Who doesn't love 13th Century Icelandic historical fiction?
Actually, I've never read any of the Icelandic sagas before. My Ph.D. advisor considered this
as something of a flaw in my education, and recommended Njal's
Saga as his favorite. I've only just now gotten around to actually
reading it, but better late than never.
The first thing that should be noted is that Njal's Saga is
not principally about a guy named Njal. Rather, it's about all of Njal's
family and friends and neighbors, over the course of 51 years. Njal himself
isn't even mentioned until Chapter 20 (of 159)! The second thing to note is
that contrary to what one might expect from a Norse Saga, Njal is not a
fierce Viking warrior who goes around smiting his enemies. He's a peaceful
landowner, who uses his wisdom and intelligence to advise and assist his
friends, relatives, etc, who do go around smiting their enemies.
Unfortunately, they don't always listen to him.
Some disconnected thoughts on Njal's Saga:
For all that they seem to have liked slaying one another, the
ancient Icelanders had a very civilized way of dealing with such
things. If somebody killed one of your relatives, else, you'd be
entitled to some form of justice: you could 1. bring a lawsuit against
the killer, asking for financial compensation or (in particularly
egregious cases) a judgement of outlawry against the killer, or 2. make
an out-of-court settlement with the killer for financial compensation,
or 3. seek blood vengeance. The interesting thing is that if you took
vengeance, then the family of the guy you killed was also entitled to
compensation or vengeance against you. Thus, there was encouragement to
make a financial settlement, rather than avenging your relatives.
Lawsuits were settled by a kind of jury, according to a definite set of
rules. Njal's Saga recounts a long series of killings,
punctuated by lawsuits.
Even if you're the best lawyer in all Iceland, when you get your
guys off by using a sleazy trick, during a lawsuit over their heinous
slaying of a family who has a lot of friends and relatives, you should
prepare to be killed on the spot by a mob of said friends and
relatives.
It's interesting to see how vastly my (modern American) narrative
expectations differ from those of medieval Icelanders. Every character
in the saga, no matter how insignificant is introduced by his
geneology:
Obviously, the intended readership thought that such details
were very important, and it probably told them more about the
characters than is apparent to the modern reader. I, on the other hand,
found it tedious and confusing, and ended up simply skipping those
parts.
Converting to Christianity didn't stop any proper Norseman
from going out and ruthlessly slaying his enemies, no way, no how.
This page Copyright P. Korda, 2003. kor2@pobox.com