Njal's Saga (2 page)

The social setting is so consistently presented that we can think of it as
a third major defining feature of the Sagas of Icelanders. Recent saga scholarship with
an anthropological and sociological focus has in fact demonstrated that although the
sagas are not to be trusted as history in the narrow sense (names, dates, events), they
provide a remarkably coherent picture of an intricate legal and social system, one which
saw little change over the three centuries of the commonwealth (960–1262). For
this kind of history – dealing with matters such as the organization of a
hierarchical society, the arranging of
marriages and divorces, the
obligations within the kin group with respect to feuds, and the handling of disputes
(whether by the courts or by personal arrangement) – the sagas represent a
large body of shared material so consistently that it cannot have been invented by any
individual author. For details of the social setting see the Glossary, especially under
‘Althing', ‘Fifth Court', ‘full
outlawry', ‘godi' and
‘Lawspeaker'.

A fourth way in which the Sagas of Icelanders form a generic whole is
their firm setting in historical time and their unified view of Iceland's
evolving past. Many sagas – though not
Njal's Saga
– begin by mentioning the reign of Harald Fair-hair (r. 870–930),
the first king to bring all of Norway under his control.
The Saga of Hrafnkel
Frey's Godi
, for example, begins: ‘It was in the days of
King Harald Fair-hair …that a man named Hallfred brought his ship to Breiddal
in Iceland, below the district of Fljotsdal.' The common explanation in the
sagas for the emigration of prominent families from the west coast of Norway is the
desire to escape Harald's harsh rule, although in fact other reasons, such as
over-population, were just as likely. Many of those who left Norway stopped first in
Celtic territories in Britain and later brought women and slaves out to Iceland, so that
the population was not pure Scandinavian. The flight from Norway led to the
‘land-taking' or settlement of Iceland, an island previously
uninhabited except for a few Irish monks, who soon left when they saw themselves
deprived of the solitude that had drawn them there. It is reckoned that by the year 930
the population of the new land had reached at least 20,000.

In addition to this foundation story of flight and settlement, the
historical awareness of the thirteenth-century Icelander would have included the
importation of laws from Norway by a man named Ulfljot and the establishment of the
Althing (general annual meeting), both around the year 930; a refinement of the laws by
a division of the country into four quarters, around 965; the acceptance of Christianity
at the Althing in 999 or 1000; and the establishment of the Fifth Court in the year
1004. All of these facts, from Harald Fair-hair to the Fifth Court and beyond, were set
down around 1125 in a concise book by Ari Thorgilsson known as
The Book of
the
Icelanders
. Not every Icelander in the thirteenth
century had a copy of Ari's book, or knew the precise dates and details just
outlined, but it is clear that the family sagas were written for an audience possessed
of a lively knowledge of the historical development of their country and its
institutions.

Njal's Saga
does not mention the flight from Harald
Fair-hair, but it embodies the historical legend by including two of the principal
events – the Conversion (Chs. 100–105) and the establishment of the
Fifth Court (Ch. 97) – and by incorporating, as do most of the family sagas,
the detailed genealogies common to the genre of historical writings. Ari Thorgilsson
mentions an earlier, expanded version of his short book, which contained
‘Genealogies and Lives of the Kings', and there is other evidence
that written genealogies were among the earliest secular writings in Iceland. Whether
written or simply preserved in oral family tradition, a knowledge of one's
ancestors and of the kinship relations of prominent figures was built into the
consciousness of every Icelander.
Njála
begins by mentioning Mord
Gigja and his father Sighvat the Red (his grandfather, according to
The Book of
Settlements
). The next person introduced is Hoskuld Dala-Kolsson, and his line
is traced back through his mother to a prominent female settler in the west of Iceland,
Unn the Deep-minded. The text does not specify that Sighvat and Unn were settlers
– this is not necessary, for the audience of the saga would have known this.
Genealogies usually appear in the sagas when a character is introduced, often in
combination with an insightful description.

