The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1982, Síða 21

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
19
niece of the noble Flosi, a man of integrity.
Njal’s two sons accepted the gossip of a
trouble-maker and tale bearer at its face
value; and, as the evil result, killed Hos-
kuld. Reluctantly, Flosi took up the
quarrel. He gathered together one hundred
and twenty men and set out for Njal’s
farmstead. There they encountered some
thirty men and engaged them in a fight.
They suffered great losses and decided to
resort to fire. At Njal’s insistence his party
took shelter in his farm house. Flosi’s men
set fire to the farm house. As the blaze got
under way, Flosi spoke to Njal. He agreed
to let all women and children leave the
burning house. And then, he said to Njal:
‘ ‘I want to offer you — permission to leave
the house, for you do not deserve to be
burned inside.” ‘‘No, I will not come
out,” answered Njal, “for I am an old man
and little fit to avenge my sons, and I do
not want to live in shame.”
Flosi then said to Bergthora: “You come
out, mistress of the house, for under no
conditions do I want to bum you inside.”
Bergthora replied: “As a young woman I
was married to Njal and vowed that one
fate should befall us both.”
And so, with her husband and her sons,
she perished in the flames. She challenged
fate and died victorious. “In that sort of
situation, in those retorts,” comments
Magnus Magnusson, “lies the essence of
the Sagas.”
Most of the villains in the sagas, if such
they may be called to distinguish them
from the heroes, are men of true nobility
and have elements of greatness. They are
not flawed human beings, but the victims
of fate, no less than the heroes.
In all the Sagas, gold nuggets flash to
light which illustrate the Viking’s sense of
style. May I recall to you an example from
the Saga of Gisli. Gisli was outlawed be-
cause of his part in a blood feud. An outlaw
was beyond the help of the law — it was an
offence to give aid to him, to help him in
any way, to feed or house him, or to take
any action to enable him to save his life.
Gisli was married to a woman named
Aud. Eyjolf, one of his chief enemies, tried
to persuade her to betray her husband. He
offered her sixty ounces of silver and to
arrange a marriage for her better in every
way than her marriage to Gisli:
“You can see for yourself,” he said,
“how miserable it becomes for you, living
in this deserted fjord, and having this hap-
pen to you because of Gisli’s bad luck, and
never seeing your kinsfolk or their families. ’ ’
“I think the last thing,” replied Aud,
“that we are likely to agree about is that
you could arrange any marriage for me that
I would think as good as this one. Even so,
it is true, as they say, that ‘cash is the
widow’s best comfort,’ and let me see
whether this silver is as much or as fine as
you say it is.”
Eyjolf counted out his silver for her
inspection. She admitted that it was of the
first quality, and asked him if she had the
right to do with it as she pleased. When
Eyjolf told her that she had that right, she
put it in a big purse, and threw the purse at
his nose so that his blood spurted out all
over him.
“Take that for your easy faith,” she
cried, “and every harm with it! There was
never any likelihood that I would give my
husband over to you, scoundrel. Take your
money, and shame and disgrace with it!
You will remember, as long as you live,
you miserable man, that a woman struck
you; and yet you will not get what you want
for all that!”
Grettir’s Saga, which is considered
second only to Njal’s Saga in human in-
terest and literary perfection, has a greater
admixture of the supernatural, of the arts
of black magic, than most of the other
sagas. It is history embroidered with
legend. It is not a story for sceptics. For its
full appreciation there must be a willing
suspension of disbelief.