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“Iceland year.”
Carol M wrote this review Thursday, October 22 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“After reading Egil's Saga, I decided to pick up what was oftentime recommended as a much better follow up. Njal's Saga is a collection of stories all based around the same 2 families and their friendships and bloodfueds lasting many decades. Njal's Saga turned out to be much better than Egil's for strange reasons. Thinking back, it was less of an epic than Egil's Saga and there was less action, however the display of the story tops it. I would is Njal's saga is the best of the Icelandic sagas for many reasons, and I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Beowulf of Gilgamesh.”
ERIC J wrote this review Thursday, October 15 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Blood and guts galore, from Viking age Iceland. It's the classic of the old Norse sagas.”
Lingchih wrote this review Saturday, October 10 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“A disorienting mix of 50% legal maneuvering & 50% revenge killings, culminating in a huge battle at Clontarf(?).”
Avis habilis wrote this review Monday, September 21 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Flosi spoke: “We have suffered great losses among our men, with many of us wounded and that man slain whom we could least afford to lose. It is quite clear now that we can’t subdue them with arms. There is many a man here who does not show as much fight as he boasted he would. But now we shall have hit on another plan. There are two alternatives for us, and neither is good: either to turn back, and that will mean our certain death; or else to set to fire to the house and burn them inside, and that is a great responsibility before God, for we too are Christians. However, that is the course that we must take; so let us set fire to that place at once.”
Jake S wrote this review Monday, July 21 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
These words are set down in Chapter 128 of Njál’s Saga, the conversion of Flosi, his men and indeed the whole of Iceland is recounted in Chapter 105 some 45 pages earlier. Bergthórshvál is set alight, Njál Thorgeirsson along with his son’s Skarphedin and Grím and Helgi and his grandson Thord Karisson and his wife Bergthóra, who had decided to ignore Flosi’s offer of amnesty to the household’s women and menservants, all burn to death. Njál’s two daughters-in-law: Astríd of Djúpárbakk and Thorhálla daughter of Asgrím accept Flosi’s offer of safe-passage and attempt to smuggle out Njál’s son Helgi, who had donned feminine attire. Helgi was detected, drew his sword, maimed one of Flosi’s men and was then dispatched by Flosi himself.
Flosi knew exactly what kind of deed he was doing and as a Christian man believed that there would be consequences for it. While on his way to Bergthórshval he had dreamt of a man clad in a goatskin and bearing an iron staff, calling and summoning his men by name and speaking this verse:
Will one to rise to weave the
web-of-arrows: soon will
doomed men’s heads drop in the
dust throughout these folk-lands;
waxes the din of war-play
wild upon the mountains:
rivers of red soon will
run down gashed men’s bodies
before departing into the mountains. Flosi knew his men to be doomed but he did not tell them for he could not be deterred; at the previous meeting of the assembly of the common wealth of Iceland (the Althing) Skarphedin Njálsson had said to him:
"Because if you are the mistress of the troll in Svínafell, as they say then he uses you like a woman every ninth night!"
It mattered not that Flosi had, prior to that, made much of Njál’s inability to grow a beard; Skarphedin and any who might wish to avenge him had to die.
Medieval Norsemen had a very different legal conception of the difference between murder and manslaughter from ours. If you were to kill a man after dark, you were a murderer; if you were to kill a man and make any attempt to conceal what you had done you were a murderer. Thjostolf killed Glúm with his axe and malice aforethought; he also pulled a ring from the dead man’s finger, raised a cairn of stones over the dead man’s body and then delivered the ring to Halgerd, the dead man’s widow. Thjostolf was not a murderer. It was not even necessary to go to the lengths that Thjostolf had, so long as you owned up to those killings down by your own hand you were never a murderer. This is not to say that manslaughter was tolerated in old Iceland, those killed others had to pay fines (weregild) to the dead man’s next of kin. One-hundred ounces of silver was considered fair “man-price” for a free man of middling rank but for slaves and those who worked for wages (apparently such people were not considered to be free men) the price could go as low as twelve. Murderer’s meanwhile, were declared outlaws meaning that since they did not see fit to obey the law themselves, they had forfeited their rights to legal protection. Outlaws could theoretically be killed with impunity and their property was customarily divided between the one who had prosecuted the case that had resulted in the declaration of outlaw and the outlaw’s neighbors. In the aftermath of World War II, Lord Chancellor Lord Simon made an attempt to revive the concept of outlawry. His idea was that summary executions of captured Nazis by allied soldiers ought to have been encouraged. He was opposed in this by officials from the Soviet Union and The United States of America. The administration of George W. Bush has argued that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to combatants not serving in the armed forces of states signatory to the Conventions, with rather more success.
