Njal's Saga

by AnonYMous

  on our saddle-less horses

  hence from here,

  with swords in hand.

  The women then pulled down the cloth and tore it to pieces, and each of them kept the piece she was holding in her hand.

  Dorrud then went away from the window and back home, and the women climbed on their horses and rode away, six to the south and six to the north.

  A similar event occurred to Brand Gneistason in the Faroe Islands.

  At Svinafell in Iceland blood appeared on the priest’s cope on Good Friday, and he had to take it off.

  At Thvotta river on Good Friday a priest thought he saw a deep sea next to the altar, and he saw many terrifying sights in it, and it was a long time before he was able to sing mass again.

  In Orkney this happened: Harek thought he saw Earl Sigurd together with some other men. Harek took his horse and rode to meet the earl, and people saw them come together and ride behind a hill. They were never seen again, and no trace of Harek was ever found.

  Earl Gilli in the Hebrides dreamed that a man came to him and gave his name as Herfinn, and said he had come from Ireland. The earl asked him for news, and Herfinn spoke this:

  24.

  When swords screamed in Ireland

  and men struggled, I was there;

  many a weapon was shattered

  when shields met in battle.

  The attack, I hear, was daring;

  Sigurd died in the din of helmets din of helmets: battle

  after making bloody wounds;

  Brian fell too, but won.

  Flosi and the earl talked at length about this dream.

  A week later Hrafn the Red came to them and told them all about Brian’s battle, about the death of the king and Earl Sigurd and Brodir and all the Vikings.

  Flosi spoke: ‘What can you tell me about my men?’

  ‘They all died there,’ said Hrafn, ‘except for your brother-in-law Thorstein, but he was spared by Kerthjalfad and is now with him. Halldor Gudmundarson died.’

  Flosi told the earl that he was going away – ‘we have to make our pilgrimage to Rome.’

  The earl told him to go as he wished and gave him a ship and whatever else they needed, and much silver. Then they sailed to Wales and stayed there a while.

  158

  To turn now to Kari: he told Skeggi that he wanted him to find him a ship, and Skeggi gave him a fully manned longship. Then Kari and David and Kolbein went aboard. They sailed south along the Scottish fjords. There they met men from the Hebrides. They told Kari what had happened in Ireland, and also that Flosi and his men had gone to Wales. When Kari heard this he told his companions that he wanted to go south to Wales and find them. He asked that those who wanted to part company with him should do so; he would not deceive anyone about the fact that he considered his sorrows to be still unavenged. All his men chose to stay with him. He then sailed south to Wales and they pulled into a sheltered inlet.

  That morning Kol Thorsteinsson went into the town to buy silver. He had the most vicious tongue of all the burners. Kol had spent much time with a wealthy woman, and it was all but fixed that he would marry her and settle there.

  That morning Kari went into town, too. He came to the place where Kol was counting the silver. Kari recognized him. He rushed at him with drawn sword and struck at his neck, but Kol was still counting silver and his head uttered the number ten as it flew from the body.

  Kari spoke: ‘Tell Flosi that Kari Solmundarson has killed Kol Thorsteinsson. I give notice that I did the slaying.’

  Then he went to his ship and told his companions about the slaying. They sailed back north to Berwick and pulled the ship ashore and went to Whitbury in Scotland and spent that winter with Earl Melkolf.

  To turn now to Flosi: he went and took the body of Kol and laid it out and spent much money on his burial. Flosi never spoke harshly of Kari. From there he sailed south across the Channel and then began his pilgrimage and walked south and did not stop until he came to Rome. There he was treated with such great honour that he received absolution from the Pope himself, and he gave much money for that.

  He returned by the eastern route1 and stopped in many towns and presented himself to powerful men and received honours from them. He spent the following winter in Norway and received from Earl Eirik a ship for the journey to Iceland. The earl also gave him much flour, and many other men showed him honour.

  Then he sailed to Iceland and landed at Hornafjord. From there he went home to Svinafell. He had then fulfilled all his part in the settlement, both the exile and the payments.

