Table Of ContentN JA L ’S SAGA
TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
MAGNUS MAGNUSSON
AND
HERMANN PÁLSSON
PENGUIN BOOKS
Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Bôoks Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada 1.3R IB4
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
This translation first published i960
Reprinted 1964, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974« 1975.
1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1986
Copyright © Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson, i960
All rights reserved
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Hazell Watson & Viney Limited,
Member of the BPCC Group,
Aylesbury, Bucks
Set in Linotype Pilgrim
Except in the United Sûtes of America,
this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed
on'the subsequent purchaser
TO
EINAR ÓLAFUR SVEÍNSSON
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 9
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION 33
NJAL’S SAGA 37
GENEALOGICAL TABLES 357
GLOSSARY OF PROPER NAMES 363
NOTE ON THE CHRONOLOGY 375
MAPS 377-8
INTRODUCTION
Njal’s Saga is the mightiest of all the classical Icelandic sagas.
It was written in Iceland by an unknown author in the last
quarter of the thirteenth century - somewhere around the year
1280, as nearly as can be deduced; and, from the outset, it has
always been regarded as the greatest of the vast, uneven, and
(to the English-speaking world, alas) largely unfamiliar prose
literature of Iceland in the Middle Ages. Its early popularity can
be seen from the fact that more vellum manuscripts of Njal’s
Saga have survived than of any other saga (twenty-four, some
of them very fragmentary). Succeeding generations of Ice
landers have endorsed this immediate affection, and the repu
tation of the saga has emerged enhanced from 150 years of
rigorous scholarly examination.
Njal’s Saga is an epic prose narrative about people - people
who lived in Iceland, intensely and often violently, some 300
years before this saga was written. It would be as misleading
to call it a history as to call it an historical novel. The saga is
broadly based on authenticated historical event, its material is
drawn from oral traditions and occasional written records, but
it is given life and force and significant artistic shape by the
creative genius of its anonymous author. The original manu
script of the saga has not survived; the earliest extant MS. is
from c. 1300, that is to say approximately twenty years later.
Our text of Njal’s Saga is, according to latest scholarly opinion,
two or perhaps three removes from the original.
Readers unfamiliar with Old Icelandic literature may find it
helpful to be shown Njal’s Saga in its historical perspective; for
it was written at a crucial period of Iceland's early history, both
literary and political, which had an important effect on its
composition.
Iceland was discovered and settled by land-hungry Norse
men late in the ninth century a.d. - some 400 years before
Njal’s Saga was written. It was the last convulsive movement
of peoples in the great Scandinavian migrations that had already
sent Viking ships to Russia, to the British Isles, to France, even
9
to North Africa. But Iceland, let it be said, was never a Viking
nation, in the popular conception. This new nation, a composite
of settlers from Scandinavia and the Norse colonies in Ireland
and the Hebrides, numbering at most perhaps 60,000, quickly
established a unique parliamentary commonwealth (in 930),
which finally broke down only a few years before Njal’s Saga
was born. It is difficult to believe that the author was not
affected by the events of his lifetime - the years of savage in
ternal strife, murderous intrigues, and ruthless self-seeking
power-politics that led, in 1262, to the loss of the independence
that her pioneers had created. It had been an independence
based on law and the rights of the individual - ‘With laws shall
our land be built up but with lawlessness laid waste,’ as Njal
says in Chapter 70. In an age where his land had indeed
been laid waste by lawlessness, the author could look back to
an age which must have seemed truly heroic in comparison,
when a man’s pride and honour were more dearly prized pos
sessions than wealth or even life itself. There was strife enough
between men, yes; but it was strife over human principles, not
politics.
Alongside the progressive deterioration of civil order and
integrity in Iceland there had been a compensatory develop
ment of literary awareness. Vernacular prose-writing in Jceland
started in the early years of the twelfth century, functional and
fragmentary at first, but growing steadily in output, in crafts
manship and stature and artistry. The written language was
exercised strenuously and extensively on all the familiar sub
jects of medieval literature - saints’ lives, historical chronicling,
treatises, translations of foreign books on religion, philosophy,
poetry, education, astronomy, travel. . . . But as well as this
mass of ‘applied’ learned and literary activity, of what one
might call ‘official’ literature, there was evolving a unique type
of literary entertainment called saga. By the end of the twelfth
century, sagas were being written about life in Iceland from
the earliest stages of her history down to contemporary times,
as well as biographies of the past and present kings of Norway.
Saga-writing grew apace throughout the thirteenth century,
with such great achievements as Heimskringla, Egil’s Saga,
Laxdcela Saga, and Gisli's Saga as well as a host of others; and
at the apex (but not the end) of saga development came Njal’s
10
