me to Njal's son Skarp-Hedin, the greatest warrior of all time. Full of snappy one-liners, able to decapitate five men with one blow, I tried to name my firstborn after him, but my husband said no. Alas!
Read
May 23, 2019Njal's Saga is by far the longest of the sagas of the Icelanders, and it appears to be the general agreement that it is also the best among them, an assessment that I am not going to deviate from. In principle, Njal's Saga is just like the other sagas (The Sagas of Icelanders) - it has their freshness and immediacy that are striking for texts that are hundreds of years old, it has their sparse, laconic style, their reliance on action and dialogue, their absence of psychology and their emphasis on geographical and genealogical placement of their characters. In short, it has everything the other sagas have - only more so.
This is not just a matter of length - what I found most striking about Njal's Saga is how very vivid it is. It's language is not any more florid than of the other sagas, but just as reduced and simple, and yet it somehow manages to paint a much more colourful picture of the events it relates - it rather feels like the widescreen Technicolor version of a saga. It probably does have something to do with its length, and that it dwells just that tiny but decisive bit longer on what a character is dressed in or what exactly he does in a fight, but I don't think that quite suffices to explains why people and events in this saga possess such an immense plasticity that makes their down-to-earth-ness almost tangible for the reader as if the book's pages were just a thin, icy mist behind which we catch glimpses of the untamed, violent Norsemen feasting, sailing and fighting each other.
Njal's Saga is also somewhat clearer structured than most other sagas - it consists of two quite distinct parts, the first being about Gunnar, the various strifes he got involved in and his final downfall, and the second the story of his friend Njal, his death and the vengeance for it. The first part takes place before the arrival of Christianity in Iceland, the second after its Christianization, in the first part most conflicts are solved peacefully, in the second most end in violence - one can't help but wonder whether there might not be be some implied reflection on Christianity on part of the anonymous author implied in that. Another thing that places Njal's Saga apart is the uncommon emphasis it puts on the law - not only is it stated several times that it is the law that keeps a society together and that it will come apart if the law fails (as is demonstrated by events in the saga), not only are there an uncommon lot of trials in this saga, but they are also described in unusual (and, it has to be said, occasionally tiresome) detail, to the point where Njal's Saga reads almost like the Medieval Icelandic version of courtroom drama.
There are some issues with this saga for the modern reader, chiefly its repetitiveness - basically, events here consist of a seemingly endless succession of slayings, trials, and vengeance which causes more slayings, more trials and more vengeance. There is not much difference in the way those events unfold either, so things can get somewhat tedious if one tries to read too much of the saga in one go, and therefore judicious rationing is strongly recommended. And with the length of the saga, it becomes even more difficult to keep track of all the persons and their relations to each - thankfully, the Penguin Classics edition I was reading is not only excellently translated (as far as I can judge that, of course) but also very well-edited, with a helpful introduction and footnotes.
This is definitely the saga one should read if one wants to read only one of them, although it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to stop after this one, they're as addictive as crisps (at least unless they tried to read the whole thing at once - just like crisps one can easily overstuff oneself), but significantly more nutritious. And while I don't usually don't do quote, I just have to put in this one, showing how just names mentioned in passing already are stories in a nutshell:
I doubt that ever before or after genealogy has been more fun. And maybe that is the reason why Njal's Saga impresses itself so vividly on the reader's mind: with all the fighting, the deaths and the maimings (there is an astonishing amount of limbs getting cut off in the course of the saga), with all the underlying fatalism, there also is an air of joyousness blowing through these tales, a boundless glorying in life and its pleasures; and no matter how rough those might appear to the modern reader some of that exuberance jumps over like an electric spark across the centuries and makes this saga so much fun to read.
