Njal's Saga by Anonymous Read Free Book Online Page B

Element in the Icelandic
     Family Sagas’, W P. Ker Memorial Lectures, 15 (Glasgow, 1957).
    Ã“lason, Vésteinn,
Dialogues with the Viking
     Age: Narration and Represen tation in the Sagas of the Icelanders
, translated
     by Andrew Wawn (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1998).
    Schach, Paul,
Icelandic Sagas
(Boston: Twayne, 1984).
Studies of
Njal’s Saga
    Allen, Richard F,
Fire and Iron: Critical Approaches to
     Njáls saga
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971).
    Clover, Carol J., ‘Hildigunnr’s
     Lament’, in John Lindow, Lars Lödie;nnroth and Gerd Wolfgang Weber
     (eds.),
Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature
(Odense: Odense
     University Press, 1986), 141–83.
    Dronke, Ursula, ‘The Role of Sexual Themes in
Njáls Saga
, Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture, University College
     London (London: Viking Society, 1981).
    Fox, Denton,
‘Njáls Saga
and the Western
     Literary Tradition’,
Comparative Literature
, 15 (1963),
     289–310.
    Jesch, Judith, ‘“Good Men” and Peace
     in
Njáls saga
, in John Hines and Desmond Slay (eds.),
Introductory
     Essays on Egils saga and Njáls saga
(London: Viking Society for
     Northern Research, 1992), 64–82.
    Lönnroth, Lars,
Njáls Saga: A Critical
     Introduction
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
    Maxwell, Ian, ‘Pattern in
Njáls saga,
     Saga-Book
, 15 (1957–61), 17–47.
    Miller, William Ian, Justifying Skarpheðinn: Of Pretext and
     Politics in the Icelandic Bloodfeud’,
Scandinavian Studies
, 55
     (1983), 316–44.
    Poole, Russell, ‘Darraðarljóð:
     A Viking Victory over the Irish’, in his
Viking Poems on War and
     Peace
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 116–56.
    Sayers, William, ‘Gunnar, his Irish Wolfhound
     Sámr, and the Passing of the Old Heroic Order in
Njáls saga, Arkiv
     f ö r nordisk filologi
, 112 (1997), 43–66.
    Sveinsson, Einar Ólafur,
Njáls Saga: A
     Literary Masterpiece
, edited and translated by Paul Schach (Lincoln: University
     of Nebraska Press, 1971).
A Note on the Translation
    This translation is based on the edition of
Brennu-Njáls
     saga
by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Íslenzk Fornrit, 12
     (Reykjavík, 1954). It differs from previous translations of
Njál’s Saga
, except for Dasent’s in 1861, in
     attempting to duplicate the sentence structure and spare vocabulary of the Icelandic
     text. Subordinate clauses, introduced by conjunctions like ‘when’,
     ‘because’, ‘who’, ‘although’
     and so on, are relatively infrequent in the saga (indeed in all the Icelandic sagas),
     where there is a marked preference for independent clauses. The saga typically says:
     ‘They had a short passage
and
the winds were good’ (Ch. 9),
     not ‘They had a short passage
because
the winds were good.’
     Often an independent clause stands alone, but at other times a group of independent
     clauses is joined by a series of ‘ands’ and
     ‘buts’, producing a sentence like this: ‘Glum often raised
     this matter with Thorarin,
and
for a long time Thorarin avoided it,
but
finally they gathered men
and
rode off, twenty in all,
     westward to Dalir
and
they came to Hoskuldsstadir,
and
Hoskuld
     welcomed them
and
they stayed there overnight’ (Ch. 13). This is an
     effective way of hastening the narrative when the author wants to cover a sequence of
     events quickly.
    Another feature imitated in this translation is the absence of the present
     participle, a standard fixture in modern English and therefore natural in a passage like
     this (Ch. 145) from the translation by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann
     Pálsson:
    Kari Solmundarson met Bjarni Brodd-Helgason. Kari seized a spear and lunged at
     him,
striking
his shield; and had Bjarni not wrenched the shield to one
     side, the spear would have gone right through