20 APRIL 1861, Page 22

THE NJALS SAGA."

OF all theor stories relating to Iceland, that of Burnt Njal, its translator ttl sous, bears away the palm for truthfulness and beauty. It is possible, and perhaps even probable, that in this, as in other heroic tales of Iceland, a large amount of historic truth may be pre. served. The story is told in prose, with an occasional song inter- spersed, and the supernatural element in it for the most part merely indicates the belief of the age, and does not imply the operation of a purely i eive or poetic intellect. " Minute particularity as to time and place" does not indeed of itself suffice to establish the authenticity of a narrative. But in the absence of any discrediting reasons that can be assigned, we may regard this precision and cir- cumstantiality as a presumption in favour of the veracity of the Saga The corroboration furnished by other traditionary tales, in which the actors are incidentally mentioned and their achievements recorded.; the non-employment of decidedly poetic forms ; the subject-matter of the story, which relates to the ordinary life of Iceland men and women, to the fends, the marriages, and deaths of mighty. chiefs; and, above all, the recognized obligation, if Mr. Dasent be right, of telling a Saga truthfully, are among the considerations which induce us to admit that a large deposit of historic fact is probably inter- mingled in the Icelandic Saga, with ornamental accretions, which again are less perhaps the product of the narrator's invention than of the unconsciously-made superadditions of numerous reporters and successive reciters. To separate the actual from the fictitious is ofttn impossible, while, in other cases, the problem is easy of solution. It may be doubted, for instance, whether Hrut, when he saw his tall fair niece playing on the floor with other girls, really acknowledged her beauty, and, detecting "her thief's eyes," prophesied that many would smart for it ; yet the circumstance is not in itself impossible. On the other hand, if the vision and song of Gumar in his grave be intended to have any external reality, which is far from certain, we should not hesitate to pronounce the narrative fictitious. Taking the Saga, however, as a vivid representation of Iceland life, character. and manners, we cannot but insist on its high value as a picture of the past; nay we must even allow that a tale told from the com- mencement "at all the great gatherings of the people and over many a fireside, on sea-strand or river bank, or up among the dales and hills," told from Althirug to Althing,. at Spring Thing and Autumn Leet, does, in all probability, contain occurrences of undoubted truth.

The story of Burnt Njal appears to have unfolded and taken shape gradually, ultimately centring round Njal. At first, orally trans- mitted, it was reduced to writing about a hundred years after the events described in it had happened, ultimately assuming its present form, not later, Mr. Dasent thinks, than the year 1200. The trans- lation which this accomplished gentleman now offers to the public shows the intensity of his admiration, as well as his rare diligence, and his unusual learning. Projected many years ago, when there was not even a dictionary of the Icelandic language, it has been touched and retouched, in some cases many times over, till the author, availing himself of the lexicographical labours of the lamented Richard Cleasby, of the critical genius of Maurer, of the scholarship of Thomsen and Tigfasson, has brought it, as we presume, to a very high degree of excellence. The rendering is apparently literal without being unidiomatic; the diction is simple and childlike ; in- deed, almost biblical in its Saxon purity, and vigorous and animated in its unpremeditatedflow. The Introduction which precedes, and the Appendix which follows, the story, will be found to illustrate the history, geography, religion, law, and even the currency of the Ice- landers. The work is further provided with maps and plans, an index carefully prepared and arranged, while we may safely endorse Mr. Dasent's eulogium that the publishers have spared no expense or pains to lay Njal before the world in a beautiful and becoming shape.

