Friends and Foes of the Central Figure in Some Icelandic Sagas

Abstract

Cohn Simpson, author of the travel book The Viking Circle (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1966) is neither an expert on saga literature nor a professional literary critic, and no one would expect his comments to be particularly profound. 'Much of the masterly Njals Saga," he writes, "seems to me a string of killings as senseless as the feud murders among the Kukukukus of New Guinea. After Njal and his wife and infant were burnt to death in their house, lying in bed under a bulihide, I gave up reading about Martins and Coys with swords instead of shotguns and much more difficult names.'' (p. 270).

Yet there is a certain amount of truth in this: the sagas are largely stories of quarrels, feuds, and battles, and their most memorable scenes are often those in which saga characters confront each other as foes. But friendship is also an important part of the saga world: one thinks of Gunnarr and Njáll or of Egill Skalla-Grimsson and Arinbjorn, whose friendships survive all the pressures exerted on them; or of Kjartan and Bohli, the collapse of whose warm friendship into open hostility Laxdoela saga skilfully describes.