This is not just a matter of length - what I found most striking about Njal's Saga is how very vivid it is. It's language is not any more florid than of the other sagas, but just as reduced and simple, and yet it somehow manages to paint a much more colourful picture of the events it relates - it rather feels like the widescreen Technicolor version of a saga. It probably does have something to do with its length, and that it dwells just that tiny but decisive bit longer on what a character is dressed in or what exactly he does in a fight, but I don't think that quite suffices to explains why people and events in this saga possess such an immense plasticity that makes their down-to-earth-ness almost tangible for the reader as if the book's pages were just a thin, icy mist behind which we catch glimpses of the untamed, violent Norsemen feasting, sailing and fighting each other.
Njal's Saga is also somewhat clearer structured than most other sagas - it consists of two quite distinct parts, the first being about Gunnar, the various strifes he got involved in and his final downfall, and the second the story of his friend Njal, his death and the vengeance for it. The first part takes place before the arrival of Christianity in Iceland, the second after its Christianization, in the first part most conflicts are solved peacefully, in the second most end in violence - one can't help but wonder whether there might not be be some implied reflection on Christianity on part of the anonymous author implied in that. Another thing that places Njal's Saga apart is the uncommon emphasis it puts on the law - not only is it stated several times that it is the law that keeps a society together and that it will come apart if the law fails (as is demonstrated by events in the saga), not only are there an uncommon lot of trials in this saga, but they are also described in unusual (and, it has to be said, occasionally tiresome) detail, to the point where Njal's Saga reads almost like the Medieval Icelandic version of courtroom drama.
There are some issues with this saga for the modern reader, chiefly its repetitiveness - basically, events here consist of a seemingly endless succession of slayings, trials, and vengeance which causes more slayings, more trials and more vengeance. There is not much difference in the way those events unfold either, so things can get somewhat tedious if one tries to read too much of the saga in one go, and therefore judicious rationing is strongly recommended. And with the length of the saga, it becomes even more difficult to keep track of all the persons and their relations to each - thankfully, the Penguin Classics edition I was reading is not only excellently translated (as far as I can judge that, of course) but also very well-edited, with a helpful introduction and footnotes.
This is definitely the saga one should read if one wants to read only one of them, although it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to stop after this one, they're as addictive as crisps (at least unless they tried to read the whole thing at once - just like crisps one can easily overstuff oneself), but significantly more nutritious. And while I don't usually don't do quote, I just have to put in this one, showing how just names mentioned in passing already are stories in a nutshell:
"A man name Hoskuld lived there, the son of Dala-Koll. His mother was Thogerd, te daughter of Thorstein the Red, who was the son of Olaf the White, the son of Ingiald, the son of Helgi. Ingiald's mother was Thorn, the daughter of Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye who was the son of Ragnar Shaggy-breeches. Thorstein the Red's mother was Unn the Deep-minded; she was the daughter of Ketil Flat-nose, the son of Bjorn Buna."
I doubt that ever before or after genealogy has been more fun. And maybe that is the reason why Njal's Saga impresses itself so vividly on the reader's mind: with all the fighting, the deaths and the maimings (there is an astonishing amount of limbs getting cut off in the course of the saga), with all the underlying fatalism, there also is an air of joyousness blowing through these tales, a boundless glorying in life and its pleasures; and no matter how rough those might appear to the modern reader some of that exuberance jumps over like an electric spark across the centuries and makes this saga so much fun to read.
December 14, 2015
Njáls saga is a 13th century Icelandic saga that describes events between the years 960 to 1020. It deserves respect because of its antiquity. But I found it be a challenge to get through.
It is a long collection of stories about "so-and-so" of "such-and-such" family killing "so-and-so" of "such-and-such" family. The names were all exotic to my English language ears; thus it all passed through my memory as a blur. In this regard it reminded me of my reaction to the Iliad. However this book is much longer than the Iliad. It seemed to go on forever.
The importance of vengeance as a defense of family honor is a prominent theme in the saga. One description I thought of for the book was "Hatfield-MaCoy with swords." Insults involving a character's manliness are especially prominent in the saga. Also, fate and omens figure prominently in the stories.
At the very end there is a description of reconciliation. But based on the earlier stories the reader has to wonder how long that will last.