Before weproceed to lay before our readers an outline of the story of Burnt Njal, we must say a few words on the Northmen who colo- _

• The Story of Burnt Nal; or Life in Iceland at the End of the Tenth Century- From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga. By George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L. With en Introduction, Maps, and Plans. Edinburgh: Edmonton and Douglas.

nized Iceland towards the end of the ninth century of our era. Harold Fairhair (860-933) introduced a new, and what seemed then a strange, system of government. His innovations or reforms, all of which tended towards the consolidation of the royal authority, and which were really an advance in the great march of civilization and of progress, were regarded by " free-born" men as an intolerable tyranny. In vain he endeavoured to oppose the establishment of the royal system of centralization. The king was too strong for him ; and after repeated but isolated efforts, "he sullenly withdrew from the field, andleft the land of his fathers, where, as he thought, no free- born man could now care to live." France, Italy, Spain, and, later, Greece and Asia, "felt the fury of his wrath, and the weight of his arm." His favourite haunt, however, was what were called the Western lands—England, Ireland, Scotland, Orkney, Shetland, and the outlying Faroe Isles. At the beginning of the tenth century, says the translator, in his appendix, many a freeman who would have tuned the host of some famous leader by land, or have lived a little king at home, now sought the waves as a birthright of which no king co d rob him. Sea roving thus received an additional impulse. It was the age of the Vikings, so called from Vik, a bay or creek, and gting," a common termination, which here implies occupation or calling. Thus the term, it will be observed, is in no way connected with the word " king," though these piratical chiefs are frequently designated "sea-kings." Harold, steadily pursuing his policy at home, determined to put an end to the piratical incursions which these sea rovers systematically made on the Norway coast. Calling on his chiefs to follow him, he levied a force, sailed suddenly with his armada-like fleet, and fell on the Vikings in Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, the Western Isles, Man, Anglesea, &c., tearing them out root and branch from the soil in which they had transplanted them- selves, and making their lands no longer the lair of Vikings, but the abode of Norse Jarls and their followers, who proved, on the whole, submissive, dutiful, and constitutional subjects. It was at this time that the great Iceland immigration took place. Ingolf and others had settled in Iceland, with its area of forty thousand square miles, from Ain. 874 downwards ; but it is not till near twenty years later that we hear of the rush of settlers to that fair domain which had so narrowly escaped the clutch of the old giants Frost and Snow. It is interesting to Englishmen to learn that more than half the names of the first colonists contained in the Landnama or Doomsday book of Iceland, are those of Northmen, who had been previously settled in the British Isles ; our own country being then " the great stepping-stone between Norway and Iceland." Sixty years were occupied in the settlement of the island. At the end of that period the number of in- habitants, reckoned at fifty thousand, had reached its maximum. In the new colony each chief lived on his holding, with his children, freedmen, and thralls, fulfilling the duties of the priesthood and ma- gistracy, convening his adherents and retainers, but acknowledging "no common bond of union save that of race." The patriarchal system and voluntary principle succumbed at the end of the sixty colonizing years. The Althing, which was a concentration of the local things, was then introduced, and an Icelandic commonwealth was thus established. Thirty years after, the provincial constitution of the country was organized, with its Spring Things and Autumn Courts or Leets ; with which last word we in England are not alto- gether unacquainted.

We pass now to the religious creed and superstitions of the Ice- landers, with their Odin and (Esix, their bright Elves and dark Elves, their Fate, to which even the War God himself must bow, their guardian spirits, their Baresarks, which Egilsson derives from bear, as if if those frantic enthusiasts were so called, not, as is generally thought, from the habit of fighting in their shirts alone, but from a sup- posed power of taking the shape of that tight-embracing animal. Among the rights of the Icelanders was that of absolute property in children at their birth, as in the Roman law. Among their duties was that of the worship of the God of Battles, and that of exacting vengeance, ramifying into tariffs of injury of limb and life. Among the philo- sophical principles was a conviction of the worthlessness and fleet- ing nature of all worldly goods, and of the stability alone of a well- earned fame. Frankness, openness of nature and action, a downright sincerity of speech and deed, to the avowal of a killing, which was regarded as no murder, and the perpetration of straightforward gentlemanly robbery and piracy, were the plain, rude, undrawing- room-like virtues of the early colonists of Iceland and their imme- diate posterity. This sketch of primitive rule, organization, and manners, is re- quisite to any ready understanding of the rough and simple tragedy of the heroes of the story of Burnt Njal, a brief analysis of which we shall now present to the general student of Iceland lore.

