Title: Njal's Saga Author: Anonymous Creation Date: c. 1280 Location: Iceland
Summary
The longest and most celebrated of the Icelandic sagas, Njal's Saga chronicles the intertwined fates of two friends: Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a magnificent warrior too noble for his own good, and Njal Thorgeirsson, the wisest lawyer in Iceland. Through a cascade of insults, killings, legal disputes, and failed arbitrations, the saga traces a multi-generational feud that escalates inexorably from petty slights to the burning of Njal and his family alive in their farmstead. The final sections follow Njal's son-in-law Kari Solmundarson as he pursues vengeance across Iceland and into the wider Norse world, before the saga resolves in an unexpected reconciliation.
Why This Book Matters
Njal's Saga is the supreme achievement of Icelandic saga literature — a tradition that represents medieval Europe's most sophisticated narrative prose outside of Italy. It portrays a society governed by law rather than monarchy, where disputes are resolved (or fail to be resolved) at the annual Althing, making it one of literature's earliest explorations of the rule of law and its limits. The saga captures the moment when Iceland converted to Christianity (1000 CE), rendering it not as triumphant progress but as pragmatic political compromise. It offers a worldview in which individuals have genuine agency but cannot escape the structural forces — honour codes, kinship obligations, gender expectations — that drive them toward violence.
Historical Context
Written in 13th-century Iceland but set during the Saga Age (c. 930–1030 CE), the saga reflects a unique medieval society: a commonwealth without a king, governed by an assembly of free farmers. Iceland in the 13th century was undergoing its own political crisis (the Sturlung Age), culminating in submission to the Norwegian crown in 1262. The saga's preoccupation with legal process and the failure of law to contain violence likely reflects anxieties about the disintegration of the commonwealth's political order.
Literary Significance
The Icelandic sagas developed an exceptionally objective narrative prose centuries before the European novel reached similar effects. Njal's Saga tells its story with famously flat affect — characters rarely express emotion directly; instead, the reader infers psychology from speech and action. This technique anticipates Hemingway by seven hundred years. The saga's management of a vast cast of characters across decades of narrative time, its use of foreshadowing and dramatic irony, and its structural architecture (building to the burning at Bergthorsknoll as its devastating climax) mark it as one of the great narrative achievements of medieval literature.
Research Notes
Chosen over the Prose Edda (which is more mythological compendium than narrative) as the essential Norse contribution. The Prose Edda is important for understanding Norse cosmology, but Njal's Saga is the greater work of literature. Robert Cook's Penguin translation is accessible and well-annotated. The saga's length and cast of characters can be daunting, but a genealogical chart (included in good editions) helps enormously.
The Reading
There was a man named Hrut Herjolfsson, who lived in Iceland. He was a handsome man, well skilled in arms. He betrothed himself to a woman called Unn, of good family. Before the wedding could be held, business took him to Norway. There he came into the favour of Gunnhild, the queen mother, a woman of great power and held by many to be skilled in witchcraft. They were lovers. When Hrut made ready to sail home, Gunnhild laid these words on him: that he should have no pleasure with the woman he meant to marry in Iceland.
Hrut came back to Iceland and married Unn. But the marriage was no marriage. They lay together and nothing came of it. Unn endured this for some seasons. Then she had the case brought to the Althing, the assembly of the free men of Iceland that met every summer at Thingvellir, where the laws of the country were spoken and disputes settled. The divorce was granted by law. But the dowry — the goods Unn had brought into the marriage — was not given back. Hrut held it, and there it stayed. Things stood quiet for a while, but it would be remembered.
There was a man called Gunnar Hamundarson, who lived at Hlidarendi in the south. He was tall and strong and handsome. He could leap his own height in full armour and strike with either hand. He was generous, slow to anger, and held to his word. There was no better fighter in Iceland in his day.
His closest friend was Njal Thorgeirsson, who lived at Bergthorsknoll. Njal was no warrior. He was small and beardless, which men in those days took as a kind of shame and made jokes about — they called him Old Beardless, and worse. But he was the wisest man in the land in the matter of the law, and he had this gift besides — he could see something of what was to come, though he could not turn it aside. Men came to him from far farms with their suits, and he showed them how to bring the action so that it would hold at the Thing. Gunnar and Njal were sworn friends, and each took counsel of the other in all things. They rode together to the assembly each summer, and home together when it was done.
Gunnar wished to marry. He saw Hallgerd Hauskuldsdottir at the Althing, called Long-Legs for her height, very beautiful, of a great family. She had been married twice already. Both her husbands were dead. The first had struck her, and her foster-father had killed him for it at her urging. The second had been killed in the same fashion. Njal said to Gunnar: "Do not marry this woman. From her will come trouble." Gunnar would not be told. He married her, and brought her home to Hlidarendi.
