the words most nearly related to the original Icelandic have been chosen wherever it was possible; and the result is that the translation retains not only the substance, but the colour and character of the original more completely than any version from a foreign language with which we are acquainted. Mr. Dasent has had his predecessors in the wide field of Northern literature; but his sketch of the 'Northmen in Iceland,' contained in the volume of 'Oxford Essays' for 1858, and the Introduction and Appendices to the present translation of the Njal's Saga, are beyond all doubt the most valuable aids to a real knowledge of the ancient North which the English reader has hitherto received.

Of all the Icelandic Sagas, the Njala, according to Mr. Dasent, whose judgment will be confirmed by every competent scholar, bears away the palm for truthfulness and beauty. To use the words of one well qualified to judge, it is, as compared with all similar compositions, "as gold to brass." Like all its brethren, or at least like all those which relate to the same period, the Njal's Saga was not committed to writing until about one hundred years after the events which it records. It was handed down orally, told at the Althings, 'at all great gatherings of the people, and over many a fireside; on sea-strand and river-bank, or up among the dales and hills;' until at last, certainly before the year 1200, it was moulded into its present form. Of its general truth there can be no doubt. 'It was,' says Mr. Dasent, considered a grave offence to public morality to tell a story untruthfully; and besides internal evidence, the genuineness of Njala is confirmed by other Sagas, and by songs and annals, the latter of which are the earliest written records which belong to the history of Iceland.' 'Much,' says the translator, 'passes for history in other lands on far slighter grounds; and many a story in Thucydides or Tacitus, or even in Clarendon or Hume, is believed on evidence not one-tenth part so trustworthy as that which supports the narratives of these Icelandic story-tellers of the eleventh century.' We may, therefore, safely trust to them for what no other country perhaps in the world certainly no other in Europe-can supply; minute pictures of life at one of the most important periods of national history-that of the introduction of Christianity. It is this which gives an especial interest to the Njala, the story of which extends from the middle of the tenth to the first years of the eleventh century; thus embracing a period of pure heathenism-the first attempts at conversion and the final reception of the new faith in the Althing of the year 1000. We shall give our readers a sufficient idea of the Saga, and introduce them to some of its most picturesque passages, if we sketch as clearly as possible the history of this change in Iceland, avail

ing ourselves largely of the stores collected by Mr. Dasent, but drawing also from such other authorities as are within our reach.

The Norwegian Jarls and freemen who fled from the novel rule of Harald Fairhair (A.D. 860-933) established themselves for the most part on the coasts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and on the neighbouring islands-especially Orkney and Shetland. Some few-the first of whom was Ingolf, in the year 874-found their way across the Northern Sea to Iceland; but that country did not receive its most important colonists for some years after. Harald, who succeeded in consolidating the royal power in Norway after the fashion of Charlemagne on the Rhine and in the Gauls, and of Athelstane in England, had rendered himself especially hateful to the freemen of Norway by his attacks on their ancient rights; and after they had withdrawn from the struggle, besides ravaging the chief shores of Western Europe, they revenged themselves on their former king by incessant pillages on those of Norway itself. Harald determined to attack them in their new settlements :

'He called,' says Mr. Dasent, on his chiefs to follow him, levied a mighty force, and, sailing suddenly with a mighty fleet which must have seemed an armada in those days, he fell upon the Vikings in Orkney and Shetland, in the Hebrides and Western Isles, in Man and Anglesey, in the Lewes and Faroe-wherever he could find them he followed them up with fire and sword. Not once but twice he crossed the sea after them, and tore them out so thoroughly, root and branch, that we hear no more of these lands as a lair of Vikings, but as the abode of Norse Jarls and their Udallers, who look upon the new state of things at home as right and just, and acknowledge the authority of Harald and his successors by an allegiance more or less dutiful at different times, but which was never afterwards entirely thrown off.'(vol. i. pp. xi., xii.)

Great numbers of the Vikings thus driven from the British Isles took refuge in Iceland. More than half the names recorded in the Landnáma-bók-the 'Land-taking' or Doomsday-book of Iceland, which contains the names and genealogies of the first settlers are those of freemen who had before been settled on the coasts of Great Britain.

For ample descriptions of the manners, the institutions, and the religion brought from Norway to Iceland by the first colonists, we refer our readers to Mr. Dasent's Introduction. We are here more immediately concerned with them in so far as they influenced the character of the Icelanders before conversion, and thereby affected the change of faith itself, and the nature of the Christianity which was then introduced. Two great points

are

are especially to be noticed: the reverence for law and for legal forms which the Icelanders possessed in common with all the Scandinavian and Teutonic races; and the duty of revenge for bloodshedding-also a common heritage, but one which nowhere receives such ample illustration as in the pages of the Njal's Saga itself. The right or duty of revenge arose out of the right of property which every head of a family was supposed to have in all his kinsmen and descendants. A system of compensations for wounds or loss of life was gradually introduced; and the person who did the wrong might, in the words of the Saxon law, either buy off the spear or bear it,' but one or the other he must do; and the relatives of the injured man were bound to carry out the feud to the last extremities, if the injurer refused to pay the legal fine or blood-wite.' An almost identical system yet prevails among the aboriginal races of India, and the various Arab tribes; but, according to Captain Burton, the duty of revenge has with the latter, at any rate in Arabia itself, the effect of rendering infrequent such tribal or family meetings, at which, as at the Icelandic Althings or home festivals, fights and loss of life would most probably occur. Such is the Arab dread of the bloodshed which a feud would draw out in its progress, or of the money fine which must otherwise close it. Very different was the feeling of the old Icelanders. Odin, with them, was especially regarded as 'Valfader,' the 'father of battle ;' an appeal to arms, in any shape, was an appeal to heaven :

6

'Victory,' says Mr. Dasent, was indeed the sign of a rightful cause, and he that won the day remained behind to enjoy the rights which he had won in fair fight; but he that lost it, if he fell bravely and like a man, if he truly believed his quarrel just, and brought it, without guile, to the issue of the sword, went, by the very manner of his death, to a better place.'-(vol. i. p. xxvii.)

