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Anonymous - The story of Burnt Njal

A >> Anonymous >> The story of Burnt Njal



+---------------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber's Note: This is a translation from Icelandic |
|and there are inconsistencies in punctuation which |
|have been left as they were in the original. |
+---------------------------------------------------------+


[Illustration: The Story of Burnt Njal
From the Icelandic of Njal Saga]




THE STORY OF BURNT NJAL




[Illustration: GUNNAR REFUSES TO LEAVE HOME]

"_Fair is Lithe: so fair that it has never seemed to me so fair; the
corn fields are white to harvest, and the home mead is mown: and now I
will ride back home, and not fare abroad at all._"




The Story of Burnt Njal


From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga


By the late Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L.




_With a Prefatory Note, and the Introduction, Abridged, from the
Original Edition of 1861_


New York E. P. Dutton & Co.
London Grant Richards
1900

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED


_The design of the cover made by the late James Drummond, R.S.A.,
combines the chief weapons mentioned in_ The Story of Burnt Njal:
_Gunnar's bill, Skarphedinn's axe, and Kari's sword, bound together by
one of the great silver rings found in a Viking's hoard in Orkney._




PREFATORY NOTE TO THE ONE-VOLUME EDITION.


_SIR GEORGE DASENT'S translation of the Njals Saga, under the
title The Story of Burnt Njal, which is reprinted in this volume, was
published by Messrs. Edmonston & Douglas in 1861. That edition was in
two volumes, and was furnished by the author with maps and plans; with a
lengthy introduction dealing with Iceland's history, religion and social
life; with an appendix and an exhaustive index. Copies of this edition
can still be obtained from Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh._

_The present reprint has been prepared in order that this incomparable
Saga may become accessible to those readers with whom a good story is
the first consideration and its bearing upon a nation's history a
secondary one--or is not considered at all. For_ Burnt Njal _may be
approached either as a historical document, or as a pure narrative of
elemental natures, of strong passions; and of heroic feats of strength.
Some of the best fighting in literature is to be found between its
covers. Sir George Dasent's version in its capacity as a learned work
for the study has had nearly forty years of life; it is now offered
afresh simply as a brave story for men who have been boys and for boys
who are going to be men._

_We lay down the book at the end having added to our store of good
memories the record of great deeds and great hearts, and to our gallery
of heroes strong and admirable men worthy to stand beside the strong and
admirable men of the Iliad--Gunnar of Lithend and Skarphedinn, Njal and
Kari, Helgi and Kolskegg, beside Telamonian Aias and Patroclus, Achilles
and Hector, Ulysses and Idomeneus. In two respects these Icelanders win
more of our sympathy than the Greeks and Trojans; for they, like
ourselves, are of Northern blood, and in their mighty strivings are
unassisted by the gods._

_In the present volume Sir George Dasent's preface has been shortened,
and his introduction, which everyone who is interested in old Icelandic
life and history should make a point of reading in the original edition,
has been considerably abridged. The three appendices, treating of the
Vikings, Queen Gunnhillda, and money and currency in the tenth century,
have been also exised, and with them the index. There remains the Saga
itself (not a word of Sir George Dasent's simple, forcible, clean prose
having been touched), with sufficient introductory matter to assist the
reader to its fuller appreciation._

_Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L., the translator of the Njals Saga, was
born in 1817 at St. Vincent in the West Indies, of which island his
father was Attorney-General. He was educated at Westminster School, and
at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he was distinguished both as a fine
athlete and a good classic, He took his degree in 1840, and on coming
to London showed an early tendency towards literature and literary
society. The Sterlings were connected with the island of' St. Vincent,
and as Dasent and John Sterling became close friends, he was a constant
guest at Captain Sterlings house in Knightsbridge, which was frequented
by many who afterwards rose to eminence in the world of letters,
including Carlyle, to whom Dasent dedicated his first book, Dasent's
appointment in 1842 as private secretary to Sir James Cartwright, the
British Envoy to the court of Sweden, took him to Stockholm, where under
the advice of Jacob Grimm, whom he had met in Denmark, he began that
study of Scandinavian literature which has enriched English literature
bu the present work, and by the_ Norse Tales, Gisli the Outlaw, _and
other valuable translations and memoirs. On settling in London again in
1845 he joined the_ Times _staff as assistant editor to the great
Delane, who had been his friend at Oxford, and whose sister he married
in the following year. Dasent retained the post during the paper's most
brilliant period. In 1870 Mr. Gladstone offered him a Civil Service
Commissionership, which he accepted and held until his retirement in
1892, at which time he was the Commission's official head. He was
knighted "for public services" in 1876, having been created a knight
of the Danish order of the Dannebroeg many years earlier._