There was at Bergthorsknoll a woman called Bergthora, Njal's wife — a woman of strong temper, who held her own and gave way to none. Hallgerd and Bergthora fell into bad words with one another. From bad words came worse. Then Hallgerd sent a man to kill one of Bergthora's house-thralls at his work. Bergthora sent a man to kill one of Hallgerd's. The next year a free man was killed for a free man, and the year after that another. Each time, Gunnar and Njal rode to the Althing, and Njal pronounced the law, and they paid each other the lawful compensation in silver. Each time they parted as friends. Their friendship held, though the silver passed back and forth between them. Neither man spoke ill of the other's wife.
Then a thing happened that broke the peace. Hallgerd sent a slave to the farm of a man named Otkell to steal cheese and butter. The theft was found out. Gunnar struck Hallgerd in the face for it — a slap, before the household. He offered Otkell full compensation, but Otkell, ill-advised, would not take it, and the case went to court. Soon after, Otkell rode past Hlidarendi and, by mishap or otherwise, drove his spur into Gunnar's ear as their horses passed. Blood ran. Gunnar killed Otkell.
This killing brought on other killings, and they are told out one by one as a man tells out coins on a board. Otkell's kinsmen took up the case. Gunnar killed them too. He killed more men, justly by the law of feud each time, but they mounted up, and his enemies were many. Njal warned him that the killings were running into one kindred and that the law could no longer hold them. So it proved. At the Althing his enemies pressed for outlawry. Njal worked at the settlement and got him a sentence of three years abroad — three years out of Iceland, and then he might come home with his honour whole. Gunnar agreed to it.
He rode south to the ship. As he came down from Hlidarendi, his horse stumbled, and Gunnar leapt from the saddle and looked back at the slope of the home-field. Then he spoke. "Fair is the hillside, fairer than I have ever seen it before, with the pale corn and the home-meadow new-mown. I shall ride home again, and I shall not go."
He turned his horse and rode back to Hlidarendi. By that act he was a full outlaw, and any man might kill him without paying for it. Njal sent word to him: "Do not stay. They will come." Gunnar stayed.
They came. His enemies came in force and surrounded the house. Gunnar fought from within. He shot with the bow until the string broke. He turned to Hallgerd, who was beside him.
"Give me two locks of your hair," he said, "and you and my mother twist them into a bowstring for me."
"Does anything depend on it?" she said.
"My life depends on it," he said. "They will not bring me down so long as I can use the bow."
"Then I shall now call to mind," she said, "that slap you gave me. And I care not whether you hold out a long time or a short."
"To each his own way of earning fame," said Gunnar. "You shall not be asked again."
He fought on with sword and halberd until they brought him down.
Njal grieved hard for Gunnar. After that it is to be told of Njal and his sons. The sons of Njal by Bergthora were Skarphedin, Grim, and Helgi. Skarphedin was the eldest — sharp-tongued, with a bitter smile, the best fighter of his age. Grim and Helgi were good men of arms and followed him. There was also a man whom Njal had fostered, called Hoskuld. Njal loved Hoskuld as he loved his own sons, and worked to set him up in standing — in a chieftaincy of his own at the Althing.
Then came Mord Valgardsson into the story. Mord was a lawyer, near as cunning as Njal, but the bent of him was wholly bad. Where Njal used the law to hold men back from killing, Mord used it to put killing into men's hands. He bore the Njalssons an old grudge. He took it on himself to set them against Hoskuld their foster-brother, going from one to the next with whispered words: that Hoskuld plotted against them, that he meant their deaths, that the chieftaincy weighed against them. He spoke this in many small pieces, over many seasons, never telling a great lie all at once, but rather a small lie one day and a smaller the next, until the Njalssons believed it.
They rode to Ossabaer one morning early. Hoskuld was up before them, sowing corn in his field, a cloak wrapped about him and an axe at his belt. They came upon him. Skarphedin struck the first blow. Hoskuld said, as he fell: "God help me, and forgive you." They left him in the field.
Word came to Njal. He sat a long while without speaking. Then he said: "I would rather have lost two of my own sons, if Hoskuld might be living."
Flosi Thordarson of Svinafell took up the suit for Hoskuld. He was Hoskuld's father-in-law and a man of good measure, and he came to the Althing meaning to take settlement. Njal too had set himself to settle the suit, and the chieftains of all the country worked at it. A very great compensation was raised — silver heaped up by the assembled lawmen — and on top of it Njal laid a silken cloak, a gift to crown the offer.
Flosi looked at the cloak and asked: "Who has put this thing here? Was it some other man, or was it Njal? For if it was Njal, he might wear it well himself — being beardless, one cannot tell whether he is man or woman."
Skarphedin heard him. He said: "It is wrong to taunt my father with his age. No man has done so before. And as for being a woman — you yourself, Flosi, lie with another man every ninth night, as I have heard, and bear his children."
