{"id":21494,"date":"2026-01-02T19:58:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T00:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21494"},"modified":"2026-01-02T19:58:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T00:58:05","slug":"reading-report-2-njals-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21494","title":{"rendered":"Reading report #2: ‘Njal’s Saga’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Gunnar fights off attackers near the Ranga River.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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[Njal said:] \u201cNever kill more than once within the same bloodline, and never break any settlement which good men make between you and others, least of all if you have broken my first warning.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Still working on reading<\/strong> Njal\u2019s Saga<\/a><\/em>, yet another time. As I write, I\u2019m now approaching Gunnar\u2019s last stand, and I\u2019m not even half-way through the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impressions<\/em> \u2013 yesterday I commented on the way fate lies heavy on all the characters here. No major player goes to his death without someone handy (Njal himself excels at this) to tell him plainly that if he goes ahead and does what he\u2019s about to do, it will end in his death. In each case, the character says he understands, but he\u2019s going to do it anyway. He seems to be, as some other sagas like to say, \u201cfey<\/em>,\u201d which does not mean effeminate here, but deceived by faery powers, helplessly doomed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Njal\u2019s Saga,<\/em> this business of recognizing fate while still ignoring it rises at one point to what we might today describe as \u201cmeta.\u201d One of the hero Gunnar\u2019s enemies is aware of Njal\u2019s warning\/prophecy, quoted at the top of this post. So he proposes to a co-conspirator that he bring a cousin along the next time they attack Gunnar. This is because Gunnar has already killed one of his relatives, so if he kills the second one, he\u2019ll trip the wire on his doom. (The loss of a cousin is apparently considered an acceptable sacrifice.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s kind of remarkable as a literary device. It\u2019s almost like breaking the proscenium, as if at the end of a mystery play, the butler is shown to be the killer, and he turns to the audience and says, \u201cCurses! I was sure the clich\u00e9 would prevent anyone suspecting me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, oddly, this heavy-handed fatalism, which you\u2019d think would spoil the story, does not. Rather, it makes it fascinating, like watching a house fire or a train wreck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Njal\u2019s Saga<\/em> is believed to have been written about 300 years after the events it describes. We know that the author was a Christian, and I wonder what he thought about this heathen fatalism. Did he believe in free will himself? Did he think that his ancestors, before their conversion to Christianity, were bound in slavery to the devil, and therefore doomed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just thinking out loud (or, rather, visibly) here. I\u2019ll keep you posted as I continue reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Njal said:] \u201cNever kill more than once within the same bloodline, and never break any settlement which good men make between you and others, least of all if you have broken my first warning.\u201d Still working on reading Njal\u2019s Saga, yet another time. As I write, I\u2019m now approaching Gunnar\u2019s last stand, and I\u2019m not … Continue reading Reading report #2: ‘Njal’s Saga’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[2026],"class_list":["post-21494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reading","tag-njals-saga"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21498,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21494\/revisions\/21498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}