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    The Story of Burnt Njal (Njal's Saga)
    The Story of Burnt Njal (Njal's Saga)
    The Story of Burnt Njal (Njal's Saga)
    Ebook550 pages8 hours

    The Story of Burnt Njal (Njal's Saga)

    By Unknown Icelanders

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    About this ebook

    This classic Icelandic saga hails from the 13th century provides a stunning look into a culture long past. Divided into three parts, this prose epic deals with friendship, tragedy and retribution and is a breathtaking look at Medieval Norse culture.
    This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

    Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes



    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXist Publishing
    Release dateApr 15, 2015
    ISBN9781623959579
    The Story of Burnt Njal (Njal's Saga)

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    Reviews for The Story of Burnt Njal (Njal's Saga)

    4/5

    195 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Njal's Saga is epic tale of toxic masculinity spiraling out of control as a 50 year blood feud builds to greater and greater acts of vengeance over insults like gifts of silk and manliness being called into question. Many people are murdered and an entire family is burnt down in their home. Peace is finally achieved when a man marries a widow. One man is given a bracelet worth 19 cows.Medieval Icelanders were petty AF.
    • 4/5
      Arguably the most famous of the Icelandic sagas, this history tells of Njal, his sons, friends and surrounding people. It is from the 13th centuary and covers many topics including feuds, impotence, marriage, law etc. Two of the main characters are Gunnar and Njal. Njal is a well known wise man who is an expert in the laws who many turn to for advice. Gunnar is his close friend, but unfortunately their wives do not get on. Gunnar's wife begins a blood feud with Njal's wife where they keep killing people to try to get their husbands to fall out. It's a bit eye for an eyeand very petty.There are villians and heros and eventually both Gunnar and Njal are killed. Gunnar is killed in battle and Njal is burnt to death in his house with his wife. His sons take their revenge and go after the burners and the feuding continues. Parts of it are an excellent view inside Icelandic life at the time mentioning local food etc. It was also interesting to read about the laws at the Althing.It's not all blood, guts limbs and heads being chopped off. It has a sense of humor and a charm to the story, although it did loose me a little after Njal was killed. I loved reading the tale after not long having visited Iceland, it made me want to go back even more. I hope to read more of the sagas in the future.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this one. There's some likeable characters -- even from my soft-hearted modern point of view -- who I really got to care about, which isn't always the case with sagas. I was kind of sad when they went out of the saga. The translation is good, clear and easy to read, and there's helpful footnotes, a good introduction, and other helpful supplementary material. As with all sagas, there's an awful lot of names, but it's still pretty easy to follow.

      I found some of it amusing in a somewhat macabre way -- especially at the beginning, with Hallgerd's bloodthirsty nature. In the end, the "eye for an eye" mentality of the characters becomes amusing because of the excess of it, to me. Gunnar and Njal are refreshing in their refusal to feud with each other.

      A lot of the saga is based on the points of the law, as well as the killing, which is interesting. Someone compared it to a John Grisham book for the Norse, which... well, I can see their point.

      ETA: I can confirm from doing my own translations that the Penguin edition has a very good translation: reasonably accurate, and idiomatic while keeping a good flavour of the original style.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book. I'd enjoyed Beowulf, and thought that this might be something along the same lines, but cooler and more obscure. Unfortunately, it read as a long series of violent episodes. The first time I tried to read it, I could only get to page 66. I tried again a year later and made it to page 120. I just.could.not.do.it. There was just nothing of interest to break up all the violence. Wish I'd liked it.
    • 4/5
      Of all the sagas, this one has the most political drama and there are parts that I really enjoy in it. Definitely recommend it.
    • 3/5
      I reread this following a trip to Iceland. It is a difficult book to understand in the way the Bible can be difficult -- there's little explanation of motivation and character is developed almost entirely through the action. It is a work that it is sometimes boring and sometimes thrilling. It is set in Iceland around 1000 AD and was written a few hundred years after the events it depicts. It is an interesting insight into a society that tries to deal with the essential violence of human nature. Payment of compensation for a murder or complicated legal proceedings sometimes prevent a cycle of killing and revenge killings. With so much homicide, it's a wonder that Iceland wasn't entirely depopulated.
    • 5/5
      A legal saga with gratuitious violence, revenge,strong characters and what I would call magical realism. It makes me want to visit the site of Njal's farm in Iceland - a country I am fascinated by but only get to pass through .

      And our cat is now called 'Ragnar Hairy - Breeks'
    • 4/5
      Here’s a family saga that makes the Hatfields and the McCoys seem like amateurs, genealogical narratives that make those in the Bible seem brief, and grisly descriptions of hand to hand combat that are the equal of the Iliad. In the introduction to this edition of the English translation by Bayerschmidt and Hollander, Þorsteinn Gylfason notes, “An Icelandic scholar of the eighteenth century said that all the sagas of the Icelanders could be summed up in four words, 'Farmers came to blows.'"But between these dismemberments are the stories of resentment and craftiness that precede the gore, and more fascinating to me, the legal suits and maneuverings in the Althing, the medieval Icelandic assembly, to award compensation to the families of the slain in exchange for a pledge of peace. Then after all parties were satisfied, the plotting of the next round of the vendetta starts just as soon as all have returned home. Equally fascinating to me is that in the middle of all this feuding and strife—in the year 1000 by our current calendar—everyone converts to Christianity, and then continues on exactly as they did as worshipers of the old Norse gods.
    • 5/5
      This is the best Saga! Got colour, (but perhaps that's due to the footnotes). Characterization, and gives an insight into the curious world of Icelandic law, both civil and criminal during the period. No civilized library should not have a translation of this work. In English, I believe that Magnusson and Palsson justly deserve the fame of their translation. Buy it, read it and lend it. (I've only lost three copies by this method. I read it three times (so far)

    Book preview

    The Story of Burnt Njal (Njal's Saga) - Unknown Icelanders

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