By now you have (hopefully) become familiar with the tempo and “plot” of Njal’s Saga, as well as the settings where the predominant part of the action takes place.  There is much more of the same ahead, of course, but the retributive killings now engulf the wise hero of the story, Njal, and his family.  Below is a plot summary of the chapters we will and will not read, followed by questions that take into account new elements of the story.

[Chs. 79-89 – You are not required to read these.  Following Gunnar’s demise, the saga shifts its focus to the travels and adventures abroad of Njal’s sons and of Thrain Sigfusson, Gunnar’s uncle.  We met Thrain briefly in ch. 34 when he appeared at Gunnar’s wedding, renounced his wife, and married Hallgerd’s daughter (thus becoming, in a bizarre way, Gunnar’s son-in-law as well as his uncle).  The relationship between Thrain and the Njalssons, never friendly, becomes even tenser due to the former’s involvement in the killings leading to Gunnar’s death.  Their rivalry escalates when Thrain gives protection to a rogue and trickster named Hrapp.  Hrapp had injured the powerful earl of Scotland, and Thrain manipulates the earl into thinking that Njal’s sons Skarp-Hedin and Helgi were unlawfully hiding the outlaw from him.  The Njalssons suffer humiliation and injury at the earl’s hands, and blame Thrain.  Hrapp and Thrain become buddies, and all parties eventually return to Iceland.  An important new person also joins the cast: Kari Solmundarson (aka “Kari the Lucky”), who befriends and protects Njal’s sons while they are abroad and returns home with them.  He becomes a powerful ally.]
Chs. 90-97 – The Njalssons and Kari, now their brother-in-law, pursue and exact vengeance on Thrain and Hrapp.  In order to head off further retribution, Njal adopts Thrain’s son, Hoskuld Hvitaness-Priest, and secures him a wife (Hildigunn, the daughter of Flosi, a chieftain—see ch. 95) and chieftainship.  Njal’s sons accept the arrangement, and peace, briefly, reigns.
Chs. 100-105 – This interlude describes the christianization of Iceland, which followed Norway and the rest of Scandinavia in accepting the faith in the year 1000.
Chs. 107-132 – Mord Valgardson, the son of Unn (remember her from chs. 1-9?) and the story’s central villain, returns to the scene and stirs up trouble between the Njalssons and their step-brother, Hoskuld Hvitaness-Priest.  He sows envy, and Skarp-Hedin and his brothers kill their step-brother.  The end-game is underway: Hoskuld’s wife Hilidgunn stirs up her clan against Njal and his sons, and the annual Althing becomes the scene of anxious party-building and negotiation between Njal’s clan and Flosi’s.  Peace fails, and the saga quickly reaches its climactic end.
[Chs. 133-158 – You are not required to read these.  The lone survivor of the burning, Kari, pursues vengeance against his father-in-law’s killers until he is satisfied.   An attempt at peace at the Althing degenerates into open warfare, and the two parties remain alienated from one another for some time, until, in ch. 159, Kari makes peace.]

Questions

(1) Is Njal’s Saga a Christian text or a pagan text?  If Christian, what sort of Christianity is described here?  Are the values of Icelandic society, in other words, what we typically might consider “Christian” values?  (Remember that the saga was written some 280 years after the country officially converted.)
(2) What is the intended moral/lesson of the tale?  What do you think was the author’s greater purpose in writing?  For whom was the text intended (who was his audience)?  Is Njal a hero, and if so, what makes him one in the context of the story?
(3) What was this society’s attitude toward fate and the afterlife?  What emotions and actions were portrayed as most destabilizing in Icelandic culture?