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Updated: May 9, 2025
Njal was too wise a man not to know that Hallgerda would seek revenge on Atli for the slaying of Kol, and he begged Atli would take service far away to the east, so that Hallgerda might not reach him.
And yet the tale has been added to, for, unless we may believe that some human beings are gifted with second sight, we cannot accept as true the prophetic vision that came to Runolf, Thorstein's son; or that of Njal who, on the evening of the onslaught, like Theoclymenus in the Odyssey, saw the whole board and the meats upon it "one gore of blood."
"Eric Brighteyes" is a romance founded on the Icelandic Sagas. "What is a saga?" "Is it a fable or a true story?" The answer is not altogether simple. For such sagas as those of Burnt Njal and Grettir the Strong partake both of truth and fiction: historians dispute as to the proportions.
To take a single instance: the account of the burning of Bergthorsknoll in the Njal Saga is not only a piece of descriptive writing that for vivid, simple force and insight is scarcely to be matched out of Homer and the Bible, it is also obviously true. We feel as we read, that no man could have invented that story, though some great skald threw it into shape.
What in the history of Iceland could give any more graphic idea of the whole character of the life and customs of the inhabitants than one of the famous sagas, such as "The Burning of Njal" or "The Death of Gunnar"?
Dasent, Burnt Njal; or Life in Iceland at the end of the tenth century. Mallet's Northern Antiquities. Thorpe, Northern Mythology. De la Saussaye, The Religion of the Teutons, 1902, the most comprehensive statement of the whole subject. Ralston, Songs of Russian People, and Russian Folk Tales. Simrock, Handb. der deutschen Mythologie. R. M. Meyer, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 1910.
Skarphedinn, Njal's son, was their leader, and had bidden the rest each to give Hauskuld a wound. But the first blow dealt by Skarphedinn brought him on his knees, and he died praying that they might be forgiven for the ill they had brought on him, guiltless. When he was dead they went home and told Njal what they had done.
The girl had never heard of such a name, and did not like it, so she determined to pay no attention; but as she opened her mouth to tell her father that her husband must be called Njal, she found herself answering instead: 'If I do marry it will be to no one except Hábogi. 'Who is Hábogi? asked her father and sisters; 'We never heard of such a person.
To Ariosto and Boccaccio he was always faithful; "Burnt Njal" was a late favourite; and he found at least a passing entertainment in the "Arcadia" and the "Grand Cyrus." George Eliot he outgrew, finding her latterly only sawdust in the mouth; but her influence, while it lasted, was great, and must have gone some way to form his mind.
In his introduction to The Story of Burnt Njal, George Dasent very justly sums up as follows the qualities of a Northman, as they appear in the sagas: To utter nothing against any man that he would not dare to tell him to his face. To turn no man from his door who sought food or shelter, even though he were a foe. The same or still better principles permeate the Welsh epic poetry and triads.
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