In the Library
Njal's Saga
Anonymous, 1280
- Form
- Form Novel
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Demanding
- Reading time
- Reading time 9 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by George Webbe Dasent (1861)
- Chapters
- Chapters 158
- Length
- Length 125k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
With law shall our land be built up and settled, and with lawlessness wasted and spoiled.
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
If you like this, try
Beowulf
Anonymous
Beowulf does the same thing, but in a hall at the edge of the sea, with monsters and a king where the saga has farms, courts and lawsuits.
£1.99
The Iliad
Homer
The Iliad does the same thing, but on a battlefield, tracing how one insult to honour drags a whole people into killing it cannot stop.
£1.99
About the book
Riding away into exile, Gunnar of Hlidarendi glances back at his farm and finds the hillside fairer than it has ever looked, its fields pale and its hay new-mown, and he turns his horse for home knowing what staying will cost him. That is how Njal's Saga breaks a heart: in a sentence as plain as a ledger entry, spending not a word on what anyone feels. Over fifty years of insult, killing and lawsuit, a feud among Icelandic farmers grows past anyone's power to stop, and at its centre stands Njal, a beardless man so wise in the law that chieftains ride to him for counsel, who sees further ahead than anyone yet cannot turn aside what is coming. The book is named for his burning. When his enemies set fire to his house, his wife Bergthora is offered safe passage and refuses it, because she was given to Njal young and promised him they would share one fate. She lies down beside him under an oxhide, their grandson between them, and the saga never once raises its voice.