NJAL'S SAGA. [Hardcover]

I live in Ireland, and am mindful that our greatest poet of this generation Seamus Heaney, who has published a collection 'North' influenced by sagas like this one, said 'Read the Norse sagas to understand Northern Ireland'. Here you find the same internecine blood-feuding that has bedevilled part of this island, whether it is a remnant of the Viking Age I do not know. Yet these Norsemen are surprising also devoted to negotiation and peace-making, paying each other fines in lieu of vengance. However, someone always seems to conspire to continue the tradition of blood-vengance. Njal's Saga is comparable to 'King Lear' in the destruction of Njal, fundamentally a man of peace, yet cursed with sons who are the 'fastest guns' in their part of the world. First comes the death of Gunnar, the friend of Njal, and Iceland's greatest warrior, which serves as a long prologue, then into the feud of Njal and Flosi, caused by the jealousy and murder of Njal's foster-son by his foster-brothers. Flosi is the father-in-law of this man, and must seek vengance. Tragically, he is also a man of peace, but ultimately takes the decision to burn Njal and his sons to death in their house, a disgraceful act considered as 'nithing' by the Vikings. It shows how even men of peace can commit the most dreadful acts. But Njal's son-in-law Kari escapes to pursue vengance across the North Atlantic to Ireland. However, the sagas became Christianised and ends in forgiveness with Kari reconciled to Flosi and settled down as his son-in-law. This story never fails to stirs the emotions, like the moment when Bergthora and Njal are offered the chance to live by Flosi (Flosi's quarrel is with Njal's sons) - Njal cannot leave because he is too old to avenge his sons, and Bergthora (who is actually a bitter shrewish woman) says "I was married to Njal as a young girl and swore we would suffer the same fate together". They go to their bed to suffocate in the fire. The real villains in the sagas are not the killers, but the mainipulators like Mord in this saga who incites Njal's sons to kill their foster-brother while playing both sides, or Samkel and Otkel the brothers who refuse reconciliation with Gunnar. They are killed by Gunnar, but their deaths leads on to Gunnar's. Hence, Njal's eldest son, the great warrior Skarphedin is also a sympathetic character - if he had some of his father's wisdom, all might have been well. A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, where great men are trapped by their own weaknesses, told in wonderfully simple language.

Although most of us have heard of the Greek epics and, in particular, the Illiad and Odyssey (the two most renowned epics in the western world), we have far less familiarity with the literary tradition of the old Norse folk who inhabited the lands about the Baltic and North Atlantic in early medieval times. Of course, we've heard about the vikings, coastal pirates and fighters who sprang from these folk, and about their wide-sailing adventures. Yet we are not nearly so familiar with the Norse literary tradition which is, in some ways, as compelling and profound as the literature of the ancient Greeks we so revere today. Certainly the Norse saga tradition is as powerful, reflecting stories handed down orally for generations which were finally committed to written form in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Among these works, Njal's Saga may well be the best of the lot. Like all sagas it is a prose epic (as opposed to the poetic form of the Illiad and its kind), but still possessing a uniquely poetic rhythm and perspective which only the Norse folk had to offer. It is a somewhat bleak tale of several generations of Icelandic families whose men and women lived and feuded in the ninth through eleventh centuries on the remote island of Iceland, itself only settled by fleeing Norse farmers and land holders from about 860 AD onward. Here, in Njal's Saga, is a tale of hard men in a harsh land who push and pull at one another until the only recourse, in their grim pioneering culture, seems to be the blood-feud. And once unleashed, the blood-flow is literally unstoppable as noble and not so noble heroes cut one another down until, at last, one of the most respected of all the Icelanders is himself burned alive, with most of his kinsmen, in one of the retaliatory raids which arise from the ongoing feuds. This despite the realization on the part of the burners that what they are about to do will have grim and far reaching implications. Yet they cannot pull back, for honor's sake, and must suffer the consequences which they have wittingly unleashed as a vast well-spring of revenge and justice arises to overwhelm the burners. In the end it is the wronged viking Kari who single-mindedly pursues and hunts his foes to the far corners of the earth, affording them no peace as he seeks re-payment for loss of kin until even he is spent.

This, like most sagas, is a tale of many strands and several generations and so it partakes of the literary conventions of its type -- conventions which make it a little harder on the modern reader than some would like. There are extensive character genealogies (of little interest to most of us today) and very limited descriptive text (something else some of us may miss). There is also a decided lack of the subjective point of view or of interior monologue, i.e., we never get inside these characters' heads to see things as they do. Indeed, as in Hemingway at his sharpest, we must 'see' the characters for what they are, based on what they do and say alone. The entire conceit of the sagas is that they are oral tales, reflecting only what people saw and remembered of the events recounted, and so they are written thus.

But at their best, they are a keen, if slightly aged and clouded, lense through which we may observe the doings of real people who are driven, much as we are today, by the same need for fame and fortune which infects the human soul in every generation. Insofar as these tales, and Njal's Saga in particular, are windows into these matters they are universal in their unraveling of human motivations. And they are great adventure besides. Njal's Saga, especially, has it all including feuds and viking adventure and, in the end, a redeeming sense of human frailty and reconciliation and justice in the eyes of heaven.

If you like the sagas as much as I do, you may want to also try some of the modern novels which are based, in varying degrees, on this literary tradition. A few good ones include: THE GOLDEN WARRIOR by Hope Muntz (the best of the lot, I think); STYRBIORN THE STRONG by E. R. Eddison; ERIC BRIGHTEYES by H. Rider Haggard; THE GREENLANDERS by Jane Smiley; TWO RAVENS by Cecelia Holland and here's one I did: THE KING OF VINLAND'S SAGA (but you have to judge the merits of this one as it's not my place to offer an opinion).

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga

Njal's saga is my favorite Icelandic saga so far. After reading Egil's saga and the Laxdaela Saga, in addition to Njal, you will be impressed by the full range of nobility, tragic consequences, and just pure plain drama that living in Viking times provided.

I agree with the other reviewers that the violence can be over the top and the laconic humor during the worst episodes cause one to blink, but that is the charm of these sagas.

Egil's saga has more poetry and is quite true to the barbaric nature of the Viking age where life seemed very cheap. You can't beat a complex sociopath like Egil (killed for the first time at age 6). But Njal offers more complex characters and a range of tragedy through time that culminates in the death of Njal. No one is completely good nor evil which makes for a more realistic setting.

Recommended for not just literature buffs but for the action enthusiast as well. The writing is blunt and so is the action. For Tolkien fans one should read the sagas to see one the inspirational sources for the Lord of the Rings.