_In addition, to his Scandinavian work, Sir George Dasent wrote several
novels, of which_ The Annals of an Eventful Life _was at once the most
popular and the best. He died greatly respected in 1896._

E. V. LUCAS.




SIR GEORGE DASENT'S PREFACE

(ABRIDGED.)


What is a Saga? A Saga is a story, or telling in prose,
sometimes mixed with verse. There are many kinds of Sagas, of all
degrees of truth. There are the mythical Sagas, in which the wondrous
deeds of heroes of old time, half gods and half men, as Sigurd and
Ragnar, are told as they were handed down from father to son in the
traditions of the Northern race. Then there are Sagas recounting the
history of the kings of Norway and other countries, of the great line of
Orkney Jarls, and of the chiefs who ruled in Faroe. These are all more
or less trustworthy, and, in general, far worthier of belief than much
that passes for the early history of other races. Again, there are Sagas
relating to Iceland, narrating the lives, and feuds, and ends of mighty
chiefs, the heads of the great families which dwelt in this or that
district of the island. These were told by men who lived on the very
spot, and told with a minuteness and exactness, as to time and place,
that will bear the strictest examination. Such a Saga is that of Njal,
which we now lay before our readers in an English garb. Of all the Sagas
relating to Iceland, this tragic story bears away the palm for
truthfulness and beauty. To use the words of one well qualified to
judge, it is, as compared with all similar compositions, as gold to
brass.[1] Like all the Sagas which relate to the same period of
Icelandic story, Njala[2] was not written down till about 100 years
after the events which are described in it had happened. In the
meantime, it was handed down by word of mouth, told from Althing to
Althing, at Spring Thing, and Autumn Leet, at all great gatherings of
the people, and over many a fireside, on sea strand or river bank, or up
among the dales and hills, by men who had learnt the sad story of Njal's
fate, and who could tell of Gunnar's peerlessness and Hallgerda's
infamy, of Bergthora's helpfulness, of Skarphedinn's hastiness, of
Flosi's foul deed, and Kurt's stern revenge. We may be sure that as soon
as each event recorded in the Saga occurred, it was told and talked
about as matter of history, and when at last the whole story was
unfolded and took shape, and centred round Njal, that it was handed down
from father to son, as truthfully and faithfully as could ever be the
case with any public or notorious matter in local history. But it is not
on Njala alone that we have to rely for our evidence of its genuineness.
There are many other Sagas relating to the same period, and handed down
in like manner, in which the actors in our Saga are incidentally
mentioned by name, and in which the deeds recorded of them are
corroborated. They are mentioned also in songs and Annals, the latter
being the earliest written records which belong to the history of the
island, while the former were more easily remembered, from the
construction of the verse. Much passes for history in other lands on far
slighter grounds, and many a story in Thucydides or Tacitus, or even in
Clarendon or Hume, is believed on evidence not one-tenth part so
trustworthy as that which supports the narratives of these Icelandic
story-tellers of the eleventh century. That with occurrences of
undoubted truth, and minute particularity as to time and place, as to
dates and distance, are intermingled wild superstitions on several
occasions, will startle no reader of the smallest judgment. All ages,
our own not excepted, have their superstitions, and to suppose that a
story told in the eleventh century,--when phantoms, and ghosts, and
wraiths, were implicitly believed in, and when dreams, and warnings, and
tokens, were part of every man's creed--should be wanting in these marks
of genuineness, is simply to require that one great proof of its
truthfulness should be wanting, and that, in order to suit the spirit of
our age, it should lack something which was part and parcel of popular
belief in the age to which it belonged. To a thoughtful mind, therefore,
such stories as that of Swan's witchcraft, Gunnar's song in his cairn,
the Wolf's ride before the Burning, Flosi's dream, the signs and tokens
before Brian's battle, and even Njal's weird foresight, on which the
whole story hangs, will be regarded as proofs rather for than against
its genuineness.[3]

