Exploring the Literary Function of Law and Litigation inNjal's Saga

The Icelandic Saga is a kind' of prose narrative depicting conflicts among powerful families during the two centuries after 870 A.D.2 that mark the first Norwegian settlement of the area. Anonymous third person narrators, who generally seem disinterested in the events they describe,3 are characteristic of the family saga. Like narrators of modern novels, they often prefer to let the saga characters speak directly rather than to report the characters' comments in indirect speech. The seemingly objective narrator, with his use of direct speech, occasionally has led readers to conclude that the family sagas accurately record historical events.4 Supposedly this history was transmitted orally until it began to be committed to parchment in the late 12th century.5 In the scholarship of recent decades, however -especially native Icelandic scholarship -the claim has been made that the family sagas were fictional (not historical) accounts composed in a written form.6 There have even been attempts to identify the author of these otherwise anonymous works.7 Although few scholars still hold to the theory that the family sagas constitute accurate reportage of historical events, a sizable number continue to argue that the family sagas have their genesis in an oral tradition.8 The conflicts and feuds described in the family sagas reach their climax in the courtroom as well as on the battlefield. Every family saga depicts at least several attempts to settle differences through lawsuits, mediation, and arbitration. Often a humiliated weaker party is forced to yield the right of self-judgment to the stronger. The legal system and judicial process form part of the stock material from which the family sagas are constructed. Of all family sagas, Njal's Saga contains the greatest quantity of legal matter.