We cannot undertake to show, as does Mr. Dasent in his intro- ductory disquisition, what were the degrees of relationship which connected the great Icelandic families that play a principal Fed in our story. When it begins, Mord, the grandson of Sighvat the Red, was the greatest of all the chiefs of the south-west. Mord was the shrewdest of lawyers, called, for his sweet and eloquent speech, the Fiddle. The next mentioned of our dramatis persona are Hanskild and Hrut, the stalwart father and foresighted uncle. We pause in our analysis to draw attention to, perhaps, one of the most charming Passages in the Saga. Hrut had married Mord's daughter, who, dis- satisfied with her spell-bound husband had returned to her paternal home. There had been a Thing, and this marriage business had been discussed at the Hill of Laws. After the Thing, .Hauskuld and Brut rode west, tarrying at Lund, where Thiostolf Biorn, Gulbera's son, then dwelt. It was a wet day, and long fires burnt down the length of the hall. Two boys were playing on the floor, and a girl was playing with them. So one of them said, " Now I will he Mord, and summon thee to lose thy wife because thou hast not been a good husband to her." Then the other answered, " I will be Hrut, and I call on thee to give up all claim to thy goods if thou darest not to fight with me." [Ilford in fact had declined to fight with Hrut.] This they said several times, and all the household burst out laughing. Then Hauskuld got wrath, and struck the boy who called himself Mord with a switch, and the blow fell on his face and grazed the skin. "Get out with thee," said Hauskuld to the boy, "and make no game of us." But Hrut said, " Come hither to me ; ' and the boy did so. Then Hrut drew a ring from his finger and gave it to him, and said, " Go away, and try no man's temper henceforth." Then the boy went away, saying, " Thy manliness will I bear in mind all m life." That was the end, says the Saga-teller of /lord's and Hint's quarrel ; a very poetical end, and one we suspect rather ben invento than ben trorato. But to resume.

