Njal's Saga

by AnonYMous

  4. His nostrils are still open: It was the custom in the north to close the eyes, mouth and nostrils immediately after death.

  Chapter 99

  1. … they’ll keep to whatever I decide: Compare a similar conversation between Njal and Gunnar, in Ch. 43.

  Chapter 100

  1. Olaf Tryggvason: King of Norway from 995 to 1000.

  Chapter 101

  1. the sign of the cross: The Icelandic word is prímsigning from Latin prima signatio, a rite preliminary to baptism.

  Chapter 102

  1. Hall, who was then three years old: Hall (Thorarinsson) lived from 995 to 1089 and fostered the historian Ari Thorgilsson (1068–1148) at Haukadal from 1075 to 1089. In Ch. 9 of his Book of the Icelanders Ari writes, ‘Hall, who was both of good memory and truthful, remembered that he was baptized and that Thangbrand baptized him when he was three years old, one year before Christianity was made law here.’

  Chapter 104

  1. Hjalti Skeggjason was outlawed for mocking the gods: On account of the verse he uttered in Ch. 102 calling Freyja a bitch and Odin a dog. In the same chapter it is said that he went abroad, and thus he was sentenced to outlawry in absentia.

  Chapter 105

  1. Thorgeir … Thorkel the Long: In other sources Thorgeir the Godi of Ljosavatn is the son, not the grandson, of Thorkel.

  2. Thorgeir spread a cloak over his head … and no one spoke to him: This and the detail of Hall’s payment of money to Thorgeir, just above, have been especially intriguing to scholars of the Conversion. Did Hall bribe Thorgeir? Did they agree beforehand that Christianity should be adopted? Did Thorgeir lie under the cloak for an entire day in order to ascertain the will of his gods – or simply to prepare his speech? These and further questions cannot be resolved here.

  3. ‘This will be the foundation of our law … no punishment’: Some of the language here echoes the Conversion account in The Book of the Icelanders, Ch. 7. Only in this saga are the exposure of children and eating horse-flesh banned, in addition to pagan worship, at the time of the Conversion. In the parallel account in The Book of the Icelanders, for example, only pagan sacrifice is banned.

  Chapter 106

  1. I have received no compensation: Amundi is a parallel case to Lyting in Ch. 98. Neither had a strong claim to compensation according to early Icelandic law, Lyting as a sister’s husband, Amundi as an illegitimate son.

  Chapter 107

  1. people have stopped being my thingmen and gone over to Hoskuld: Mord and Valgard have two good reasons to resent Hoskuld: his new assembly place at Hvitanes has replaced the old one at Thingskalar, and he has attracted many of Mord’s thingmen to himself. In commonwealth Iceland men were free to select their own godi; they were not required to support the one living closest.

  Chapter 108

  1. neither side took a decision unless the other agreed: This phrase echoes, with heavy irony, the similar phrase used at the end of Ch. 97 describing the close amity between Hoskuld Thrainsson and the Njalssons, the very amity that Mord is now seeking to destroy.

  Chapter 109

  1. ‘I don’t think they can be blamed for that’ said Hoskuld: Mord has just implied that the Njalssons provoked Amundi into killing Lyting (Ch. 106), and Hoskuld correctly denies that they were involved.

  2. I don’t want that: It is common in the sagas for a hero to turn down an offer of safety when in great danger, and in this case there is a verbal echo which links son to father: Hoskuld’s father Thrain uttered nearly the same words in Ch. 92, shortly before he was killed.

  3. He had also fostered Thorhall … one of the three greatest lawyers in Iceland: The adoption of Thorhall, whose legal skills will soon become useful, was also reported in Ch. 27, where he was called the greatest lawyer in Iceland. Thorhall will be called one of the three greatest lawyers in Iceland again in Ch. 135, and in Ch. 142 we learn that Njal predicted he would be the greatest lawyer in Iceland, if put to the test (as he is in that chapter).

  Chapter 111

  1. … that will cause serious damage to their case: Mord’s audacious scheme is that if he acts as plaintiff the suit will be invalid once it is revealed that he was in fact one of Hoskuld’s slayers. Thorgerd, it should be remembered, is Hoskuld’s mother and the widow of Thrain Sigfusson.

