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Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)
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Our Price: $10.88
You Save: $ 5.12 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140447699
ISBN: 0140447695
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2002-05-28
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2002-05-28
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140447699
ISBN: 0140447695
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2002-05-28
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2002-05-28
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)
Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems-from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to the terrible consequences when decent men and women are swept up in a tide of violence beyond their control. It is populated by memorable and complex characters like Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a powerful warrior with an aversion to killing, and the not-so-villainous Mord Valgardsson. Full of dreams, strange prophecies, violent power struggles, and fragile peace agreements, Njal's Saga tells the compelling story of a fifty-year blood feud that, despite its distance from us in time and place, is driven by passions familiar to us all. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction, chronology, index of characters, plot summary, explanatory notes, maps, and suggestions for further reading.
Translated and edited by Robert Cook.
Translated and edited by Robert Cook.
Customer Reviews of Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The heroic tale with a new type of hero
Review: This is one of the larger Icelandic sagas, and one of the best. It bears to keep in mind that being almost a thousand years old, if not older, the story doesn't read like the most thrilling of works, even with this excellent translation. The eponymous hero of the saga, Njal, is a type of hero not often seen in medieval literature, the sage. Njal is pacifistic in an Iceland rife with violence and chaos, giving the reader pause at the possible effect of Christian influences on the undertones within the story. Thankfully, the tale does not draw so decided a line for us. The story is truly epic in size, and has several fascinating - if not conflicting - lessons to tell. If you can be patient and work your way through this saga, you will feel rewarded and fulfilled by the end.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Primer on Anarchy
Review: I would recommend Njal's Saga as a primer on anarchy. Not the theoretical, Emma Goldman philosophical anarchy, but anarchy as it manifests itself "on the ground" as anthropologists like to phrase it.
Njal's Saga is a great piece of literature concerning how the early Norse settlers of Iceland, often themselves outlaws back in Norway, dealt with lawlessness. The main theme is stated by Njal himself. "With laws our nation will be built up." This sentiment is echoed by several other characters throughout the tale. Another saying, uttered by more than one person is, "The hand is soon sorry it has struck," and provides the awful counterbalance propelling the plot. For here we find a historic locale in which each man must execute justice and law for himself because medieval Iceland was a place of no central authority. Therefore, only men powerful enough themselves, or with enough powerful friends, could exact just retribution for injuries sustained by their neighbors. Men were driven by a warrior honor code that forced them to take up arms or lose face and the whole saga is full of a sense of dreadful irony of how just causes are perverted by resorting to violent solutions. This society is reminiscent of Odysseus' description of the cannibal Cyclops' society where each father is a law unto his wife and children and they meet in no just assemblies. The old Icelanders had their national assembly, the Althing, and while it could render decisions based upon law imported from Norway, it was left to the aggrieved individual to exact the sentence. Therefore, Gunnar of Hlidarende could ignore the sentence of outlawry and not leave the country and his enemies were therefore free to kill him in his home without fear of legal reprisal. Njal's Saga is an actual account of what anarchy is like in a remote society based upon powerful males trying to dominate all the land and people they could based on individual might and wit and prestige. The United States prides itself on being a nation of laws and not of men. Medieval Iceland was a settlement of contending personalities, each trying to adapt traditions from the old country to their individual benefit, with no central executive authority to carry out sentences in the name of the common good. So men pursued vengeance and blood begat blood as original justifications became obscured. In other words, traditions minus authority still equals anarchy. Read Njal's Saga and you can imagine the tragedy of being a law unto yourself.
Marc Ladewig
author of Odysseus: The Epic Myth of the Hero
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Better than most modern novels
Review: Njal's Saga is perhaps the single most important and best-known of the entire body of Icelandic saga literature. By turns a legal thriller, domestic drama, and violent revenge tragedy, Njal's Saga is far more complex and entertaining than most of the modern fiction that I've ever read.
Njal's Saga covers one of the most violent and tumultuous periods in European history in general and Norse history in particular. During Njal's long life the first Christian missionaries came to the island and, in 1000, the island voted to convert. Such a brief summation does no justice to the intense machinations involved and the often violent reactions of Icelanders and Christians alike.