  159

  To tell now about Kari: the following summer he went to his ship and sailed south across the Channel and began his pilgrimage in Normandy and walked south and received absolution and returned by the western route1 and took over his ship in Normandy and sailed north across the Channel to Dover in England. From there he sailed west to Wales and then north along the coast of Wales and on to the Scottish firths, and did not stop his journey until he came to Skeggi, at Freswick in Caithness. Then he turned the cargo vessel over to Kolbein and David. Kolbein sailed this ship to Norway, while David stayed behind on Fair Isle.

  Kari spent that winter at Caithness. During the winter his wife died in Iceland.

  The next summer Kari prepared to go to Iceland. Skeggi gave him a cargo vessel, and there were eighteen of them on board. They finished their preparations late, but put out to sea. They had a long passage, but at last they reached the promontory Ingolfshofdi, and there the ship was shattered into pieces; their lives, however, were spared.

  The snow was falling thickly. Kari’s men asked him what they were to do, and he said that it was his plan to go to Svinafell and put Flosi’s magnanimity to the test. They walked to Svinafell through the snowstorm.

  Flosi was in the main room. He recognized Kari at once and jumped up to meet him and kissed him, and then placed him in the high seat by his side. He invited Kari to stay there for the winter. Kari accepted.

  They made a full reconciliation. Flosi gave Kari the hand of his brother’s daughter, Hildigunn, who had been the wife of Hoskuld the Godi of Hvitanes. They lived at Breida to begin with.

  People say that the end of Flosi’s life came when he had grown old and went abroad to find wood for building a house and spent the winter in Norway. The next summer he was late in his preparations. Men talked about the bad condition of the ship. Flosi said that it was good enough for an old man doomed to die, and he boarded the ship and put out to sea, and nothing was ever heard of the ship again.

  These were the children of Kari and Helga Njalsdottir: Thorgerd, Ragnheid, Valgerd and Thord who was burned at Bergthorshvol. The children of Hildigunn and Kari were Starkad and Thord and Flosi. Flosi’s son was Kolbein, who was the most distinguished man in that line. And here I end the saga of Njal of the burning.

  Notes

  Chapter 1

  1. Dala-Koll: His name means Koll from the Dalir or ‘Dales’ district. This sudden shift of scene from the flat south-west coast of Iceland to the eastern valleys which feed into Breidafjord is unusual in the sagas.

  Chapter 2

  1. Sixty hundreds: The Old Germanic ‘hundred’ signifies one hundred and twenty; thus the figure which Mord proposes as his part of the dowry is 60 × 120 = 7,200 ells of homespun. Hrut is to add half of this amount, an additional 3,600. An amendment in a late-thirteenth-century lawbook reveals that the figure shows Mord to have been a very rich man: ‘Here in Iceland no one may give a maiden or woman a larger bride-price than sixty hundreds, even if these men are rich, and never more than a fourth part of his goods’ Fónsbók, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson (Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, 1904), p. 70. A cow was worth between 72 and 100 ells of homespun in twelfth and thirteenth-century Iceland.

  2. two hundred marks if he got it all: There were two means of exchange in medieval Iceland, homespun cloth and refined silver. There were eight ounces of silver in a mark, and six ells of homespun were worth one ounce of silver.
The total amount of Hrut’s estate in Norway is thus 240 × 8 × 6 = 11,520 ells of homespun, which exceeds the amount decided on in the marriage agreement.

  3. Hern Islands: A group of islands off Hordaland in the west of Norway.

  Chapter 3

  1. Harald Grey-cloak … in the east: Harald Grey-cloak was king of Norway from 961 to 965. His mother Gunnhild was the widow of Eirik Blood-axe, who ruled Norway from 930 to 935. Here she is said to be the daughter of Ozur Toti, but it is more likely that she was the daughter of King Gorm of Denmark. Many stories were told of her harshness, her skill in magic and her fondness for men. Konungahella was near present-day Göteborg in Sweden.

  Chapter 4

  1. “guests”: A special group of followers at the king’s court, charged with internal spying and killing the king’s enemies.

