Njal's Saga

She was endowed with great beauty for all those attributes that were outside her control, but it was said that in all characteristics for which she herself was responsible, she was utterly wicked

Those we murder with our mouths often live longest

Few people are spoken of in the way they would choose

When Thorhall heard this he was so shocked that he could not speak a word. He sprang out of bed, snatched with both hands the spear that Skarp-Hedin had given him, and drove it deep into his own leg. The flesh and core of the boil clung to the blade as he gouged it out of his leg, and a torrent of blood and matter gushed across the floor like a stream. Then he strode from the booth without a limp, walking so fast that the messenger could not keep pace with him.

He will give you a friendly greeting in return and ask if you are a northerner. You reply that you are from Eyjafjord. He will then ask you whether there are a lot of good men up there, to which you reply, "a lot of perverts, that's about all

He snatched the cloak away and tossed a pair of blue trousers at Flosi, saying he would have greater need of them than a cloak. Why should I need them more? said Flosi. Skarp-Hedin replied, you certainly will if you are, as I have heard, the mistress of the Svinafell Troll, who uses you as a woman every ninth night

Let me have two locks of your hair, and help my mother plait them into a bow-string for me. "Does anything depend on it asked Hallgerd". "My life depends on it replied Gunnar.

Cold is the counsel of women.

Bad things will be your only reward for this.’ ‘Things will go as they must,’ said Gunnar.

The saga teems with life and action, with memorable and complex characters from the heroic Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a warrior without equal who dislikes killing, to the villainous, insinuating Mord Valgardsson, who turns out to be less dastardly than we first expect. Unforgettable events include Skarphedin’s head-splitting axe blow as he glides past his opponent on an icy river bank, or Hildigunn’s provoking of her uncle to seek blood revenge by placing on his shoulders the blood-clotted cloak in which her husband was slain... Just as in the Norse poem Völuspá (‘The Seeress’s Prophecy’) the gods met their doom (no mere twilight) at the hands of brute giants and monsters, after which a new and peaceful earth arose, so do the terrible events of Njal’s Saga lead finally and at great cost to a dignified resolution bearing the promise of a better time. (Robert Cook(

Eigi er það sættarrof," segir Njáll, "að hver hafi lög við annan því að með lögum skal land vort byggja en eigi með ólögum eyða.

That's true," says Bergthora, "yet neither of us finds fault with the other for it; but Thorwald, thy husband, was not beardless, and yet thou plottedst his death." Then

Now Thrain Sigfus' son kept staring at Thorgerda Glum's daughter; his wife Thorhillda saw this, and she got wroth, and made a couplet upon him. "Thrain,

He had to wife Thorhillda Skaldwife; she had a sharp tongue of her own, and was given to jeering. Thrain loved her little.

This is a terribly dangerous journey" said Bjorn, "and few would have the courage to make it except you and me". His wife said, "if you let Kari down, you had better realise that you will never be allowed into my bed again, and that my kinsmen will force a division of property between us

You have many qualities that make you as great a man as any other here at the Althing. In the first place, you are as well-born as all those who are descended from Ragnar Hairy-Breeks.