In my opinion if you don't have a special interest in Icelandic history and literature, don't read this book. However, I can see some lessons of human nature in the stories, so perhaps a researcher of gang warfare in modern cities could find source material here.
It is a long collection of stories about "so-and-so" of "such-and-such" family killing "so-and-so" of "such-and-such" family. The names were all exotic to my English language ears; thus it all passed through my memory as a blur. In this regard it reminded me of my reaction to the Iliad. However this book is much longer than the Iliad. It seemed to go on forever.
The importance of vengeance as a defense of family honor is a prominent theme in the saga. One description I thought of for the book was "Hatfield-MaCoy with swords." Insults involving a character's manliness are especially prominent in the saga. Also, fate and omens figure prominently in the stories.
At the very end there is a description of reconciliation. But based on the earlier stories the reader has to wonder how long that will last.
In my opinion if you don't have a special interest in Icelandic history and literature, don't read this book. However, I can see some lessons of human nature in the stories, so perhaps a researcher of gang warfare in modern cities could find source material here.
November 19, 2014
The original Kill Bill
January 1, 2016
So engrossing that I missed my bus stop once while reading on the bus. I think that is a good sign.
Basically guys hack each other to pieces for 50 years until eventually the only two dudes left finally make peace. People who are all like "Oh our culture is so violent nowadays" should read this for a little perspective. Because a guy will be like "Where's so-and-so?" And another guy will be like "Oh, I severed his head." And the first guy will be like "Oh, that seems like something you'd do." And then life moves on and somebody owes somebody money.
All that being said, it was very gripping!
And here is a life lesson: If a bunch of armed men come to your house to kill you, and you are standing there with a bunch of other armed men... do NOT go inside your house.
I now present to you a list of extremely delightful names from this book (mostly from the genealogies):
Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye
Ragnar Hairy-Breeks
Ketil Flat-Nose
Ulf the Unwashed
Mord Fiddle
Orm Wood-Nose
Thorolf Creek-Nose
Hraerek the Ring-Scatterer
Olvir the Child-Sparer
Bork Bluetooth-Beard
Olaf the Peacock
Thorfinn the Skull-Splitter
Eystein the Noisy
Killer-Hrapp
Hamund Hell-Hide
Hjorleif the Lecherous
Grim Hairy-Cheek
Gunnstein the Beserk-Killer
Eirik Bristle-Beard
Asbjorn the Bald of Myrkriver
Thorstein Hollow-Mouth
Hallbjorn Half-Troll
Bjorn Butter-Box
Thorstein Cod-Biter
Basically guys hack each other to pieces for 50 years until eventually the only two dudes left finally make peace. People who are all like "Oh our culture is so violent nowadays" should read this for a little perspective. Because a guy will be like "Where's so-and-so?" And another guy will be like "Oh, I severed his head." And the first guy will be like "Oh, that seems like something you'd do." And then life moves on and somebody owes somebody money.
All that being said, it was very gripping!
And here is a life lesson: If a bunch of armed men come to your house to kill you, and you are standing there with a bunch of other armed men... do NOT go inside your house.
I now present to you a list of extremely delightful names from this book (mostly from the genealogies):
Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye
Ragnar Hairy-Breeks
Ketil Flat-Nose
Ulf the Unwashed
Mord Fiddle
Orm Wood-Nose
Thorolf Creek-Nose
Hraerek the Ring-Scatterer
Olvir the Child-Sparer
Bork Bluetooth-Beard
Olaf the Peacock
Thorfinn the Skull-Splitter
Eystein the Noisy
Killer-Hrapp
Hamund Hell-Hide
Hjorleif the Lecherous
Grim Hairy-Cheek
Gunnstein the Beserk-Killer
Eirik Bristle-Beard
Asbjorn the Bald of Myrkriver
Thorstein Hollow-Mouth
Hallbjorn Half-Troll
Bjorn Butter-Box
Thorstein Cod-Biter
September 9, 2009
A legal saga with gratuitious violence, revenge,strong characters and what I would call magical realism. It makes me want to visit the site of Njal's farm in Iceland - a country I am fascinated by but only get to pass through .