  Chapter 5

  1. Hakon, foster-son of King Athelstan: Hakon the Good preceded Harald Grey-cloak as king of Norway, from 935 to 961; he had been fostered by King Athelstan of England.

  Chapter 6

  1. ‘You’re pulling against a powerful man’: The metaphor is of a tug-of-war; it appears in several other sagas and is common in modern Icelandic.

  2. the king: Some manuscripts have ‘Gunnhild’ here.

  3. six weeks before winter: Around the middle of September. The wedding was originally scheduled (in Ch. 2) for early August two years before.

  Chapter 7

  1. Sigmund Ozurarson: Nothing is known of this Sigmund or the favours Unn has shown him, but since he refers to Hrut as his kinsman he may be the son of Ozur, Hrut’s uncle.

  2. men’s door: This seems to have been the main door (of two or three) and a place where various legal ceremonies took place. The travel directions which Mord gives to Unn in the following sentence are meant to avoid the usual route which would start by going south rather than east.

  3. divorced: There are two divorces in the saga. This one, from the woman’s side, consists of a threefold series of declarations (at the bed, at the door, and at the Law Rock) and may well represent early Icelandic law; the threefold process is treated as important in Ch. 24. The other divorce, from the man’s side, occurs in Ch. 34 and is a much simpler procedure, a single declaration.

  Chapter 8

  1. he set the figure at ninety hundreds … three marks: Mord is asking, legitimately, for the sixty hundreds provided by himself as dowry and the thirty hundreds added by Hrut (see Ch. 2). The fine is for failure to pay promptly.

  2. episode: So read most manuscripts, but Reykjabók has a word meaning ‘conflict’ here.

  Chapter 9

  1. foster-father: Although the term fóstri (usually translated ‘foster-father/son/ brother’) is used of Thjostolf, he was not so much Hallgerd’s foster-father as simply a man who looked after her as she was growing up.

  2. paid no compensation for them: The refusal to pay compensation for slayings, to make reasonable amends for an unjust act, is a sure sign of a wicked and intractable character.

  Chapter 12

  1. Ljot the Black, her kinsman: Like Sigmund Ozurarson in Ch. 7 and Jorund the Godi in Ch. 8, this character is brought on stage without prior introduction and is, like Sigmund, not known elsewhere.

  2. Reykjanes: It is not explained why Osvif, Thorvald’s father, is to be found at Reykjanes rather than at Fell, his residence in Ch. 9, but we may guess that he moved there after his son’s marriage.

  3. ‘Osvif’s personal spirits are coming this way’: Svan, with his second sight, has a vision of the personal spirits of Osvif and his men. Such visions were often marked by sleepiness, and this explains his yawning.

  4. The nose is near to the eyes: A proverb which asserts the duties that go along with family ties. The sense here is ‘what involves those close to us involves us as well’. The proverb will be uttered again by Ketil of Mork in Ch. 112.

  Chapter 13

  1. Three brothers … owned that farm together: Glum, who will play the largest role of the three brothers in this saga, is the only one who is not known from other sources. Thorarin was the second Icelandic lawspeaker, from 950 to 969.

  2. Engey and Laugarnes in the south: Laugarnes is part of the modern capital city of Reykjavík, and the island Engey, uninhabited, lies in Faxafloi bay just north of the city.

  3. one oath does not invalidate all oaths: A proverbial saying which means that what happens once, even though done badly like an oath violated, need not be repeated.

  Chapter 14

  1. my father’s mother … Sigurd Fafnisbani: Compare the genealogy given for Hoskuld in Ch. 1, which does not go back this far. Sigurd Fafnisbani (Sigurd the slayer of Fafnir) is a great hero in the Eddic poetry and the Saga of the Volsungs; he corresponds to Siegfried in the medieval German epic Das Nibelungenlied and in Wagner’s operatic cycle The Ring of the Nibelung.

  2. sprinkled with water: A pagan ceremony resembling, but not related to, Christian baptism.

  Chapter 16

  1. I don’t want to follow in the footsteps of your slaves: This is intemperate speech, for Glum’s servants are certainly not slaves. The Icelandic word used for them elsewhere is húskarlar, ‘house-men’, and the same term was used for men in the Norwegian king’s court.