  Chapter 112

  1. the nose is near to the eyes: See note 4 to Ch. 12 above.

  Chapter 116

  1. our day-meal: Chief meal of the day but eaten around nine in the morning.

  2. Arnor Ornolfsson … at the Skaftafell Assembly: This fight is recorded in The Book of Settlements, in the Icelandic Annals under the year 997, and in The Saga of the Sons of Droplaug, with the difference that the avenging sons are Kolbein and Flosi, not Kolbein and Egil.

  3. Cold are the counsels of women: This phrase also appears in The Saga of Gisli and The Saga of the People of Laxardal. Its use by Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest (‘Wommennes conseils been ful ofte colde’) indicates that it may have been a common proverb.

  4. as red as blood, as pale as grass, and as black as Hel itself: The threefold simile, providing three of the 148 similes counted in the Sagas of Icelanders, gives powerful emphasis to Flosi’s overwrought state. ‘Hel’ is the Old Norse word for both the goddess of death and the place of the dead, corresponding to the Greek Hades. The word has been adapted in English for the Christian concept of Hell as a place of eternal punishment.

  5. when I married you to my brothers daughter … in all things: This wedding and this promise have not been mentioned, nor indeed has Thraslaug, Flosi’s niece and wife of Ingjald. Ingjald, Thraslaug and Hrodny do not appear in any sources other than this saga.

  Chapter 119

  1. My sister forunn will not expect me to avoid helping you: Gizur’s sister Jorunn is Asgrim’s mother.

  2. You’re Skafti Thoroddsson … in his flour sacks: Skarphedin’s insult against one of the most prominent and respected Icelanders of the early eleventh century (see note 1 to Ch. 56 and note 2 to Ch. 97 above) is effective: Skafti not only disguised himself and escaped in an undignified way he also associated with slaves and had a strip of turf, usually raised for a solemn purpose such as swearing brotherhood or an ordeal, cut in order to conceal himself. Skafti remembers this insult in Ch. 139, when he refuses aid for a second time, and Gizur the White compares him unfavourably with his father. In the battle at the Althing (Ch. 145) Skafti is wounded through the calf and dragged into the booth of a sword-sharpener, and the saga writer states specifically that he receives no compensation for this wound. This treatment of an important lawspeaker as vain, cowardly and ineffectual is reminiscent of the insults directed by Broddi Bjarnason against some leading chieftains, including Skafti, in Olkofri’s Saga. The story contained in Skarphedin’s insult is not recorded elsewhere.

  3. you need to be avenging your father rather than predicting my fate: Snorri’s father Thorgrim was slain by Gisli Sursson, the outlaw hero of Gisli Sursson’s Saga (see Ch. 16 of that saga). Vengeance in this case was complicated, because Gisli, the slayer, was the brother of Snorri’s mother Thordis; Skarphedin’s insult is therefore unfair. Snorri’s response, that he has heard this insult before, may indicate that the saga author know Olkofri’s Saga, where Broddi says the same thing to Snorri.

  4. It would be more fitting … from your home: Svanlaug and this story are not known elsewhere.

  5. Thorkel Bully … you deserve blame for that: The slander of Gudmund to which Skarphedin may be referring appears in The Saga of the People of Ljosavatn, Ch. 19, as an explicit accusation of homosexuality: ‘I imagine your ass has slaked itself at many streams, but I doubt it has drunk milk before.’

  6. He was the son … Hallbjorn Half-troll: This genealogy repeats the one given for Thorkel’s father in Ch. 105.

  7. Balagardssida: This is thought to refer to the south-west coast of Finland.

  8. a creature half-man, half-beast: The Icelandic word for this centaur-like creature is finngálkn, which does not app
ear in any other family saga. Thorkel’s adventures with this creature and with the flying dragon are more typical of the legendary and romantic sagas. Only in one other family saga, The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People, Ch. 5, does a man kill a flying dragon.