And our cat is now called 'Ragnar Hairy - Breeks'
And our cat is now called 'Ragnar Hairy - Breeks'
January 14, 2018
--------GENERAL THOUGHTS--------
Okay, so this ancient Icelandic saga is confusing but also strangely engrossing and kind of funny (one memorable line: “He will ask you whether there are a lot of good men up [where you’re from]; to which you reply, ‘A lot of perverts, that’s about all.’”).
Names: these get real confusing. There are multiple characters with the same names, and the long-dead author, whoever it is, usually doesn’t bother to make an effort to clarify which Mord (grandfather and grandson, plus another random Mord) or Thjostolf (unrelated, I think?) or Ozur (definitely unrelated) or Olaf (there are so many goddamn Olafs) or Hoskuld (great-grandfather and his great-granson, plus an unrelated Hoskuld) or Thorhall (brothers, oddly enough— and they have a sister named Thorhalla because their parents had zero creativity) or Grim (brothers-in-law) or Thorgerd (unrelated) they’re talking about.
On the plus side, you get wonderful epithets like “Sigurd the Dragon-Killer” and “Ulf the Unwashed” and “Hroar the Tongue-Priest.”
Culture: You get some interesting glimpses to the unique features of High Middle Age-era Icelandic society. For instance, women can inherit, own their own property, marry without male relatives’ consent, and divorce their husbands without much trouble, even for things like “he doesn’t make me orgasm enough.”
--------PLOT SUMMARY--------
Here’s what you need to know: there’s a beautiful young woman named Hallgerd. Her nickname is Longlegs (yes really). She’s a spoiled rotten daddy’s girl with “thief’s eyes” but she’s also feisty, smart, and the most entertaining character in the saga. Her father Hoskuld has a brother named Hrut.
Hrut gets married to a girl named Unn, who promptly divorces him because he doesn’t make her orgasm enough. Unn has a relative named Gunnar; he’s important and will come up later. Gunnar’s best friend’s name is Njal, a wise and somewhat clairvoyant lawyer; he’ll be important later on too.
Got all that? Good.
Here we go.
--------BLOODFEUD #1--------
Hallgerd’s dad Hoskuld sets her up with husband #1 and makes her marry him without asking if she wants to.
Predictably, because Hallgerd is Hallgerd, she and her new husband fight all the time, and once he slaps her for being disobedient. Hallgerd isn’t the kind of girl to take this lying down, so she calls godfather Thjostolf to come kill him. Thatta girl.
Hoskuld is like “okay, lesson learned” so when this guy named Glum asks if he can marry Hallgerd, he wisely decides to ask Hallgerd herself for her preference (“You must now say frankly, since you have a will very much your own, whether it is at all to your liking; and if you are averse to such a contract, we do not wish to discuss it further”). She says sure, he seems like a nice guy.
Off go Hallgerd and Glum to their new home. Thjostolf comes with them, because he is a super creepy godfather who clearly has the hots for his goddaughter and doesn’t want anyone else to have her. And Hallgerd is all “Hey Godfather, don’t kill this husband, I actually like him, ok?” Thjostolf does a little wink-wink-nod-nod: “LOL ya I gotchu.” And he promptly goes and kills Glum.
Thjostolf comes back to Hallgerd and goes “Um idk how to tell you this, but Glum’s dead.” Hallgerd asks, “So you killed him?” And Thjostolf is all “...kinda, yeah.” And Hallgerd laughs (seriously, she does) and says the equivalent of “LOL WOW you really don’t halfass anything, do you?” (“There’s nothing half-hearted about your way of doing things.”)
But secretly, Hallgerd is really pissed he killed her husband when she specifically told him not to so she tells him to run so he doesn’t get in trouble for the murder, and go to her Uncle Hrut who will “take care of him.” Uncle Hrut actually hates Thjostolf, which Hallgerd knows perfectly well, so she’s really sending him there to get killed. Which is what does indeed happen.
