There seems no reason to quarrel with the classification which divides the sagas proper into two classes, greater and lesser, and assigns position in the first to five only—the Saga of Burnt Njal, that of the dwellers in Laxdale, the Eyrbyggja, Egil's Saga, and the Saga of Grettir the Strong. It is very unlucky that the reception extended by the English public to the publications of Mr Vigfusson and Professor York Powell, mentioned in a note above, did not encourage the editors to proceed to an edition at least of these five sagas together, which might, according to estimate, have been done in three volumes, two more containing all the small ones. Meanwhile Njala—the great sagas are all known by familiar diminutives of this kind—is accessible in English in the late Sir G.W. Dasent's well-known translation;[163] the Eyrbyggja and Egla in abstracts by Sir Walter Scott[164] and Mr Gosse;[165] Laxdæla has been treated as it deserves in the longest and nearly the finest section of Mr Morris's Earthly Paradise;[166] and the same writer with Dr Magnusson has given a literal translation of Grettla.[167]
The lesser sagas of the same group are some thirty in number, the best known or the most accessible being those of Gunnlaug Serpent's-Tongue, often printed in the original,[168] very short, very characteristic, and translated by the same hands as Grettla;[169] Viga Glum, translated by Sir Edmund Head;[170] Gisli the Outlaw (Dasent);[171] Howard or Havard the Halt, The Banded Men, and Hen Thorir (Morris and Magnusson)[172]; Kormak, said to be the oldest, and certainly one of the most interesting.[173]
So much of the interest of a saga depends on small points constantly varied and renewed, that only pretty full abstracts of the contents of one can give much idea of them. On the other hand, the attentive reader of a single saga can usually give a very good guess at the general nature of any other from a brief description of it, though he must of course miss the individual touches of poetry and of character. And though I speak with the humility of one who does not pretend to Icelandic scholarship, I think that translations are here less inadequate than in almost any other language, the attraction of the matter being so much greater than that of the form. For those who will not take the slight trouble to read Dasent's Njala, or Morris and Magnusson's Grettla, the next best idea attainable is perhaps from Sir Walter Scott's abstract of the Eyrbyggja or Mr Blackwell's of the Kormak's Saga, or Mr Gosse's of Egla. Njal's Saga deals with the friendship between the warrior Gunnar and the lawyer Njal, which, principally owing to the black-heartedness of Gunnar's wife Hallgerd, brings destruction on both, Njal and almost his whole family being burnt as the crowning point, but by no means the end, of an intricate series of reciprocal murders. For the blood-feuds of Iceland were as merciless as those of Corsica, with the complication—thoroughly Northern and not in the least Southern—of a most elaborate, though not entirely impartial, system of judicial inquiries and compensations, either by fine or exile. To be outlawed for murder, either in casual affray or in deliberate attack, was almost as regular a part of an Icelandic gentleman's avocations from his home and daily life as a journey on viking or trading intent, and was often combined with one or both. But outlawry and fine by no means closed the incident invariably, though they sometimes did so far as the feud was concerned: and there is hardly one saga which does not mainly or partly turn on a tangle of outrages and inquests.
Njala.
As Njala is the most complete and dramatic of the sagas where love has no very prominent part except in the Helen-like dangerousness, if not exactly Helen-like charm, of Hallgerd, of whom it might certainly be said that
"Where'er she came,
She brought Calamity";
Laxdæla.
so Laxdæla is the chief of those in which love figures, though on the male side at least there is no lover that interests us as much as the hapless, reckless poet Kormak, or as Gunnlaug Serpent's-Tongue. The Earthly Paradise should have made familiar to all the quarrel or, if hardly quarrel, feud between the cousins Kiartan and Bodli, or Bolli, owing to the fatal fascinations of Gudrun. Gudrun is less repulsive than Hallgerd, but she cannot be said to be entirely free from the drawbacks which, as above suggested, are apt to be found in the Icelandic heroine. It is more difficult to sentiment, if not to morality, to pardon four husbands than many times four lovers, and the only persons with whom Gudrun's relations are wholly agreeable is Kiartan, who was not her husband. But the pathos of the story, its artful unwinding, and the famous utterance of the aged heroine—
"I did the worst to him I loved the most,"
which is almost literally from the Icelandic, redeem anything unsympathetic in the narrative: and the figure of Bodli, a strange mixture of honour and faithlessness to the friend he loves and murders, is one of the most striking among the thralls of Venus in literature.