  Chapter 120

  1. It’s never happened … such a filthy thing: This insult combines the likely and the outrageous. In Ch. 2 of The Saga of the People of Ljosavatn Thorkel and his brothers oppose their father Thorgeir (the lawspeaker who decided in Ch. 105 above that Iceland should be Christian). The charge of eating the mare’s rectum has nothing to do with the prohibition against eating horse flesh; the sense is that only someone as low as Thorkel Bully could eat such food, with a hint at his avarice. The small household at his farm Oxara is mentioned in Ch. 13 of The Saga of the People of Ljosavatn.

  2. I had this axe in my hand … to catch me: See the account of this killing in Ch. 92.

  Chapter 122

  1. I felt that the sweetest light of my eyes had been put out: The phrase ‘light of my eyes’, more than any other in the saga, has religious echoes, as in Tobit 10: 4: ‘lumen oculorum nostrorum’. In the life of St Alexis appears ‘lumen oculorum meorum’ (Acta Sanctorum, XXXI, p. 252). In both cases a mother is lamenting the death (or presumed death) of a son. The additional word ‘sweet’ in this phrase appears only in one other place in the sagas of Icelanders, in Thorstein Eiriksson’s prophecy about Gudrid’s descendants (among whom were bishops) in Ch. 5 of The Saga of the Greenlanders: ‘you will live a long life together, and have many descendants, promising, bright and fine, sweet and well-scented.’ The combination of sweetness and brightness in that passage, as in Njal’s Saga, may go back to Psalm 18: 10-11 (Vulgate), where the commandments of the Lord are said to enlighten the eyes and to be sweeter than honey. Sweetness was associated with sanctity in the Middle Ages.

  2. when I helped your kinsman … Hall the Red: This story is not told elsewhere, but Thorgrim is mentioned in Thorstein Sidu-Hallson’s Saga and his father, Stout-Ketil, appears in a number of sources.

  Chapter 123

  1. the farmers’ churchyard: Grágás mentions a farmer’s churchyard at Thingvellir, where such payments were made. It is not known where this churchyard (or church) was.

  2. a silk robe … on top of the pile: The robe, though costly, was apparently suitable for either sex and thus gave Flosi an excuse to take offence. Njal may have added these gifts as a gesture of good will, but some readers have suspected that he was deliberately provoking Flosi and in effect sealing his own doom. The fact that he is silent when Flosi asks (twice) who put the robe on the pile can be taken to support this view; if the gift was innocent, why not acknowledge it?

  3. black trousers … more need of these: The insult lies either in the fact that these trousers were women’s trousers, or that they were men’s trousers which Flosi, with his woman’s nature, needed badly.

  4. he uses you as a woman every ninth night: Similar insults about a man being a woman every ninth night appear in Thorstein Sidu-Hallson’s Saga, Ch. 3, and The Saga of Ref the Sly, Ch. 7. The Svinafell troll, presumably a semi-human creature who lived at Svinafell, is mentioned only here. The seriousness of the insult can be measured by the Old Norwegian Gulathing Law: ‘No one is to make an exaggerated utterance about another or a libel. It is called an ‘‘exaggerated utterance’’ if someone says something about another man which cannot be, nor come to be, nor have been: declares he is a woman every ninth night or has borne a child or calls him gylfin (some sort of unnatural monster). He is outlawed if he is found guilty of that.’ Cited in ‘Níð and the Sacred,’ by Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, in Artikler: Udgivet i anleding af Preben Meulengracht Sørensens 60. års fødselsdag 1. marts 2000 (Aarhus: Norrønt Forum, 2000), p. 79.

  5. ‘They can never prosecute us, according to the laws of the land’: What this means is unclear. Skarphedin seems to think that because of the legal mistake committed (deliberately) by Mord, it will be too late to initiate the legal process once more.

  Chapter 124

  1. the Lord’s Day which falls eight weeks before winter: Sunday at the end of August, a good time for a long ride in the Icelandic highlands, with the ground hard but not snow-covered.

  Chapter 126

  1. Sand: Lomagnupssand, as Flosi indicated in Ch. 124. Today it is called Skeidararsand. The ‘Sand’ in the next paragraph is Mælifellssand. The main feature of Flosi’s route is that it passes to the north of Eyjafjalla glacier, rather than along the usual route, close to the southern coast.