But of even greater importance to Njal's story are the many feuds in which he became embroiled and which finally claimed his life. The overall arc of the stories is far too complex to be related here, but every victory that Njal achieves comes at a heavy cost of both money and blood. Throughout, the feuding, fighting, and legal episodes at the Althing are carefully recorded and uniformly exciting.
A word on the translation: Cook's translation of the saga has drawn a considerable amount of flak from fans of the more "contemporary" Magnusson translation, but such attacks are largely unfounded. Cook's aim in translating the saga was to accurately recreate the original Icelandic's terse, forthright, and completely unembellished style. Having read a number of other saga translations, I'd say this is a noble and, in this case, successful aim. This translation is exciting without catering to modern convention, something that speaks well for the power of the story regardless of translator.
My only word of warning about this book: don't put it down. If you're like me, you won't have a problem with this, but for casual readers the details of plot and the many, many characters will probably slip away should one take a casual approach to the Saga. That said, this book should draw you in and never once let go once you've begun.
Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A gripping story of violence, revenge, and ultimately, forgiveness.
Review: Njal's Saga is an Icelandic saga by an unknown author, supposedly written around 1280 A.D. The story tells of an unending spiral of feuds and vengeance, leading eventually to the burning of a farmstead at Bergotha in Iceland, which killed the head of the household, Njal, his wife, and a number of his sons. There are several main characters. In the first half, a man named Gunnar, who is a great warrior and often champions underdogs in legal disputes, not infrequently by challenging the other party in the dispute to a duel, causing them to concede or settle rather than face him. Gunnar fought a notable fight against attackers who greatly outnumbered him, which is mentioned in a number of other sources and was apparently a true and famous event. The burning of Njal in his farm is also a historically documented event.
Eventually Gunnar is killed by a coalition of his enemies, and his death is then avenged by the sons of Njal (Gunnar and Njal were close friends), which leads to another escalating round of killings, that concludes with the burning of Njal and his farm.
The final section of the saga concerns the efforts of Kari, Njal's son-in-law and the only survivor of the attack on and burning of Njal's farm, to avenge the burning by tracking down and killing many of the members of the burning-party.
The saga is a powerful, building story, even by modern standards. It also provides much detail about legal proceedings in Iceland, particularly cases brought over killings, contains brief mentions of legendary Viking leader Ragnar Logbrod and several of this sons, and also contains a number of very detailed, vivid descriptions of combat as fought during the Viking period.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Don't dismiss Cook's translation out of hand...
Review: I recently became interested in Norse mythology, and after acquiring a number of books on the subject my interest spilled over into Norse, particularly Icelandic, sagas. I bought the hefty Penguin "The Sagas of Icelanders", and since all the reviewers for it lamented the exclusion (understandably, for space reasons) of Njal's Saga, I bought that separately, and I've just finished reading it.
I bought this translation, Cook's. There seemed to be two main choices, this or Magnus Magnusson's, and I noticed a few reviewers quite bluntly trashing Cook's translation, promoting Magnus's instead. I decided to start with Cook's anyway, figuring that, even if it was inferior to Magnusson's, I wouldn't know what I was missing, since I hadn't yet read Magusson's. Admittedly, I still haven't read Magnusson's translation, but I enjoyed Cook's translation very much and did not by any means think of it as lacking.
In fact, in Cook's notes on the translation presented in the book, he explains his motivation and justification for translating the saga the way he did, in a way that seems to anticipate the disfavor of his translation by loyal Magnusson fans:
"[This translation] differs from previous translations of Njal's Saga...in attempting to duplicate the sentence structure and spare vocabulary of the Icelandic text."
After giving a few examples of the stylistic eccentricities in which the saga was originally written and demonstrating how he attempted to reproduce them in his translation--even contrasting an excerpt of Magnusson's translation with his own--he goes on to say:
"It is hoped that the reader of this translation will accept--and even learn to enjoy--these and other efforts at fidelity, though they may seem strange at first. The intent has been to create a translation with the stylistic "feel" of the Icelandic original."
Clearly, Cook did not set out to create a dry, inferior translation; rather he set out to create a more stylistically faithful translation, even if it meant sacrificing some of the flare and drama to which we as modern readers are accustomed.
