Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2004, Blaðsíða 43

LITERATURE
The Burning Issue
Originally penned sometime around 1280 and apparently based
loosely on factual events, with a good dose of fictional narrative
thrown in, Njáls Saga is the most involved of many medieval
Icelandic family sagas that have survived until modern times.
Ostensibly it chronicles the history of Njál, a wise lawman
thought to have been born towards the end of the ninth
century, although the story extends backwards and forwards
in time to encompass a number of protagonists and family
histories.
Embla Bárudóttir and Ingó Björgvinsson, the young duo
that committed themselves to the task of putting faces to
the now-mythical characters of Njáls Saga, opted to tell the
story backwards, starting with the last subplot in the text: the
vengeance of Kári.
Despite concerns about how such a venerable tale would fare in
comic book form, and the fact that large tracts of the original
text were excised to keep the story motoring along, Blóðregn
dominated Iceland’s bestseller list in the run up to Christmas
last year and also bagged the annual Best Book for Children
and Young Readers award – not bad considering the work owes
more to Japanese Manga than, for example,Tintin.
Brennan follows the trials and tribulations of Njáls son,
Skarphéðinn, whose difficult relationship with Njáll could
sound familiar for many of today’s troubled teenagers.
There the similarity with the present day ends, though.
According to legend, killing people was a popular alternative to
legal recourse in medieval Iceland, giving Brennan the kind of
body count you might expect from a Schwarzenegger movie.
It culminates with the episode where Blóðregn kicks off: the
burning of a farm at Bergþórshvol (near Hella, south-west of
Reykjavík) in which Njáll and his entourage, apart from the
aforementioned Kári, meet their end.
This is arguably the most significant chapter in Njáls Saga and
one of the few events in the story that appears to be grounded
in historical fact; a burning at Bergþórshvol is recorded in The
Book of Settlements, an early history of Iceland.
For aficionados of the original saga, there is also the fact that
more of its key protagonists are included in Brennan than
Blóðregn - including Njáll himself, of course.
Bringing him to life on the page was a daunting task for the
authors since virtually every Icelander is familiar with Njáls
Saga and probably has his own idea of how the character should
look.
Bárudóttir and Björgvinsson confess they toyed with the idea of
dropping a bombshell on readers, for example by making Njáll
a woman.
In the end they decided to stay true to the original tale, which
has quite enough action as it is, only leaving out the lengthy
tracts of indigestible legal wrangling that pepper the Njáls Saga.
If Brennan proves as popular as Blóðregn, the sprawling Njáls
Saga has enough sub-plots and characters to easily furnish
another prequel, and possibly more.
For the time being, the books are available only in Icelandic,
but that could change if Bárudóttir and Björgvinsson’s inspired
story-telling succeeds in bringing Njáll to a wider audience.
And even that might only be the beginning – Iceland has as
many as 40 other sagas waiting to be drawn.
by Jason Deign
For those not in the know, Blóðregn was the first
adaptation of the most famous story in Icelandic history,
Njáls Saga (english translation: The Story of Burnt Njal),
as a graphic novel.
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