Tracing of family lines goes forward as well as backward. The
twelfth-century Icelandic historian, Saemund Sigfusson the Learned, is mentioned in
Njal's Saga
as a descendant of Ulf Aur-godi (Ch. 25) and also of
Sigfus Ellida-Grimsson (Ch. 26). Gizur the White's son Isleif, mentioned in
Ch. 46, became the first bishop of Iceland in 1056, and the audience would have known
that Isleif's son was the influential Bishop Gizur who introduced the tithe to
Iceland. In the fullest genealogy in the saga, that given for Gudmund the Powerful in
Ch. 113, his line is traced not only to Bishop Ketil (d. 1145) but to the prominent
thirteenth-century families of the Sturlungs and the people of Hvamm. The abundant
genealogies, not to mention the
abundance of characters, must have
made
Njála
a rich shared experience for thirteenth-century Icelanders,
most of whom could trace their ancestry back to at least one of the four hundred
settlers and to other persons named in this and other sagas.

In this sense, the modern reader – unless he is an Icelander who
can trace his lineage for a thousand years (as many can) – is an outsider,
unable to share fully in the personal excitement of reading about one's family
past and one's national past. There is no disadvantage, however, if the reader
is prepared to understand sympathetically the historical background just described and
what it must have meant to the men and women who wrote and read or listened to these
sagas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is well documented that the
thirteenth century in Iceland was an ugly and troubled time, virtually a period of civil
war, with large-scale battles, with power falling into fewer and fewer hands (instead of
being distributed among the thirty-nine godis) and with interference from Norway in both
secular and ecclesiastical affairs. The resolution of this turmoil was submission to
Norwegian rule in the year 1262, and it was seven centuries before the Icelanders became
an independent nation again, in 1944. Whether written before 1262 or after (like
Njal's Saga
), the sagas were written partly out of a need to
affirm identity, both personal and national, with the past, a time when their ancestors
fled Norwegian tyranny – rather than succumb to it – and built up a
new society free of monarchical rule and governed by laws and institutions that
functioned with dignity, if not without bloodshed.

We have seen that the author
of Njal's Saga
worked
with traditional materials, oral tales of historical (and non-historical) events and
persons, combined with a strong consciousness of his country's history and
social institutions. He apparently also worked with written sources, including
genealogies, a book of laws, accounts of the Conversion (Chs. 100–105) and of
the battle of Clontarf (Chs. 153–7) and works in Icelandic based on foreign
sources such as the
Dialogues of
Gregory the Great
(see the note to Flosi's dream in Ch. 133). It is impossible to disentangle
the four components in the saga – authentic history, the inventions of oral
tradition, written sources and the contribution of the thirteenth-century author
– but the saga shows so many signs of careful artistry that one is inclined to
believe in a master craftsman at the final stage, perhaps even a writer who, as the
Swedish poet and critic A. U. Bååth put it long ago, had the last line
of his saga in mind when he wrote the first.

The last sentence of the saga in most manuscripts refers to it as
Brennu-Njáls saga
, which can be translated either ‘the
saga of the burning of Njal' (with an emphasis on the act of burning) or
‘the saga of Njal of the burning' (i.e. of Njal who endured the
burning). In either case this term (used as the title in most modern editions) points to
the two things which are central, a man and a burning. The laws make it clear that
burning a man's house was a heinous crime, punishable by full outlawry even if
no persons were burned (
Laws of Early Iceland
, p. 169). The saga itself shows
burning to be shameful as well as heinous. In the attack on Gunnar in Ch. 77, the option
of burning was proposed by the malicious Mord Valgardsson, but firmly rejected. In the
attack on Bergthorshvol, Flosi's own words before starting the blaze reveal
his awareness of the shame attendant on such a deed (Ch. 128). The saga, like the
tradition behind it, was fascinated by this horror. In one way or another all the events
in the first part of the saga lead to the non-incendiary killing of Gunnar; all of the
subsequent events, as well as many of the earlier events, lead to Njal's death
by burning. After this climax there are still twenty-nine chapters in the saga
(131–59); these are more than a coda, they are a necessary settling of scores
and a hard-won return to equilibrium.