Flosi snatched up the cloak and flung it back upon the heap of silver. "I will not take it," he said. "Nor any of this. You shall pay for Hoskuld in another coin." From then there was no more talk of settlement.
Flosi gathered a hundred men, riding from farm to farm and binding them by oath. They rode to Bergthorsknoll. They came at evening, with the autumn light low on the home-field, and surrounded the houses. Njal and his sons and their women and the servants were within. The Njalssons would have ridden out to fight in the open, but Njal said: "Stay inside. They will not be able to bring us down by the sword if we hold the doors. They will have to use fire, and that they have sworn not to do." So the Njalssons stayed within, and shut up the doors. But Flosi, finding he could not take the house by arms, called his men to bring brushwood from the woodpile and stack it against the timbers, and set fire to the eaves.
Flosi called to those inside that women and children and old men might come out, and they should not be harmed. The women and the small children and the servants came out. Then Flosi called to Bergthora. Bergthora answered: "I was given to Njal young. I have promised him that one fate should come on us both." She would not come.
Then Flosi called to Njal: "Come out, master Njal. You shall not burn." Njal said: "I will not come out. I am an old man, ill-fit to avenge my sons, and I will not live in shame."
Njal and Bergthora went to their bed. They lay down. They drew an ox-hide over themselves. Between them they laid their young grandson. Njal said: "Have a strong faith in God, and trust that he is merciful, and that he will not let us burn both in this world and the next." So they lay still while the fire took the house above them.
All within died — Njal, Bergthora, Skarphedin, Grim, Helgi, and the boy. Only Kari Solmundarson, Njal's son-in-law, came out alive. He ran through the smoke with his clothes burning and threw himself from the wall. He rolled in a vat of whey to put the fire out, and went out into the night. The burners did not see him.
It is to be said now of an older matter, that came to pass while these events were drawing on. At the Althing of the year one thousand, the country was divided between the men who held to the old gods and those who had taken the new faith. The Christian men had named priests among them, and the heathen men had sworn to hold to their sacrifices, and the two sides had named separate lawcourts and looked likely to break the country in two. There were strong men on either side, and threats of arms were spoken openly at the booths. The lawspeaker that year was Thorgeir of Ljosavatn, who was himself a heathen. Both sides put the matter into his hands and agreed to abide by what he should say. Thorgeir went into his booth, drew his cloak over his head, and lay there a day and a night, neither eating nor speaking. Then he rose and gave his ruling at the Law-rock. He said that all in Iceland should be baptised and hold to the new faith; but that men might still eat horseflesh, and expose unwanted children, and sacrifice to the old gods in private if they did so where no man saw. So the law-suit was settled and the country held together. The men of both parties stood by it. This was reckoned the greatest law-giving in Iceland.
After the burning the suit was brought to the Althing. Kari and the kinsmen of the burnt men set out the case against Flosi and the burners. The pleading went hard, with great cunning on both sides, until at last the law-suit was overthrown on a flaw in the prosecution. Then the men of both sides came to arms in the assembly-place itself, between the booths, until the older chieftains forced them apart and an arbitration was given. The burners were sentenced — some to outlawry, some to fines — but Kari would have none of it. He held himself free of the settlement.
Kari took up the pursuit of the burners. He took no man with him for long, but rode alone, on a good horse, with sword and spear. He rode through Iceland and killed them where he found them — one in the south, two together at a feast, others by ones and twos. He killed them in their own halls and on the open road. Each time he gave his name, that the kin of the dead should know who had done it. When the country grew too narrow for them, the burners that yet lived took ship from Iceland, and Kari followed. He hunted them through the Orkney Islands and across to Scotland, and he killed them, one by one, year by year.
At the last, when many years had gone and most of the burners were dead, Kari came once more to the south of Iceland. By chance he came up to Svinafell, the very farm of Flosi Thordarson, the leader of the burning. He came up to the house in winter, alone and worn. Flosi knew him, and rose from the high seat, and went to him, and kissed him, and set him on the bench beside him. There was no fight. The two of them made an end of it between them. Flosi gave Kari a kinswoman of his in marriage, and Kari took her, and they lived together, and they had children who lived after them.
So ends the saga of Burnt Njal.
This post is part of Civilisations, a 149-book chronological journey through world literature. See the full collection →
Two editions of Njal's Saga are readily available in English. Robert Cook's Penguin Classics translation (2001) is the recommended modern version — clear, complete, and well-annotated with maps and genealogical charts to help navigate the saga's vast cast. The earlier translation by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson (Penguin, 1960) is also excellent and widely available secondhand.
Trans. Robert Cook. The recommended modern translation — clear prose with excellent notes.
Trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson. The classic earlier translation, still widely read.
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