Later on, when Njal’s bestie Gunnar asks to marry her, she coyly says “I may be a little particular about husbands.” LOL clearly. They get married, and Gunnar’s friends (Njal and Njal’s wife Bergthora) hate her because she acts like a twat to them. Gunnar tries to make them get along (“Don’t try any mischief on my friends”), but Hallgerd’s all “The trolls take your friends.” Yeah! That’s my girl!
So Bergthora and Hallgerd start hiring hitmen to kill each others’ servants, picking them off one by one. This feud is the initial crux of the saga.
Gunnar’s not happy, and he slaps Hallgerd during an argument. Gunnar and Njal start paying each other cash for the deaths of their respective servants, but it quickly spirals out of control. As, you know, blood feuds tend to do.
Gunnar gets a reputation, through this feud, for being a badass, and he gets a big head. People start challenging him to fights, and he’s too proud to refuse, so he basically starts multiple unnecessary feuds with other people.
When some of those people come to get him, his bowstring breaks and he asks his wife, Hellgerd, if he can have a strand of her hair to make a new bowstring, and that his life depends on it.
Hellgerd lols and goes “Hey remember that one time you slapped me? Bisssh bet you wish you hadn’t done that now.” (You may have noticed Hellgerd really does not like being slapped and people who slap her tend to end up dead). Gunnar is killed and Njal is super sad. Hallgerd, of course, is not.
--------BLOODFEUD #2--------
Njal’s sons get in an unrelated argument with Thrain, who’s married to Hallgerd’s daughter and who also happens to be Gunnar’s uncle. This is the secondary big feud, since the Hallgerd vs. Bergthora one is mostly over.
Njal’s sons kill Thrain, and Njal adopts Thrain’s son Hoskuld (yes, named after the earlier Hoskuld- this Hoskuld is the great-grandson of that Hoskuld). This Hoskuld becomes a great chieftain.
--------BLOODFEUD #3--------
Remember Unn? The divorcee? Right, so her son Mord gets worried his own status as chieftain is threatened by Hoskuld’s success, so he starts trying to convince Njal’s sons to hate their foster brother, which is bizarrely easy, and they end up killing Hoskull which was Mord’s plan.
Hoskuld’s wife convinces her kinsmen to get blood vengeance. They surround Njal’s house to burn it. They tell Njal and his wife Bergthora they can go, but they choose to die with their sons and grandkid. They all lie down, commend their souls to God, and burn to death, except for Kari, who’s married to one of Njal’s daughters.
He escapes and later enacts revenge for his burned family, but after his wife (Njal’s daughter) dies, he marries Hoskuld’s widow and brings peace to the families.
Okay, so this ancient Icelandic saga is confusing but also strangely engrossing and kind of funny (one memorable line: “He will ask you whether there are a lot of good men up [where you’re from]; to which you reply, ‘A lot of perverts, that’s about all.’”).
Names: these get real confusing. There are multiple characters with the same names, and the long-dead author, whoever it is, usually doesn’t bother to make an effort to clarify which Mord (grandfather and grandson, plus another random Mord) or Thjostolf (unrelated, I think?) or Ozur (definitely unrelated) or Olaf (there are so many goddamn Olafs) or Hoskuld (great-grandfather and his great-granson, plus an unrelated Hoskuld) or Thorhall (brothers, oddly enough— and they have a sister named Thorhalla because their parents had zero creativity) or Grim (brothers-in-law) or Thorgerd (unrelated) they’re talking about.
On the plus side, you get wonderful epithets like “Sigurd the Dragon-Killer” and “Ulf the Unwashed” and “Hroar the Tongue-Priest.”
Culture: You get some interesting glimpses to the unique features of High Middle Age-era Icelandic society. For instance, women can inherit, own their own property, marry without male relatives’ consent, and divorce their husbands without much trouble, even for things like “he doesn’t make me orgasm enough.”