But it is an old saying, that a story never loses in telling, and so we
may expect it must have been with this story. For the facts which the
Saga-teller related he was bound to follow the narrations of those who
had gone before him, and if he swerved to or fro in this respect, public
opinion and notorious fame was there to check and contradict him.[4] But
the way in which he told the facts was his own, and thus it comes that
some Sagas are better told than others, as the feeling and power of the
narrator were above those of others. To tell a story truthfully was
what was looked for from all men in those days; but to tell it properly
and gracefully, and so to clothe the facts in fitting diction, was given
to few, and of those few the Saga teller who first threw Njala into its
present shape, was one of the first and foremost.

With the change of faith and conversion of the Icelanders to
Christianity, writing, and the materials for writing, first came into
the land, about the year 1000. There is no proof that the earlier or
Runic alphabet, which existed in heathen times, was ever used for any
other purposes than those of simple monumental inscriptions, or of short
legends on weapons or sacrificial vessels, or horns and drinking cups.
But with the Roman alphabet came not only a readier means of expressing
thought, but also a class of men who were wont thus to express
themselves.... Saga after Saga was reduced to writing, and before the
year 1200 it is reckoned that all the pieces of that kind of composition
which relate to the history of Icelanders previous to the introduction
of Christianity had passed from the oral into the written shape. Of all
those Sagas, none were so interesting as Njal, whether as regarded the
length of the story, the number and rank of the chiefs who appeared in
it as actors, and the graphic way in which the tragic tale was told. As
a rounded whole, in which each part is finely and beautifully polished,
in which the two great divisions of the story are kept in perfect
balance and counterpoise, in which each person who appears is left free
to speak in a way which stamps him with a character of his own, while
all unite in working towards a common end, no Saga had such claims on
public attention as Njala, and it is certain none would sooner have been
committed to writing. The latest period, therefore, that we can assign
as the date at which our Saga was moulded into its present shape is the
year 1200....

It was a foster-father's duty, in old times, to rear and cherish the
child which he had taken from the arms of its natural parents, his
superiors in rank. And so may this work, which the translator has taken
from the house of Icelandic scholars, his masters in knowledge, and
which he has reared and fostered so many years under an English roof, go
forth and fight the battle of life for itself, and win fresh fame for
those who gave it birth. It will be reward enough for him who has first
clothed it in an English dress if his foster-child adds another leaf to
that evergreen wreath of glory which crowns the brows of Iceland's
ancient worthies.

BROAD SANCTUARY.

_Christmas Eve, 1860._

It will be seen that in most cases the names of places throughout
the Saga have been turned into English, either in whole or in part,
as "Lithend" for "Lfaethrendi," and "Bergthorsknoll" for
"Bergthorshvol". The translator adopted this course to soften the
ruggedness of the original names for the English reader, but in
every case the Icelandic name, with its English rendering, will be
found in the maps. The surnames and nicknames have also been turned
into English--an attempt which has not a little increased the toil
of translation. Great allowance must be made for these renderings,
as those nicknames often arose out of circumstances of which we
know little or nothing. Of some, such as "Thorgeir Craggeir," and
"Thorkel foulmouth," the Saga itself explains the origin. In a
state of society where so many men bore the same name, any
circumstance or event in a man's life, as well as any peculiarity
in form or feature, or in temper and turn of mind, gave rise to a
surname or nickname, which clung to him through life as a
distinguishing mark. The Post Office in the United States is said
to give persons in the same district, with similar names, an
initial of identification, which answers the same purpose, as the
Icelandic nickname, thus: "John _P_ Smith."--"John _Q_ Smith". As a
general rule the translator has withstood the temptation to use old
English words. "Busk" and "boun" he pleads guilty to, because both
still linger in the language understood by few. "Busk" is a
reflective formed from 'eat bua sik,' "to get oneself ready," and
"boun" is the past participle of the active form "bua, buinn," to
get ready. When the leader in Old Ballads says--

"Busk ye, busk ye,
My bonny, bonny me,"

he calls on his followers to equip themselves; when they are thus
equipped they are "boun". A bride "busks" herself for the bridal;
when she is dressed she is "boun". In old times a ship was "busked"
for a voyage; when she was filled and ready for sea she was
"boun"--whence come our outward "bound" and homeward "bound". These
with "redes" for counsels or plans are almost the only words in the
translation which are not still in everyday use.




