Njal’s Saga, ‘100 years of Solitude’ in Iceland – Penguin Classics 2001, translated by Robert Cook
Magical Realism? Check. Blunt sexuality? Yup. Impassive narration in translation? Absolutely. Reams of characters requiring family trees and indices? You betcha. Generational shifts? Oh yeah. Fatalism and prophecy? All the time. A cultural shift to Christianity? Check.
This may sound like 100 years of Solitude, but in fact it predates Marquez’s novel by about 700 years. This is Njal’s Saga, written anonymously in Icelandic in the late 13th Century, and it’s pretty great.
Njal’s Saga is a mixture of the awe-inspiring and the horrifying, epically spanning multiple generations and perhaps a hundred or so deaths. Newly developing Icelandic culture is caught between the need for vengeance and the desire for peace, and time and again it is the masculinity of the characters that pushes them from accepting settlements for offences to violence. This is not simply a chronicle of murders, however. Njal and Gunnar, two of the many central figures, attempt to maintain a stable society while all around them men and women call for death.
Central to Icelandic law was the idea that offences could be paid for; so killing a man could result in either outlawry, or having to pay a certain sum of money. Another option, though, was simply for the relatives of the victim to head out and retaliate. The feud between Njal and Gunnar’s families puts on display all the emotions and options surrounding family enmities, as the heads of the families struggle to keep peace while their wives and children wage war behind their backs. It is here that Njal’s Saga becomes a legal drama, as the prosecutions are more exciting than the battle-scenes. This aspect becomes even more crucial later in the Saga, when a great tragedy leads to great court-scenes between the two greatest Icelandic lawyers, Eyjolf and Thorhall.
There are hurdles to enjoying the Saga, such as the endless numbers of characters and the complicated family lines, but you can safely skip over the geneologies without missing out on the plot, and just occasionally check an index if you’re unsure which Thorgeir is currently killing which Glum. More upsettingly Njal’s Saga, like most literature of its time, is almost entirely a documentation of masculinity, and so women get bit-part roles. They can be wives, mothers and daughters, married for the profit of their male relatives, but they can also be the harshest proponents of blood-vengeance, and their urgings often lead to the deaths of their sons and brothers.
Once you’ve got the hang of it Njal’s Saga is one of the most fascinating books you’re likely to read. Throughout the Saga heroism is thoroughly explored and weighted against stability, while the legal and societal realism retains its power despite enchanted axes and singing corpses. This is a story of men killing each other, but it is by no means a straight-forward treatment. These are complex characters, no simple Vikings, and they deserve a read.