--------PLOT SUMMARY--------
Here’s what you need to know: there’s a beautiful young woman named Hallgerd. Her nickname is Longlegs (yes really). She’s a spoiled rotten daddy’s girl with “thief’s eyes” but she’s also feisty, smart, and the most entertaining character in the saga. Her father Hoskuld has a brother named Hrut.
Hrut gets married to a girl named Unn, who promptly divorces him because he doesn’t make her orgasm enough. Unn has a relative named Gunnar; he’s important and will come up later. Gunnar’s best friend’s name is Njal, a wise and somewhat clairvoyant lawyer; he’ll be important later on too.
Got all that? Good.
Here we go.
--------BLOODFEUD #1--------
Hallgerd’s dad Hoskuld sets her up with husband #1 and makes her marry him without asking if she wants to.
Predictably, because Hallgerd is Hallgerd, she and her new husband fight all the time, and once he slaps her for being disobedient. Hallgerd isn’t the kind of girl to take this lying down, so she calls godfather Thjostolf to come kill him. Thatta girl.
Hoskuld is like “okay, lesson learned” so when this guy named Glum asks if he can marry Hallgerd, he wisely decides to ask Hallgerd herself for her preference (“You must now say frankly, since you have a will very much your own, whether it is at all to your liking; and if you are averse to such a contract, we do not wish to discuss it further”). She says sure, he seems like a nice guy.
Off go Hallgerd and Glum to their new home. Thjostolf comes with them, because he is a super creepy godfather who clearly has the hots for his goddaughter and doesn’t want anyone else to have her. And Hallgerd is all “Hey Godfather, don’t kill this husband, I actually like him, ok?” Thjostolf does a little wink-wink-nod-nod: “LOL ya I gotchu.” And he promptly goes and kills Glum.
Thjostolf comes back to Hallgerd and goes “Um idk how to tell you this, but Glum’s dead.” Hallgerd asks, “So you killed him?” And Thjostolf is all “...kinda, yeah.” And Hallgerd laughs (seriously, she does) and says the equivalent of “LOL WOW you really don’t halfass anything, do you?” (“There’s nothing half-hearted about your way of doing things.”)
But secretly, Hallgerd is really pissed he killed her husband when she specifically told him not to so she tells him to run so he doesn’t get in trouble for the murder, and go to her Uncle Hrut who will “take care of him.” Uncle Hrut actually hates Thjostolf, which Hallgerd knows perfectly well, so she’s really sending him there to get killed. Which is what does indeed happen.
Later on, when Njal’s bestie Gunnar asks to marry her, she coyly says “I may be a little particular about husbands.” LOL clearly. They get married, and Gunnar’s friends (Njal and Njal’s wife Bergthora) hate her because she acts like a twat to them. Gunnar tries to make them get along (“Don’t try any mischief on my friends”), but Hallgerd’s all “The trolls take your friends.” Yeah! That’s my girl!
So Bergthora and Hallgerd start hiring hitmen to kill each others’ servants, picking them off one by one. This feud is the initial crux of the saga.
Gunnar’s not happy, and he slaps Hallgerd during an argument. Gunnar and Njal start paying each other cash for the deaths of their respective servants, but it quickly spirals out of control. As, you know, blood feuds tend to do.
Gunnar gets a reputation, through this feud, for being a badass, and he gets a big head. People start challenging him to fights, and he’s too proud to refuse, so he basically starts multiple unnecessary feuds with other people.
When some of those people come to get him, his bowstring breaks and he asks his wife, Hellgerd, if he can have a strand of her hair to make a new bowstring, and that his life depends on it.
Hellgerd lols and goes “Hey remember that one time you slapped me? Bisssh bet you wish you hadn’t done that now.” (You may have noticed Hellgerd really does not like being slapped and people who slap her tend to end up dead). Gunnar is killed and Njal is super sad. Hallgerd, of course, is not.