SIR GEORGE DASENT'S INTRODUCTION.

(ABRIDGED).


THE NORTHMEN IN ICELAND.

The men who colonized Iceland towards the end of the ninth century of
the Christian aera, were of no savage or servile race. They fled from the
overbearing power of the king, from that new and strange doctrine of
government put forth by Harold Fairhair, 860-933, which made them the
king's men at all times, instead of his only at certain times for
special service, which laid scatts and taxes on their lands, which
interfered with vested rights and world-old laws, and allowed the
monarch to meddle and make with the freemen's allodial holdings. As we
look at it now, and from another point of view, we see that what to them
was unbearable tyranny was really a step in the great march of
civilization and progress, and that the centralization and consolidation
of the royal authority, according to Charlemagne's system, was in time
to be a blessing to the kingdoms of the north. But to the freeman it was
a curse. He fought against it as long as he could; worsted over and over
again, he renewed the struggle, and at last, when the isolated efforts,
which were the key-stone of his edifice of liberty, were fruitless, he
sullenly withdrew from the field, and left the land of his fathers,
where, as he thought, no free-born man could now care to live. Now it is
that we hear of him in Iceland, where Ingolf was the first settler in
the year 874, and was soon followed by many of his countrymen. Now, too,
we hear of him in all lands. Now France--now Italy--now Spain, feel
the fury of his wrath, and the weight of his arm. After a time, but not
until nearly a century has passed, he spreads his wings for a wider
flight, and takes service under the great emperor at Byzantium, or
Micklegarth--the great city, the town of towns--and fights his foes from
whatever quarter they come. The Moslem in Sicily and Asia, the
Bulgarians and Slavonians on the shores of the Black Sea and in Greece,
well know the temper of the Northern steel, which has forced many of
their chosen champions to bite the dust. Wherever he goes the Northman
leaves his mark, and to this day the lion at the entrance to the arsenal
at Venice is scored with runes which tell of his triumph.

But of all countries, what were called the Western Lands were his
favourite haunt. England, where the Saxons were losing their old dash
and daring, and settling down into a sluggish sensual race; Ireland, the
flower of Celtic lands, in which a system of great age and undoubted
civilization was then fast falling to pieces, afforded a tempting
battlefield in the everlasting feuds between chief and chief; Scotland,
where the power of the Picts was waning, while that of the Scots had not
taken firm hold on the country, and most of all the islands in the
Scottish Main, Orkney, Shetland, and the outlying Faroe Isles;--all
these were his chosen abode. In those islands he took deep root,
established himself on the old system, shaved in the quarrels of the
chiefs and princes of the Mainland, now helped Pict and now Scot, roved
the seas and made all ships prizes, and kept alive his old grudge
against Harold Fairhair and the new system by a long series of piratical
incursions on the Norway coast. So worrying did these Viking cruises at
last become, that Harold, who meantime had steadily pursued his policy
at home, and forced all men to bow to his sway or leave the land,
resolved to crush the wasps that stung him summer after summer in their
own nest. First of all he sent Kettle flatnose, a mighty chief, to
subdue the foe; but though Kettle waged successful war, he kept what he
won for himself. It was the old story of setting a thief to catch a
thief; and Harold found that if he was to have his work done to his mind
he must do it himself. He called on his chiefs to follow him, levied a
mighty force, and, sailing suddenly with a fleet which must have seemed
an armada in those days, he fell upon the Vikings in Orkney and
Shetland, in the Hebrides and Western Isles, in Man and Anglesey, in the
Lewes and Faroe--wherever he could find them he followed them up with
fire and sword. Not once, but twice he crossed the sea after them, and
tore them out so thoroughly, root and branch, that we hear no more of
these lands as a lair of Vikings, but as the abode of Norse Jarls and
their udallers (freeholders) who look upon the new state of things at
home as right and just, and acknowledge the authority of Harold and his
successors by an allegiance more or less dutiful at different times, but
which was never afterwards entirely thrown off.

