Gripla - 20.12.2007, Page 58

GRIPLA
tive in a specific way: the latter has produced no poetry up to this point in the
saga, but does so once the feud concerning Njáll’s family has reached its
extreme.
Unlike many of the other sagas, such as Grettis saga, Egils saga, and Gísla
saga Súrssonar, that depict their principal characters as prolific and precocious
versifiers right from their first appearances in their stories, Njáls saga contains
little in the way of praise-poetry. Most of the famous stanzas in it are pro-
phesies by minor characters, most verses have associations with death, and
they seem to be introduced more schematically than in other sagas.19 One of
the more significant examples, in praise of the great hero Gunnarr’s last stand,
appears at the very moment that this hero dies, as if his reputation in verse
replaces him (190). Gunnarr himself only recites poetry as a ghost, in his
burial mound. Significantly, Skarpheðinn witnesses this recitation (193). Just
like Gunnarr, he then produces only one poem in the course of his illustrious
career, at the burning of himself and the rest of Njáll’s family (336),20 and this
verse only appears once one of the burners has wondered whether or not
Skarpheðinn is alive late in the burning. Since the poem is nearly unintel-
ligible and apparently a depiction of a woman in mourning, it suits the situa-
tion of a dying man, striving against impossible odds. A burner even specu-
lates as to whether or not Skarpheðinn was dead or alive when he recited the
poem (337). One sees, therefore, a progression in Njáls saga from a verse by
a dead man to a (half) verse by a half-dead man. And the power of poetry,
among other things, seems to be passed on like a legacy.
At the burning, this legacy comes to Kári. Indeed, Skarpheðinn tells him,
as a reply to Kári’s praise of his great leap, Eptir er enn yðvarr hluti (233),
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19 The saga seems to take an unusually critical attitude to skaldic verse in general. Typically, the
saga only refers, with a few exceptions, to the work of so-called famous poets without quot-
ing it; for instance the scurrilous verses directed at Njáll and his family. Also, these poems are
clearly portrayed in the saga as a negative development in dealings between the feuding
parties. The stanzas directly lead to much bloodshed. Much verse elsewhere in the saga is
associated with black magic, paganism, or both (264-266, 321, 335-336, 348, 454-460). I
largely rely upon Einar Ól. Sveinsson’s edition of the saga in my conclusions concerning the
poems, because I do not have space to discuss the different patterns of verse that exist in the
over 50 manuscripts of Njáls saga that are extant. Readers should know, for instance, that
sometimes the scurrilous verses directed at Njáll and his family do appear, though every
modern edition of the saga leaves them out. See Einar Ól. Sveinsson’s notes to the verses, his
appendix including and concerning the doubtful ones (465-480), and his discussion of the
manuscripts (cxlix-clxiii). For an English translation of Njáls saga that includes many of the
verses of disputed authenticity, see Dasent 1911:passim.
20 But cf. Njáls saga (467-469, 470, 472-473, 474-477, 478-480).