Legal cases were tried before the Althing, a body that combined the functions of the judicial and legislative branches of government and those of a country fair. As for executive powers, individual Icelanders were encouraged to take the law into their own hands. Grievances arose and were tried before the Althing; the chief consequence of the absence of a sovereign was that offences that in order system would be considered the proper province of the penal code would fall under the medieval equivalent of Tort Law. The Saga depicts the folk of Iceland as a litigious bunch and it is unfortunate that Wordsworth editions did not include the Icelandic Statutes, Grágás (literally grey-goose) as an appendix, during disputes the facts of the case could easily take a back seat to purely formal matters such as wrangling over points of order. The actual law codes might have made for a handy reference, or perhaps they would just been cause for further confusion. On the other hand legal cases could also be concluded with stunning rapidity, such as when Unn reports to her father, Mord Fiddle, that she cannot enjoy comfortable marital relations with her husband Hrút, on account of the man’s oversized penis. Mord advises her to wait until her husband has left the house, summon witnesses, proclaim herself divorced and then make good her escape.
I have no hard data before me, but my feeling is that Njál’s Saga is probably underrepresented in the syllabi of Western Civ courses being taught to college freshman. The laws of old Scandinavia were similar to the old Saxon code that is the direct ancestor of the Common Law which is used in Britain and her former colonies today. The book also has a great deal to say on the subject of Rousseau’s old question of why it is that man is born free and yet is found everywhere in chains. One possible answer is that because man does not always behave himself. In 1262, after over three-hundred years of independence, but finally wracked by civil strife, the Icelandic commonwealth surrendered what amounted to its sovereignty to the Norwegian King. Still as far as the longevity of “states” go, three-hundred years isn’t too bad. The saga would also be useful reading for anarchist romantics whose only historical points of reference for envisioning a stateless society are Hommage to Catalonia, the writings of Hakim Bey and whatever twaddle CrimethInc. has most recently published; not necessarily because their idealism needs crushing but because it is often useful to realize that the enemy is us as often as it is them. This is not to say that the work’s interest is mainly didatic; to their credit Carl F. Bayerschimdt and Lee M. Hollander have rendered the old saga in clear workman-like English prose, that makes for quick reading and can handle tasks such as descriptions of Valkyries weaving tapestries from human entrails without sounding silly.
”“Kill a man? Better pay up. This saga walks the tightrope between telling the evils of medling women and the ubiquity of blood-lusting revenge. Also it teaches you all kinds of ways to weasel out of murder in a trial, if that's what you're looking for. I've read this whopper twice, and with characters like Skarp-Hedin, Hoskuld, Lambi Gunnarsund, it never ceases to be entertaining.”
hubdiggity wrote this review Monday, December 10 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Totally sweet! Badass Icelandic dudes with swords and bows and spears killing each other. In all seriousness, this is the best saga I've read, and the only one i've reread. The plot can get a bit complicated with people making alliances then pissing each other off, but the action is suprisingly awesome for an old piece of literature. Favorite scene: One of the main characters sliding down an icy slope and cutting down opponents as he flies past them. I think he cuts off one dudes leg, can't remember exactly. But totally sweet!”
dpb wrote this review Friday, November 16 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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