Our story opens about A.D. 955. Unit's courtship or Unna, their marriage and separation, are among the earlier incidents of the Saga. Then follows the union of Hallgerda, "with the fair locks and thief s eyes," to Thorwald. At the end of a year they quarrel, and Thiostolf, who sides with the wife, slays Thorwald with his pole-axe. Hall,gerda's second marriage with Glum, which took place in 959, was more to her liking; but it prospered as little as the first. Thiostolf, the mischief- maker, again reappeared; husband and wife again fell out ; and Glum's blow was avenged, like that of Thorwald, by the murderous axe of this pestilent guest. Hallgerda, when she heard of her hus- band's death, knew whose deed it was, and laughed when Thiostolf acknowledged it for his. After this the rich widow remained single for about fifteen years. The sketch of her character in the Saga is. brief and significant. " Hallgerda was prodigal and grasping, and there was nothing that any of their neighbours had that she must not have too, and all that she had, whether it were her own or be- longed to others, she wasted." Men loved her for her beauty, and, in truth, she must have been a most fascinating woman, clad in "a cloak of rich blue woof, and under it a scarlet kirtle and a silver girdle round her waist, with her hair coming down on both sides of her bosom, and the locks turned up under her girdle." In 972, when this " shining mischief" was about thirty-five years of age, she was wooed and won by Gunnar, who had come within the circle of her enchantments. The hero of Lithend had, ere this, taken up his cousin Cana's cause and forced Hrut, her former lord, to restore her goods. Gunnar is said to have been the most dexterous of swords- men and bowmen. "He could leap more than his own height with all his war gear, and as far backwards as forwards. He was blue-eyed and bright-eyed and ruddy-cheeked. His hair thick i and of good hue, and hanging down in comely curls. The most courteous of men was he, of sturdy frame and strong will, bountiful and gentle, a fast friend, but hard to please when making them." When Gunnar undertook his daring ride to the west, to learn how to summon Hrut from the lips of Hrut himself, he went to see Njal and ask advice of him. Njal, the pivot character of our story, after the death of Mord, the great lawyer of the South, succeeded him as the chief oracle of Iceland. " Wise he was, and foreknowing, and foresighted. Of good counsel and ready to give it, and all that he advised men was sure to be the best for them to do. Gentle and generous, he unravelled every man's knotty points who came to see him about them." From the day that Gunnar visited Njal, the two. noble men became firm and faithful friends. In 972, following his oracle's advice, Gunnar rode forth to win fame and wealth. On his return, two years after, he determined, against Njal's counsel, to go to the Althiug. There it was that lie saw Hallgerda, resplendent in scarlet-embroidered cloak, and fair long-flowing tresses. Seeing her beauty he admired and loved her, and making up his quarrel with her uncle and father (Hrut and Hauskuld) married the beautiful widow and brought her home to Lithend. But, alas ! Njars fore- bodings were soon to come true. On a visit to her husband's friend, Hallgerda contrived to quarrel with Bergthora, Njal's high-spirited, brave-hearted wife. Death followed death in rapid succession. First Swart was slain, then Kol, then Atle, then Brynjolf the -Unruly, then Sigmund the White, and lastly, Skjold. The friendship of Gunnar and Njal, however, remained unshaken. They paid blood-fine upon blood-fine, as thrall, freedman, or kinsman fell round them, and lived on in ever-renewed amity, like the great-hearted gentlemen they were, until the death of Sigmund, Gunnar's cousin, when a coolness betel between the families and the heads of the houses saw little of one another. At the end, however, of the three years, Gunnar got into trouble and Njal again came to the help of his old friend. This trouble the translator identified with " that dastard's deed which Hrut's foresight had seen in the child's eyep as rfallp,erda played on the floor." The "thief's blood" now came out. Ilallgerda com- mitted the house-breaking and fire-raising at Otkelrs house at Kirkby. And now we are introduced to new and strange, to great and mean characters—to the spiteful and lying Skamkell, who worked upon the weak and foolish Otkell till he made him more weak and more foolish. to Mord Valgard, "the greatest villain, perhaps, in all Icelandic story," to the " terrible Skarphedinn, who stalks across the stage with his axe, the Ogress of War, uplifted to his shoulder," the resolute Kare, the noble-hearted, well-intentioned Flosi, fate-impelled to the most tragical crimes, Weatherlid the Skald, Olof the Peacock, Hauskuld's showy son, the subtle Snovri, and the high-hearted Gudmund. We cannot follow, in detail, the incidents of this do- mestic Iliad. After slaying Otkell and Skamkell, and fighting with his banded foes from Three-corner, Gunnar was himself overpowered and stain. " His two worst foes throughout his struggle were Hall. gerda his wife, and Mord his cousin." With the death of the match-

less champion Gunnar, the first division of thecloses. The interest now thickens round his seer-like friend annis house ; and Njal becomes the prominent figure of the second, as Gunnar was the principal hero of the first, portion of this prose epic. • Njal's sons were all grown up. They had passed some years in foreign travel and adventure, mostly in Orkney, with their sure friend Earl Sigurd. Not long after their return to Iceland came the great change of faith, Thangbrand assaying "to convert the Ice- landers by the sword rather than by the Word," to borrow the for- cible expression of the translator. "On the 24th of June, 1000, for we can name the very day, Iceland passed from heathendom to Christianity, and the meekness of Hall of the Side, the sound rea- soning of Snovri the priest, and the common sense and public spirit of Thorgeir the Speaker, effected what all the duels and bloodshed- ding of Thangbrand and Gudleif could never bring about. Into this episode, with Njal's establishment of a Fifth Court, or Court of Ap- peal, the officers of which (Hauskuld, son of Thrain, and Njal's foster son, being one) were in fact the priests of the new religion, we have neither space, time, nor inclination to enter. The promotion of Hauskuld, who was now united to the lady of his heart, the niece of Flosi, a mighty chief, gave dire offence to the