--------BLOODFEUD #2--------
Njal’s sons get in an unrelated argument with Thrain, who’s married to Hallgerd’s daughter and who also happens to be Gunnar’s uncle. This is the secondary big feud, since the Hallgerd vs. Bergthora one is mostly over.
Njal’s sons kill Thrain, and Njal adopts Thrain’s son Hoskuld (yes, named after the earlier Hoskuld- this Hoskuld is the great-grandson of that Hoskuld). This Hoskuld becomes a great chieftain.
--------BLOODFEUD #3--------
Remember Unn? The divorcee? Right, so her son Mord gets worried his own status as chieftain is threatened by Hoskuld’s success, so he starts trying to convince Njal’s sons to hate their foster brother, which is bizarrely easy, and they end up killing Hoskull which was Mord’s plan.
Hoskuld’s wife convinces her kinsmen to get blood vengeance. They surround Njal’s house to burn it. They tell Njal and his wife Bergthora they can go, but they choose to die with their sons and grandkid. They all lie down, commend their souls to God, and burn to death, except for Kari, who’s married to one of Njal’s daughters.
He escapes and later enacts revenge for his burned family, but after his wife (Njal’s daughter) dies, he marries Hoskuld’s widow and brings peace to the families.
February 4, 2016
Beware you need to do a lot of research to make any sense out Njal's Saga. If you just pick it up and start reading, it seems like "100 Years of Solitude" in that it describes a long multi-generational cycle of violence in which all the murderers and all the victims have the same name. The difference is that Gabriel Marquez is parodying a situation which he desperately wants to change whereas the author of Njal's Saga is describing what he considers to be a well-ordered world.
Regretfully, I have very little to say to help you with this dizzying saga of retribution. It is clearly a historical document of extraordinary value as it describes a people who are attempting to make the transition from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages. Iceland converts to Christianity in the course of this yarn but the social mores, government and literary culture are behind where the Mediterranean countries were in 1000 BC.
Regretfully, I have very little to say to help you with this dizzying saga of retribution. It is clearly a historical document of extraordinary value as it describes a people who are attempting to make the transition from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages. Iceland converts to Christianity in the course of this yarn but the social mores, government and literary culture are behind where the Mediterranean countries were in 1000 BC.
Read
August 7, 2025Used this one in my teaching way back when I was a Danish teacher. It seems like it was in another life....
June 11, 2020
I’ve bought this book 5 years ago when I travelled to Iceland. So this has been in my TBR for a long time. I think I’ve been afraid to read such an old tale, mostly because I’ve no academic background in this area.
I found this book a little hard to get through and to keep me interested. It's hard to care for the characters, because the narration of the plot is so descriptive, the eternal cycle of blood feuds and subsequent settlements, and the never ending list of murdered characters. Even the main characters are murdered.
Interesting piece about the way of living and rules in Iceland, but can’t say I enjoy much of the story.
I found this book a little hard to get through and to keep me interested. It's hard to care for the characters, because the narration of the plot is so descriptive, the eternal cycle of blood feuds and subsequent settlements, and the never ending list of murdered characters. Even the main characters are murdered.
Interesting piece about the way of living and rules in Iceland, but can’t say I enjoy much of the story.
May 2, 2022
I picked up this novel only out of curiosity after I finished watching TV series Vikings. I was fascinated by the story of Ragnar Lothbrok, however, I did not expect much from this novel and thought only of reading in continuum of the Ragnar saga.
This turned out to be a wrong judgement on my part as I ended up reading one of the best novel experiences of my life. The adventures of Icelandic warriors is not just enthralling and entertaining but it slides one into uncomfortable zones of misfortunes of human endeavour as a whole. All the man's glory, pride, wealth, beauty all perishes out of a folly committed in a moment of impulse. Why do we do all those things that we do? And what is the result? Result is often ugly not only for the heroes but also for the villain. We are wandering like forgotten child in a forest of destruction. Human endeavour is eventually fragile and be it the saga of Ragnar himself or of his sons or of Gunnar or of Njal, the most judge of all.
