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He compares saga morality to the ancient moral outlook of the Greeks and
contrasts both with what he calls the modern moral outlook. The modern
moral outlook is characterized by Christian and kantian assumptions
about purity of heart and moral equality of persons. kristján is critical of
sociological readings of the sagas and makes no attempt to relate these
moral outlooks to different social structures or to historical development.
for him, moral values and virtues can be liberated from their original tradi­
tions and made viable in the contemporary world. Instead of seeing it as
parochial, he argues that there is good reason to study saga morality “as an
atemporal, universal moral outlook, relevant to modern concerns.”13
According to kristján, the sagas of the Icelanders, as the Greek ethics of
antiquity, present us with an option “at which we need to take a hard look;
or at any rate as a potential sources of values to be incorporated into other
moral outlooks.”14
Another Icelandic philosopher, the late Þorsteinn Gylfason, argues in
his introduction to Njáls saga that some of the moral characteristics that
people take to be peculiar to the sagas, such as honour, are very much alive
today. He writes: “The importance of honour in Njála (and other sagas) is
often said to reflect a special morality of honour which is sometimes said
to be characteristic of shame cultures, for instance that of the Greece of
Homer and the tragedians.”15 Þorsteinn rejects this reading and, on the
basis of a few examples which show that in Iceland “the language of hon­
our and dishonour is perfectly colloquial to this day” and still a major moti­
vation for conduct, he concludes that the “fundamental moral conceptions
of Njála are shared by us.”16
kristján and Þorsteinn both reject the sharp distinction sometimes
made between moral cultures of shame and the more modern one of guilt,
the former being primarily motivated by received opinion and the latter by
more independent conscience or moral conviction of the individual.17 Both
refer to examples where a saga character’s conception of his own honour
13 Ibid., 407.
14 Ibid., 422.
15 Þorsteinn Gylfason, “Introduction” Njal’s Saga, transl. by C.f. Bayerschmidt and L.M.
Hollander (Ware: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 1998), xxvii–xxviii.
16 Ibid., xxviii, xxx.
17 on this distinction, see Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: university of
California Press, 1993).
An etHoS In tRAnSfoRMAtIon