Regarding the story itself...what can one say? There is something immensely powerful about reading a piece of literature that was written over seven centuries ago and discovering that its author and the people about whom he wrote had many of the same thoughts, feelings, and problems that we do today. When a character responds emotionally to a situation, or feels frustrated because of a moral dilemma, we can still, despite the vast chasm of time separating us, so easily relate to him or her. Even the author's humor and wit are delightfully close to home. Stories such as Njal's Saga remind us that people from long ago and far away are just that: people. Just like us. In a popular culture that has a tendency to glorify the ephemeral, trendy Here and Now, it's a fact that's easy to forget.
Review Summary: The heroic tale with a new type of hero
Review: This is one of the larger Icelandic sagas, and one of the best. It bears to keep in mind that being almost a thousand years old, if not older, the story doesn't read like the most thrilling of works, even with this excellent translation. The eponymous hero of the saga, Njal, is a type of hero not often seen in medieval literature, the sage. Njal is pacifistic in an Iceland rife with violence and chaos, giving the reader pause at the possible effect of Christian influences on the undertones within the story. Thankfully, the tale does not draw so decided a line for us. The story is truly epic in size, and has several fascinating - if not conflicting - lessons to tell. If you can be patient and work your way through this saga, you will feel rewarded and fulfilled by the end.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Primer on Anarchy
Review: I would recommend Njal's Saga as a primer on anarchy. Not the theoretical, Emma Goldman philosophical anarchy, but anarchy as it manifests itself "on the ground" as anthropologists like to phrase it.
Njal's Saga is a great piece of literature concerning how the early Norse settlers of Iceland, often themselves outlaws back in Norway, dealt with lawlessness. The main theme is stated by Njal himself. "With laws our nation will be built up." This sentiment is echoed by several other characters throughout the tale. Another saying, uttered by more than one person is, "The hand is soon sorry it has struck," and provides the awful counterbalance propelling the plot. For here we find a historic locale in which each man must execute justice and law for himself because medieval Iceland was a place of no central authority. Therefore, only men powerful enough themselves, or with enough powerful friends, could exact just retribution for injuries sustained by their neighbors. Men were driven by a warrior honor code that forced them to take up arms or lose face and the whole saga is full of a sense of dreadful irony of how just causes are perverted by resorting to violent solutions. This society is reminiscent of Odysseus' description of the cannibal Cyclops' society where each father is a law unto his wife and children and they meet in no just assemblies. The old Icelanders had their national assembly, the Althing, and while it could render decisions based upon law imported from Norway, it was left to the aggrieved individual to exact the sentence. Therefore, Gunnar of Hlidarende could ignore the sentence of outlawry and not leave the country and his enemies were therefore free to kill him in his home without fear of legal reprisal. Njal's Saga is an actual account of what anarchy is like in a remote society based upon powerful males trying to dominate all the land and people they could based on individual might and wit and prestige. The United States prides itself on being a nation of laws and not of men. Medieval Iceland was a settlement of contending personalities, each trying to adapt traditions from the old country to their individual benefit, with no central executive authority to carry out sentences in the name of the common good. So men pursued vengeance and blood begat blood as original justifications became obscured. In other words, traditions minus authority still equals anarchy. Read Njal's Saga and you can imagine the tragedy of being a law unto yourself.
Marc Ladewig
author of Odysseus: The Epic Myth of the Hero
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Better than most modern novels
Review: Njal's Saga is perhaps the single most important and best-known of the entire body of Icelandic saga literature. By turns a legal thriller, domestic drama, and violent revenge tragedy, Njal's Saga is far more complex and entertaining than most of the modern fiction that I've ever read.
Njal's Saga covers one of the most violent and tumultuous periods in European history in general and Norse history in particular. During Njal's long life the first Christian missionaries came to the island and, in 1000, the island voted to convert. Such a brief summation does no justice to the intense machinations involved and the often violent reactions of Icelanders and Christians alike.
But of even greater importance to Njal's story are the many feuds in which he became embroiled and which finally claimed his life. The overall arc of the stories is far too complex to be related here, but every victory that Njal achieves comes at a heavy cost of both money and blood. Throughout, the feuding, fighting, and legal episodes at the Althing are carefully recorded and uniformly exciting.
A word on the translation: Cook's translation of the saga has drawn a considerable amount of flak from fans of the more "contemporary" Magnusson translation, but such attacks are largely unfounded. Cook's aim in translating the saga was to accurately recreate the original Icelandic's terse, forthright, and completely unembellished style. Having read a number of other saga translations, I'd say this is a noble and, in this case, successful aim. This translation is exciting without catering to modern convention, something that speaks well for the power of the story regardless of translator.
