Árbók Landsbókasafns Íslands - Nýr flokkur - 01.01.1991, Page 76

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ANDREW WAWN
have been the draft Njála translation, but it was not long before the
doubts and insecurities of an inexperienced and rather overawed
translator surfaced:
It was soon found that there are some things which, begun in
youth, must wait for their completion in middle age; and though
the work has never been wholly laid aside, it has been translated
and retranslated, in some cases many times over, in the interven-
ing space. Even now [24 December 1860], after all that has been
done to make the rendering faithful, the translator lays it with
dread before the public, not because he has any doubt as to the
beauty of his original, but because he is in despair, lest any
shortcomings of his own should mar the noble features of the
masterpiece which it has been his care to copy. (Dasent, 1861,
p.xvi)
Translating Brennu-Njáls saga into the language of mid-Victo-
rian England was certain to throw up a worrying number of such
‘shortcomings’, no matter how dedicated the translator, given the
absence of a satisfactory edition of the saga and of a reliablc (or
even an unreliable) dictionary. Progress towards the completion of
a serviceable Icelandic-English dictionary based on the work of
Richard Cleasby had largely stalled in the hands of the fastidious
but dilatory Konráð Gíslason during the years immediately after
the Englishman’s death in October 1847. It was Dasent who
eventually revived the project and entrusted its completion to the
indefatigable Guðbrandur Vigfússon in England after 1864;5 but
this was too late for The Story of Burnt Njal. Too late, also, was the
‘long promised’ (Dasent, 1861, p.xv) 1875 first volume of Konráð
Gíslason’s Gopenhagen edition of Brenm-Njáls saga.6 Dasent was
left to struggle witli the textual eccentricities and related inade-
quacies of Olaus Olavius’s 1780 Copenhagen edition Sagan af Njáli
Pórgeirssyni ok Sonvm Hans, reprinted at the Stephensen Viðey
press in 1844. If Dasent’s translation was to do the justice to Njála
which both his head and his heart demanded, the London-based
Englishman was going to need the help of learned and (it
5. On the turbulent history of the Dictionary see the recent discussion by B.S. Benedikz,
„Guðbrandur Vigfússon: a biographical sketch“ in Ur Dölum til Dala. Guðbrandur Vigfússon
Centenary Essays, ed. Rory McTurk and Andrew Wawn, Leeds Texts and Monographs, New
Series 11, 1989, pp. 11-33, at 18-22 and notes.
6. The second volume was published in 1889.