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Produced by National Library of Iceland and Cornell University Library via www.sagnanet.is, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net +---------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's Note: This is a translation from Icelandic | |and there are inconsistencies in punctuation which | |have been left as they were in the original. | +---------------------------------------------------------+ [Illustration: The Story of Burnt Njal From the Icelandic of Njal Saga] THE STORY OF BURNT NJAL [Illustration: GUNNAR REFUSES TO LEAVE HOME] "_Fair is Lithe: so fair that it has never seemed to me so fair; the corn fields are white to harvest, and the home mead is mown: and now I will ride back home, and not fare abroad at all._" The Story of Burnt Njal From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga By the late Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L. _With a Prefatory Note, and the Introduction, Abridged, from the Original Edition of 1861_ New York E. P. Dutton & Co. London Grant Richards 1900 THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED _The design of the cover made by the late James Drummond, R.S.A., combines the chief weapons mentioned in_ The Story of Burnt Njal: _Gunnar's bill, Skarphedinn's axe, and Kari's sword, bound together by one of the great silver rings found in a Viking's hoard in Orkney._ PREFATORY NOTE TO THE ONE-VOLUME EDITION. _SIR GEORGE DASENT'S translation of the Njals Saga, under the title The Story of Burnt Njal, which is reprinted in this volume, was published by Messrs. Edmonston & Douglas in 1861. That edition was in two volumes, and was furnished by the author with maps and plans; with a lengthy introduction dealing with Iceland's history, religion and social life; with an appendix and an exhaustive index. Copies of this edition can still be obtained from Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh._ _The present reprint has been prepared in order that this incomparable Saga may become accessible to those readers with whom a good story is the first consideration and its bearing upon a nation's history a secondary one--or is not considered at all. For_ Burnt Njal _may be approached either as a historical document, or as a pure narrative of elemental natures, of strong passions; and of heroic feats of strength. Some of the best fighting in literature is to be found between its covers. Sir George Dasent's version in its capacity as a learned work for the study has had nearly forty years of life; it is now offered afresh simply as a brave story for men who have been boys and for boys who are going to be men._ _We lay down the book at the end having added to our store of good memories the record of great deeds and great hearts, and to our gallery of heroes strong and admirable men worthy to stand beside the strong and admirable men of the Iliad--Gunnar of Lithend and Skarphedinn, Njal and Kari, Helgi and Kolskegg, beside Telamonian Aias and Patroclus, Achilles and Hector, Ulysses and Idomeneus. In two respects these Icelanders win more of our sympathy than the Greeks and Trojans; for they, like ourselves, are of Northern blood, and in their mighty strivings are unassisted by the gods._ _In the present volume Sir George Dasent's preface has been shortened, and his introduction, which everyone who is interested in old Icelandic life and history should make a point of reading in the original edition, has been considerably abridged. The three appendices, treating of the Vikings, Queen Gunnhillda, and money and currency in the tenth century, have been also exised, and with them the index. There remains the Saga itself (not a word of Sir George Dasent's simple, forcible, clean prose having been touched), with sufficient introductory matter to assist the reader to its fuller appreciation._ _Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L., the translator of the Njals Saga, was born in 1817 at St. Vincent in the West Indies, of which island his father was Attorney-General. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he was distinguished both as a fine athlete and a good classic, He took his degree in 1840, and on coming to London showed an early tendency towards literature and literary society. The Sterlings were connected with the island of' St. Vincent, and as Dasent and John Sterling became close friends, he was a constant guest at Captain Sterlings house in Knightsbridge, which was frequented by many who afterwards rose to eminence in the world of letters, including Carlyle, to whom Dasent dedicated his first book, Dasent's appointment in 1842 as private secretary to Sir James Cartwright, the British Envoy to the court of Sweden, took him to Stockholm, where under the advice of Jacob Grimm, whom he had met in Denmark, he began that study of Scandinavian literature which has enriched English literature bu the present work, and by the_ Norse Tales, Gísli the Outlaw, _and other valuable translations and memoirs. On settling in London again in 1845 he joined the_ Times _staff as assistant editor to