  Chapter 129

  1. one fate should await us both: This phrase, with slight variations, appears four other times in chapters close to the burning (119,123,124 and 130), thus lending a sense of fate to that event. The clause also appears after the burning, at the end of Ch. 152.

  Chapter 130

  1. Thord Freed-man: Presumably the son of Thord Freed-man’s son and Gudfinna – see Ch. 39.

  2. Gunn of gold … cried out: The translation of the second half of this stanza is conjectural, as these lines have not been satisfactorily interpreted. The first four lines refer to a woman, presumably Skarphedin’s wife Thorhild, who will grieve over her husband’s death. The fact that there is no mention of the burning does not necessarily mean that the poem was originally composed for another occasion.

  Chapter 131

  1. Have no doubt that I will be loyal … for myself: Mord was an enemy of the Sigfussons for his part in the slaying of Hoskuld Thrainsson, and thus he is forced to align himself with Kari.

  Chapter 133

  1. ‘I want to tell you about a dream I had’: The dream which Flosi is about to recount, in which a figure comes out of a mountain and calls out, in groups, the names of men about to die, has a literary source in the following passage from the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, which were known in medieval Iceland: ‘A steep mountain towered high above the monastery, and a deep chasm lay beneath it. When omnipotent God had decided to reward the venerable Anastasius for his labours, a voice was heard one night crying out from the top of the cliff in prolonged tones saying: ‘‘Anastasius, come!’’ And when this had been said, seven other monks were likewise called by name. For a short while, however, the voice which had been heard fell silent, and then it called the eighth monk. Since the community had clearly heard this, no one doubted that death was approaching those whose names had been called. Thus within a few days first the most revered Anastasius passed away, and the others also in the same order in which their names had been called from the top of the mountain. That brother whose name had been preceded by a moment of silence lived on for a few days after the others had died and then he too passed away. Thus it was clearly shown that the silence which interrupted the voice signified a brief period of life.’ Migne, Patrologia Latina, 77, col. 185; the English translation is taken from Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, p. 206.

  2. First he called … Kol Thorsteinsson: The names called out anticipate the deaths of Flosi’s men: Grim the Red and Arni Kolsson are killed in the beginning of Ch. 145; later in that chapter come the deaths of Eyjolf and Ljot ‘and about six other men’. For the others see n. 1 to Ch. 152. The only discrepancy between this prophecy and later events is that Glum is not killed in a group of five, as here, but in the group of three killed in Ch. 151.

  3. “First I shall clear the panel … for the battlers”: These words look ahead to the battle at the Althing in Ch. 145. The translation attempts to capture the rhetorical zeugma in the original, where the single verb ryðja (‘clear’) is used in two different senses with two different kinds of objects, first in a legal sense with ‘panel’ and ‘court’ and then in its original literal sense with ‘battlefield’.

  4. What I told you once … before all this is over: Flosi had predicted this in Ch. 117.

  Chapter 134

  1. Flosi was wearing trousers … easier to walk This is obscure, but the idea seems to be (1) that such a garment makes walk
ing easier, and (2) that if Flosi walks, many men of lesser rank will be inclined to join him. Presumably there were not enough horses for everybody.

  Chapter 135

  1. I give notice … Thorgeir Thorisson: See n. 1 to Ch. 73.

  Chapter 136

  1. Beitivellir: ‘Grazing fields’, a grassy area between Laugarvatn and Thingvellir where they rested and let their horses graze before the final stretch to Thingvellir.

  2. Flosi had arranged for the Byrgi booth to be covered: The Byrgi booth seems to have belonged to Flosi and the men from Svinafell. It is mentioned in other sources and tradition associates it with a definite place at Thingvellir.

  Chapter 138

  1. There was a man named Eyjolf … in Iceland: Eyjolf Bolverksson’s family is prominent, and his brother(?) Gellir Bolverksson was lawspeaker on two occasions, but Eyjolf is not known outside this saga. Thorhall Asgrimsson is also referred to as one of the three greatest lawyers, on three occasions – see note 3 to Ch. 109 above. The third is presumably the lawspeaker, who at that time was Skafti Thoroddsson. The designation of both Thorhall and Eyjolf as among the three greatest lawyers anticipates the legal battle between them in Chs. 142-4.