The man Njal is not the hero one expects from a work called
‘saga'. His introductory description (Ch. 20) shows him to be an
older man (or at least a man with grown children, as becomes clear in Ch. 25), known for
his wisdom, his gift of prophecy, his skill at law, and – a surprising
physical detail – his inability to grow a beard. Further, the beardless
titular hero of this saga never kills, never fights, and is only once shown to carry a
weapon, a rather useless short axe (Ch. 118). His neighbour and good friend Gunnar, on
the other hand, is the
very model of the blond, blue-eyed Viking,
described chiefly in terms of his unmatched physical skills (Ch. 19). His two battles
against Viking raiders abroad (Ch. 30) prove him to be the greatest of Icelandic
fighters. His tragedy is that back in Iceland he is dragged into quarrels with men of
inferior worth who envy his greatness and eventually bring him down. Njal and Gunnar
form an ideal complementary pair, wisdom and strength, and Gunnar profits from
Njal's advice and legal skills as long as he can – and then, in
effect, gives up.

The presence of Njal at the centre of the saga is a sign that the emphasis
is not on overt displays of masculine prowess, though of course there are a generous
number of personal combats, carefully described with a connoisseur's eye to
every movement, every swing of the sword and thrust of the spear, every gaping or
severing wound. Many of these encounters, however, are not altogether heroic. Gunnar is
on his own when he is attacked in his home by forty men, Hoskuld Thrainsson is killed in
a cowardly attack by five men who lie in hiding until he comes out in the morning to sow
grain, and Njal and his family are annihilated by men who take no risks and burn them
inside their house. Much blood is shed in the saga, but much of it is shamefully shed
– not exactly what seekers after Viking adventure want to read.

Rather than violent action, it is spiritual qualities that occupy the
centre of interest in this saga – intelligence, wisdom, decisiveness,
purposefulness, a shrewd business sense, the ability to give and follow advice, decency,
a sense of honour. Njal says at one point, when he is calculating how to respond to the
abusive language of the Sigfussons, ‘they are stupid men' (Ch. 91).
Those who plot evil, invent and pronounce gratuitous insults and envy the honest virtues
of others are stupid. Between their stupidity and the clear-headedness of their
antagonists lies the central conflict in the saga. It is emblematic that when Njal has a
vision of some men about to attack Gunnar he reports that ‘they seem in a
frenzy but act without purpose' (Ch. 69).

In our age of self-doubt, identity crises and existential uncertainty, it
is refreshing to read about firm decision-making and purposeful action by men and women
with a sure sense of themselves. Hesitation
is treated with scorn in
Njála
, as when Hallgerd whets Brynjolf in Ch. 38: he falls silent,
and she insults him by saying that Thjostolf (now dead) would not have hesitated. When
Sorli Brodd-Helgason gives a feeble response to Flosi's request for support,
Flosi says ‘I can see from your answer that your wife rules here'
(Ch. 134). Some men of course are temporarily caught in a dilemma, like Flosi in Ch.
116, torn between blood vengeance and a peaceful settlement, or Ketil of Mork (Chs. 93
and 112) and Ingjald of Keldur (Chs. 116 and 124), torn between conflicting allegiances.
Their decisions are not easy, and we sympathize with them. But we are thrilled by men
who do not stop to weigh the odds, like Kari outside the hall of King Sigtrygg of Orkney
in Ch. 155: when he overhears Gunnar Lambason's lying account of the burning,
he dashes in and cuts off Gunnar's head in a single blow. We also admire
Gunnar of Hlidarendi's change of mind: his decision to remain in Iceland
rather than go abroad as an outlaw is taken quickly, resolutely and courageously (Ch.
75).

The good characters not only understand themselves and what is required of
them, they also know what to expect of others, and often with remarkable precision. The
fullest example of this is Njal's instructions to Gunnar in Ch. 22, where he
is able to predict step by step exactly what will happen when Gunnar comes in disguise
to Laxardal. A small example is Kari's ability to time the movement of Ketil
and his men (beginning of Ch. 152). In between are many other cases where intelligent
people show a keen ability to anticipate the actions and words of others.