  Chapter 17

  1. The only bad company comes from home: A proverbial phrase which also appears in other sagas. Although the contexts are different, one might compare Matthew 10: 35-6: ‘For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household’ (RSV), and James Joyce, Ulysses 9.812–13 (Gabler edition): ‘A man’s worst enemies come from house and family.’

  Chapter 19

  1. Gunnar … Sandholar: For Gunnar’s relation to Unn see the beginning of the saga, where Mord Gigja, Unn’s father, is the son of Sighvat the Red. She is thus Sighvat’s granddaughter, and here we learn that Gunnar, through his mother Rannveig, is the great-grandson of Sighvat. According to The Book of Settlements, it was Sigmund, the son of Sighvat, who was slain at the Sandholar ferry (see translation by Pálsson and Edwards, p. 131). This Sigmund is unknown in Njal’s Saga.

  2. Uni the Unborn: ‘Unborn’ means born by Caesarean delivery rather than by the normal way. Uni is one of the settlers of Iceland, and his father Gardar is considered the discoverer of Iceland in some versions of The Book of Settlements (see p. 17 of the English translation by Pálsson and Edwards) and in Theodoricus Monachus, The Ancient History of the Norwegian Kings (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1998), p. 6.

  Chapter 26

  1. Asgrim slew Gauk: This is referred to again in Ch. 139, where Asgrim is taunted for having slain his foster-brother Gauk. An entry in the early-fourteenth-century manuscript Möðruvallabók indicates that there existed a ‘Saga of Gauk Trandilsson’ and that the scribe planned to copy it into that manuscript immediately after Njal’s Saga. But the copy was not made, and the saga is lost.

  Chapter 29

  1. Earl Hakon Sigurdarson ruled the realm: He ruled in Norway from 975 to 995.

  Chapter 31

  1. King Harald Gormsson was staying there: King of Denmark, nicknamed ‘Blue-tooth’; he died around 986 after a reign of perhaps forty years.

  Chapter 33

  1. I’m very demanding when it comes to men: Hallgerd’s response is deliberately ambiguous: (a) she is demanding in her choice of men; (b) she makes many demands on men.

  Chapter 34

  1. He was Gunnar’s uncle: Thrain’s father Sigfus was the father of Gunnar’s mother, Rannveig. See the beginning of Ch. 19 and Genealogical Tables 1 and 2. Thrain and his brothers (the Sigfussons) are not known outside this saga.

  2. Thorgerd and Helga: In Ch. 20 it was said that Njal had three daughters, but only these two are named and play a role in the saga.

  3. Hoskuld: This Hoskuld is the natural son of Njal (see Ch. 25), and not to be confused with Hoskuld Dala-Kollsson, the father of Hallgerd. It
has often been noticed that the seating arrangement, with Njal and his family on one side of Gunnar, and the Sigfussons and their allies on his other side, foreshadows the major conflict in the saga.

  Chapter 35

  1. you have gnarled nails on every finger: Some scholars believe that such deformed nails, probably a fungus growth, were taken as a sign of nymphomania, in which case Hallgerd is accusing Bergthora of a tendency which she herself will best exemplify, at least according to Skarphedin’s insult in Ch. 91 where he calls Hallgerd ‘either a cast-off hag or a whore’.

  Chapter 39

  1. Asgerd: Njal’s mother; see the genealogy in Ch. 20.

  Chapter 41

  1. there was close kinship between him and Sigmund: See Genealogical Table 2; Sigmund’s father was the brother of Gunnar’s grandfather. This Sigmund is not known from other sources than this saga.

  Chapter 44

  1. … all of them malicious: The slanderous nature of Hallgerd’s remarks and Sigmund’s verses (unrecorded here) cannot be exaggerated. First, Njal’s strong point, his wisdom, has been impugned. Second, the epithets for both Njal and his son are a slur on their manhood: ‘Old Beardless’ is an insulting reference to a physical characteristic of Njal, and ‘Dung-beardlings’ implies that his sons can only have beards by putting dung on their faces.