the great Delane, who had been his friend at Oxford, and whose sister he married in the following year. Dasent retained the post during the paper's most brilliant period. In 1870 Mr. Gladstone offered him a Civil Service Commissionership, which he accepted and held until his retirement in 1892, at which time he was the Commission's official head. He was knighted "for public services" in 1876, having been created a knight of the Danish order of the Dannebrög many years earlier._ _In addition, to his Scandinavian work, Sir George Dasent wrote several novels, of which_ The Annals of an Eventful Life _was at once the most popular and the best. He died greatly respected in 1896._ E. V. LUCAS. SIR GEORGE DASENT'S PREFACE (ABRIDGED.) What is a Saga? A Saga is a story, or telling in prose, sometimes mixed with verse. There are many kinds of Sagas, of all degrees of truth. There are the mythical Sagas, in which the wondrous deeds of heroes of old time, half gods and half men, as Sigurd and Ragnar, are told as they were handed down from father to son in the traditions of the Northern race. Then there are Sagas recounting the history of the kings of Norway and other countries, of the great line of Orkney Jarls, and of the chiefs who ruled in Faroe. These are all more or less trustworthy, and, in general, far worthier of belief than much that passes for the early history of other races. Again, there are Sagas relating to Iceland, narrating the lives, and feuds, and ends of mighty chiefs, the heads of the great families which dwelt in this or that district of the island. These were told by men who lived on the very spot, and told with a minuteness and exactness, as to time and place, that will bear the strictest examination. Such a Saga is that of Njal, which we now lay before our readers in an English garb. Of all the Sagas relating to Iceland, this tragic story bears away the palm for truthfulness and beauty. To use the words of one well qualified to judge, it is, as compared with all similar compositions, as gold to brass.[1] Like all the Sagas which relate to the same period of Icelandic story, Njala[2] was not written down till about 100 years after the events which are described in it had happened. In the meantime, it was handed down by word of mouth, told from Althing to Althing, at Spring Thing, and Autumn Leet, at all great gatherings of the people, and over many a fireside, on sea strand or river bank, or up among the dales and hills, by men who had learnt the sad story of Njal's fate, and who could tell of Gunnar's peerlessness and Hallgerda's infamy, of Bergthora's helpfulness, of Skarphedinn's hastiness, of Flosi's foul deed, and Kurt's stern revenge. We may be sure that as soon as each event recorded in the Saga occurred, it was told and talked about as matter of history, and when at last the whole story was unfolded and took shape, and centred round Njal, that it was handed down from father to son, as truthfully and faithfully as could ever be the case with any public or notorious matter in local history. But it is not on Njala alone that we have to rely for our evidence of its genuineness. There are many other Sagas relating to the same period, and handed down in like manner, in which the actors in our Saga are incidentally mentioned by name, and in which the deeds recorded of them are corroborated. They are mentioned also in songs and Annals, the latter being the earliest written records which belong to the history of the island, while the former were more easily remembered, from the construction of the verse. Much passes for history in other lands on far slighter grounds, and many a story in Thucydides or Tacitus, or even in Clarendon or Hume, is believed on evidence not one-tenth part so trustworthy as that which supports the narratives of these Icelandic story-tellers of the eleventh century. That with occurrences of undoubted truth, and minute particularity as to time and place, as to dates and distance, are intermingled wild superstitions on several occasions, will startle no reader of the smallest judgment. All ages, our own not excepted, have their superstitions, and to suppose that a story told in the eleventh century,--when phantoms, and ghosts, and wraiths, were implicitly believed in, and when dreams, and warnings, and tokens, were part of every man's creed--should be wanting in these marks of genuineness, is simply to require that one great proof of its truthfulness should be wanting, and that, in order to suit the spirit of our age, it should lack something which was part and parcel of popular belief in the age to which it belonged. To a thoughtful mind, therefore, such stories as that of Swan's witchcraft, Gunnar's song in his cairn, the Wolf's ride before the Burning, Flosi's dream, the signs and tokens before Brian's battle, and even Njal's weird foresight, on which the whole story hangs, will be regarded as proofs rather for than against its genuineness.[3] But it is an old saying, that a story never loses in telling, and so we may expect it must have been with this story. 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