treacherous Mord. In order to avenge himself on his rival he con- trived, with great refinement of malignancy, that the sons of Njal should slay Hauskuld, hoping that in their turn they would fall vic- tims to the vindictive passions of Flosi and his faction. The sons of Njal, believing that Hauskuld intended to visit upon them the death. of his father Thrain, whom Skarphedinn, "the most soldierly of men," had slain, resolved to anticipate him. Accordingly, the wea- ther being good, and the sun just risen, they fell upon him and slew him, as he was sowing his field, having his corn-sieve in one hand and his sword in the other. This murder sealed the fate of Njal and his house. The award, or blood fine, agreed on for Hauskuld's death, though not till after much ado, was set at nought by the taunts of Flosi and Skarphedinn's bitterness. On a Mcnday night, in August, 1011, one hundred and twenty men, henceforth to be re- cognized under the fearful name of the Burners, decreed the de- struction of Njal's house. They took the vetch-stack and set fire to it: but Njal told his friends "it was but a passing storm, adding, `Put your trust in God, and believe that he is so merciful that he will not let us burn both in this world and the next.' And Flosi said, I will offer thee, master Njal, leave to go out." I will not go out,' said Njal, for I am an old man, and little fitted to avenge my sons, but I will not live in shame.' I was given away to Njal Young,' said Bergthorn, and I have promised him this, that we would both share the same fate.' We will go to our bed,' says Njal, 'and lay us down; for I have long been eager for rest.' Then Bergthorn bare the boy Thord, Karl's son, to her bed, for he said, It is better to die with thee and Njal than to live after you.' And Skarphediun saw how his father laid him down, and how he laid himself out, and then he said : ' Our father goes early to bed, and that is what is to be looked for, for he is an old man..'" So it went within doors. Without, they hurled brands and spears, "but they caught them all as they flew, and sent them back again." At length Kari took up a blazing bench, ran along the cross-beam, hurled the bench at the roof, which fell crashing on those who were outside, and with blazing clothing and ignited hair, threw himself down, and so crept along with the smoke. "Skarphedinn then went to his brother Grim, and they held one another by the hand and trode the fire; but when they came to the middle of the hall Grim fell, down. Then Skarphedinn went to the end of the house, and there was a great crash, and down fell the roof. Skarphedinn was then shut in between it and the gable, and so he could not stir a step thence." After the fight, Flosi and the Burners are banished; Kari and Thorgeir Craggeir, Njal's first cousin, mindful of Skarphedinn, will take no atonement. The Burners are pursued, and fifteen of them slain. One of Flosi's band is stricken dead at the very board of Sigurd, the great Earl of Orkney, on Christmas-day. In Dublin, fifteen more of the Burners lose their lives. Flosi sets out on his pilgrimage, lingering awhile in Wales. Kari follows him up, slays Kol Thorstein's son, and so satiates his wrath. In 1016 Karl's wife dies, out in Iceland. Kari, late in getting to sea, is wrecked the summer after under Ingolf's Head at Flosi's door, seeks his hospitality in a storm, and is nobly welcomed. "After a thorough atonement, Kari marries Ibildigunna the Proud, and lives happily. In his old age Flosi is lost at sea, and thus ends the story of Burnt Njal." Hurriedly and imperfectly as we have traced the course of this tale divine, it must be evident to all who have accompanied. us in our progress that there is real Homeric stuff in it. The Saga has a double value, an aesthetic and an historic value. Through it we may learn how men and women in Iceland, near a thousand years ago, lived, loved, and died. We may learn, too, here to understand how it was that the Icelanders were looked upon as the first and fore- most of the Scandinavian race, combining, in Dasent's words, "the dash, daring, and genius of the Athenian, with the deliberate valour and mother wit of the Spartan mind." The Iceland colony, however, true to its origin, never made much of it. Bold, isolated independ- ence, rebellious, single-handed individualism, are not likely ever to be greatly prosperous. Glorious as is the Scandivavian heathen prin- ciple of personal liberty and self-assertion, it must be supplemented by the Christian principle of self-sacrifice and submission before it can become fruit-bearing, consolidating, and concentrative. Iceland never realized a permanent republicanism ; it never displayed a feudal loyalty, a catholicity of sentiment, or a humanizing chivalry. Its euthanasia was absorption into the Norwegian government. Its freedom was transitory and individual, never attaining to collective glory and greatness.