My only word of warning about this book: don't put it down. If you're like me, you won't have a problem with this, but for casual readers the details of plot and the many, many characters will probably slip away should one take a casual approach to the Saga. That said, this book should draw you in and never once let go once you've begun.
Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A gripping story of violence, revenge, and ultimately, forgiveness.
Review: Njal's Saga is an Icelandic saga by an unknown author, supposedly written around 1280 A.D. The story tells of an unending spiral of feuds and vengeance, leading eventually to the burning of a farmstead at Bergotha in Iceland, which killed the head of the household, Njal, his wife, and a number of his sons. There are several main characters. In the first half, a man named Gunnar, who is a great warrior and often champions underdogs in legal disputes, not infrequently by challenging the other party in the dispute to a duel, causing them to concede or settle rather than face him. Gunnar fought a notable fight against attackers who greatly outnumbered him, which is mentioned in a number of other sources and was apparently a true and famous event. The burning of Njal in his farm is also a historically documented event.
Eventually Gunnar is killed by a coalition of his enemies, and his death is then avenged by the sons of Njal (Gunnar and Njal were close friends), which leads to another escalating round of killings, that concludes with the burning of Njal and his farm.
The final section of the saga concerns the efforts of Kari, Njal's son-in-law and the only survivor of the attack on and burning of Njal's farm, to avenge the burning by tracking down and killing many of the members of the burning-party.
The saga is a powerful, building story, even by modern standards. It also provides much detail about legal proceedings in Iceland, particularly cases brought over killings, contains brief mentions of legendary Viking leader Ragnar Logbrod and several of this sons, and also contains a number of very detailed, vivid descriptions of combat as fought during the Viking period.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Don't dismiss Cook's translation out of hand...
Review: I recently became interested in Norse mythology, and after acquiring a number of books on the subject my interest spilled over into Norse, particularly Icelandic, sagas. I bought the hefty Penguin "The Sagas of Icelanders", and since all the reviewers for it lamented the exclusion (understandably, for space reasons) of Njal's Saga, I bought that separately, and I've just finished reading it.
I bought this translation, Cook's. There seemed to be two main choices, this or Magnus Magnusson's, and I noticed a few reviewers quite bluntly trashing Cook's translation, promoting Magnus's instead. I decided to start with Cook's anyway, figuring that, even if it was inferior to Magnusson's, I wouldn't know what I was missing, since I hadn't yet read Magusson's. Admittedly, I still haven't read Magnusson's translation, but I enjoyed Cook's translation very much and did not by any means think of it as lacking.
In fact, in Cook's notes on the translation presented in the book, he explains his motivation and justification for translating the saga the way he did, in a way that seems to anticipate the disfavor of his translation by loyal Magnusson fans:
"[This translation] differs from previous translations of Njal's Saga...in attempting to duplicate the sentence structure and spare vocabulary of the Icelandic text."
After giving a few examples of the stylistic eccentricities in which the saga was originally written and demonstrating how he attempted to reproduce them in his translation--even contrasting an excerpt of Magnusson's translation with his own--he goes on to say:
"It is hoped that the reader of this translation will accept--and even learn to enjoy--these and other efforts at fidelity, though they may seem strange at first. The intent has been to create a translation with the stylistic "feel" of the Icelandic original."
Clearly, Cook did not set out to create a dry, inferior translation; rather he set out to create a more stylistically faithful translation, even if it meant sacrificing some of the flare and drama to which we as modern readers are accustomed.
Regarding the story itself...what can one say? There is something immensely powerful about reading a piece of literature that was written over seven centuries ago and discovering that its author and the people about whom he wrote had many of the same thoughts, feelings, and problems that we do today. When a character responds emotionally to a situation, or feels frustrated because of a moral dilemma, we can still, despite the vast chasm of time separating us, so easily relate to him or her. Even the author's humor and wit are delightfully close to home. Stories such as Njal's Saga remind us that people from long ago and far away are just that: people. Just like us. In a popular culture that has a tendency to glorify the ephemeral, trendy Here and Now, it's a fact that's easy to forget.