It was just then, just when the unflinching will of Harold had taught
this stern lesson to his old foes, and arising in most part out of that
lesson, that the great rush of settlers to Iceland took place. We have
already seen that Ingolf and others had settled in Iceland from 874
downwards, but it was not until nearly twenty years afterwards that the
island began to be thickly peopled. More than half of the names of the
first colonists contained in the venerable Landnama Book--the Book of
Lots, the Doomsday of Iceland, and far livelier reading than that of the
Conqueror--are those of Northmen who had been before settled in the
British Isles. Our own country then was the great stepping-stone between
Norway and Iceland; and this one fact is enough to account for the close
connection which the Icelanders ever afterwards kept up with their
kinsmen who had remained behind in the islands of the west....


SUPERSTITIONS OF THE RACE.

The Northman had many superstitions. He believed in good giants and bad
giants, in dark elves and bright elves, in superhuman beings who tilled
the wide gulf which existed between himself and the gods. He believed,
too, in wraiths and fetches and guardian spirits, who followed
particular persons, and belonged to certain families--a belief which
seems to have sprung from the habit of regarding body and soul as two
distinct beings, which at certain times took each a separate bodily
shape. Sometimes the guardian spirit or fylgja took a human shape; at
others its form took that of some animal fancied to foreshadow the
character of the man to whom it belonged. Thus it becomes a bear, a
wolf, an ox, and even a fox, in men. The fylgjur of women were fond of
taking the shape of swans. To see one's own fylgja was unlucky, and
often a sign that a man was "fey," or death-doomed. So, when Thord
Freedmanson tells Njal that he sees the goat wallowing in its gore in
the "town" of Bergthorsknoll, the foresighted man tells him that he has
seen his own fylgja, and that he must be doomed to die. Finer and nobler
natures often saw the guardian spirits of others. Thus Njal saw the
fylgjur of Gunnar's enemies, which gave him no rest the livelong night,
and his weird feeling is soon confirmed by the news brought by his
shepherd. From the fylgja of the individual it was easy to rise to the
still more abstract notion of the guardian spirits of a family, who
sometimes, if a great change in the house is about to begin, even show
themselves as hurtful to some member of the house. He believed also that
some men had more than one shape; that they could either take the shapes
of animals, as bears or wolves, and so work mischief; or that, without
undergoing bodily change, an access of rage and strength came over them,
and move especially towards night, which made them more than a match for
ordinary men. Such men were called hamrammir, "shape-strong," and it was
remarked that when the fit left them they were weaker than they had been
before.

This gift was looked upon as something "uncanny," and it leads us at
once to another class of men, whose supernatural strength was regarded
as a curse to the community. These were the Baresarks. What the
hamrammir men were when they were in their fits the Baresarks almost
always were. They are described as being always of exceeding, and when
their fury rose high, of superhuman strength. They too, like the
hamrammir men, were very tired when the fits passed off. What led to
their fits is hard to say. In the case of the only class of men like
them nowadays, that of the Malays running a-muck, the intoxicating fumes
of bangh or arrack are said to be the cause of their fury. One thing,
however, is certain, that the Baresark, like his Malay brother, was
looked upon as a public pest, and the mischief which they caused,
relying partly no doubt on their natural strength, and partly on the
hold which the belief in their supernatural nature had on the mind of
the people, was such as to render their killing a good work.

Again, the Northman believed that certain men were "fast" or "hard";
that no weapons would touch them or wound their skin; that the mere
glance of some men's eyes would turn the edge of the best sword; and
that some persons had the power of withstanding poison. He believed in
omens and dreams and warnings, in signs and wonders and tokens; he
believed in good luck and bad luck, and that the man on whom fortune
smiled or frowned bore the marks of her favour or displeasure on his
face; he believed also in magic and sorcery, though he loathed them as
unholy rites. With one of his beliefs our story has much to do, though
this was a belief in good rather than in evil. He believed firmly that
some men had the inborn gift, not won by any black arts, of seeing
things and events beforehand. He believed, in short, in what is called
in Scotland "second sight". This was what was called being "forspar" or
"framsynn," "foretelling" and "foresighted ". Of such men it was said
that their "words could not be broken". Njal was one of these men; one
of the wisest and at the same time most just and honourable of men. This
gift ran in families, for Helgi Njal's son had it, and it was beyond a
doubt one of the deepest-rooted of all their superstitions.

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