All are fallen on the ground, some because of their folly, some because of their bravery, some because of their knowledge, some because of their commitment and what not. If you ask any of these warriors, was it worth? All the fight, all the strife, all the war? They probably can't tell you how they feel now but they won't be too sure of their own pride and knowledge after they have fallen. The fallible mankind reveals itself into tragic ends.
This turned out to be a wrong judgement on my part as I ended up reading one of the best novel experiences of my life. The adventures of Icelandic warriors is not just enthralling and entertaining but it slides one into uncomfortable zones of misfortunes of human endeavour as a whole. All the man's glory, pride, wealth, beauty all perishes out of a folly committed in a moment of impulse. Why do we do all those things that we do? And what is the result? Result is often ugly not only for the heroes but also for the villain. We are wandering like forgotten child in a forest of destruction. Human endeavour is eventually fragile and be it the saga of Ragnar himself or of his sons or of Gunnar or of Njal, the most judge of all.
All are fallen on the ground, some because of their folly, some because of their bravery, some because of their knowledge, some because of their commitment and what not. If you ask any of these warriors, was it worth? All the fight, all the strife, all the war? They probably can't tell you how they feel now but they won't be too sure of their own pride and knowledge after they have fallen. The fallible mankind reveals itself into tragic ends.
October 20, 2025
I read this book for school but felt like I still wanted to mark it as read on here. There are other books I’ve read for my studies that I haven’t accounted for on here but this one felt worthy of a spot. Partly because unlike some of the other texts I’ve read that have been short-stories or poems or books I’ve merely skimmed through, I actually fully read this book. But also because I honestly kind of enjoyed it. It was a bit confusing at times I must admit. There A LOT of characters to keep track of and people dying just left, right and center. But it was entertaining tho.
October 21, 2016
I have read an abridged version of Njal's Saga before, but never in its entirety. When I received this tome for my birthday, I was most excited to begin it. Njal's Saga features an incredible amount of characters, and is prefaced by a series of extensive - and necessary - family trees. As with all good sagas, it is filled with slayings, battles, marriages, and betrayals. It is a true epic, and its story is fascinating and far-reaching, but at times I must admit that I found the translation rather matter-of-fact; different indeed to the beautiful writing which I have come to expect from the Icelandic sagas. Despite some not-too-poetic sections, the Wordsworth translation is a relatively fluid one, and each separate chapter can be read independently; it is not a book which has to be continuously studied to get anything from it. I liked the way in which conversational patterns retained their antiquity in terms of language and phrasing. Oddly, and the antithesis to my experience with Icelandic fiction so far, the setting does not come to life; the characters themselves are far more vivid, and the backdrop is just that - a backdrop. Not the most gripping of sagas, but a relatively satisfying read.
May 19, 2018
I recently read a collection of Icelandic Sagas but it did not contain Njal's Saga. I'm glad I made time for this one, for I found it more compelling as classical material than the others.
It was interesting to me how Njal mostly seems to hover over the saga rather than really being part of the action until the end. He reminded me very much of the roll a mentor plays in one's life. They may be often around or in your thoughts, influencing thoughts and events, but you can never quite be close to them. And while the conflicts in the story are interesting, some of them dragged on a bit too long, especially between the wives. So in all, a good read, maybe even a good reread, but not quite a 5 star-er.
It was interesting to me how Njal mostly seems to hover over the saga rather than really being part of the action until the end. He reminded me very much of the roll a mentor plays in one's life. They may be often around or in your thoughts, influencing thoughts and events, but you can never quite be close to them. And while the conflicts in the story are interesting, some of them dragged on a bit too long, especially between the wives. So in all, a good read, maybe even a good reread, but not quite a 5 star-er.
February 29, 2008
In the tradition of Icelandic sagas it is very violent and barbaric. Tons of fun in other words, and based on a true story by all accounts. Lots of modern law practice goes back to the people and principles described in this book. My favorite part is the vision of the Valkyries at the end. Delightfully macabre!
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