Valhalla was ready for him. Hence the indifference to life among the Icelanders; who believed, moreover, that an inexorable fate hung over each man's life, against which it was in vain to strive. To avoid a feud was thus not only unmanly, but useless. In following up the duty of revenge,' all that was essential was to act openly, like a man, and to show no shame for what had been done. 'To kill a man, and say that you had killed him, was manslaughter; to kill him, and not to take it on your hand, was murder.'-(vol. i. p. xxxiii.)

In what manner this leading principle of the heathen Icelander was affected by Christianity we shall presently see. The reverence for law and for legal forms, thoroughly illustrated in the history and constitution of the Althing, of which Mr. Dasent gives us an admirable account (vol. i. p. cxxiii.), supplied the

direct method by which the change of faith was finally brought about.

Iceland continued heathen in its social life and in its courts of law for more than one hundred years before the first definite attempt at the conversion of the island. But it would probably be wrong to imagine that Christianity was entirely without influence, from the very first, on the national character. Among the earliest settlers, the first who took possession of the Western Dales at the head of Hvammsfirth was Aud the 'deeplywealthy,' mother of Thorstein the Red, who had been king over a portion of Caithness in Scotland, where he was slain. On his death in the year 892, Aud removed to Iceland, with all her wealth and her 'following.' She was a Christian-the first woman of that faith who set foot on the shore of the island, and the first to raise upon it the great Christian symbol. The lofty craig in the Dale country, on the top of which Aud set up the cross, is still known as Krossholar,' the Cross-hills; and although the shadow which it flung over the valley was only the earnest of a better time-for after Aud's death the cross was replaced by a heathen temple-it is difficult to believe that the faith introduced by so powerful a colonist, whose own character was marked by some of the highest qualities of her race, should have disappeared without leaving at least some recollection behind it. At any rate, her last resting-place is still pointed out. She would not lie in unconsecrated earth, and was buried, according to her own desire, on the sands, below high-water mark, underneath a great stone, covered with mussel-shells.'* More than one of the first settlers from Norway also were 'halfChristians,' and were not unfavourably disposed toward the new faith, without as yet abandoning the old. Those who plundered and traded with foreign lands-and every Icelandic Viking was at the same time a chapman'-were sometimes brought into closer relations with the Christian religion. A ceremony called 'primsignaz,' ('prima signatio,') which seems in effect to have been a form of receiving a catechumen,† was frequently submitted to by chapmen and others who frequented Christian countries; for,' says the Saga of Egil Skallagrimson, they who had received the primsignaz might enter into any commerce with either Christians or heathens; but in religion they held whatever seemed best to them.' Thus Athelstane of England required that Thorolf and his brother, a pair of famous

'Oxonian in Iceland,' p. 281.

Perhaps resembling the Ordo ad faciendum Catechumenum' in the Sarum Manual. See Proctor's Hist. of the Prayer Book,' p. 361.

Egil's Saga, p. 265.

Northern

Northern champions whom he was about to receive among his followers, should first undergo the 'primsignaz.' The ceremony was no doubt insisted on from a dread of the magical influences and other mysterious evils which might result from the unrestrained communications of Christians with the heathen worshippers of Thor and Odin. It may have been as purely formal as the Saga intimates; but at any rate it brought the Northman into peaceful contact with the Christian Church and its ministers, although he may have gazed with some unhallowed longing upon the golden crucifix and embroidered vestments of the priests who received him at the door of the Minster. Thus the services of the 'bell-ringers,' as the Christian priests were called, were not altogether novelties when they came to be introduced in Iceland. In the character of the noblest Icelanders we may perhaps trace something of a general Christian influence which seems to have made itself felt over the whole North before the actual establishment of the Church. Take, for example, that of Thorwald Kodranson, called the far-farer,' who, while still a heathen, took service, toward the close of the tenth century, with Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark :—

Thorwald,' says the Saga, had not been long with King Sweyn ere the king set more store by him than by all his other men and friends; for Thorwald was a great man for good counsel, manifesting to every man his worth and foresight, strong in body and bold of heart, keen in combat and quick in battle, mild in temper and bountiful of money, and proved for trustiness and gentleness; beloved and befriended by all the king's followers, and not unworthily; for even then, as a heathen, he showed his justice before that of other heathens, insomuch that all his share of plunder which he got on their cruises he bestowed on the needy and in ransoming captives; and thus he helped many who were in bad case. Now, inasmuch as he was bolder in battle than others of the king's band, so they passed a law that he was to have the first choice of all their spoil; but he made this use of that honour, that he chose the sons of great men, or those things else which those who had lost them set most store by, but which his messmates cared least to give up, and sent them afterwards to those to whom they had belonged. By that means. . . . he

set free King Sweyn himself. It so fell out that once on a time King Sweyn harried in Wales . . . . and was there taken captive and cast into a dungeon, and Thorwald Kodranson along with him, and many other men of worth and rank. Next day came a mighty leader to the dark dungeon with a great company to take Thorwald out of prison, for a little while before he had set free the sons of this very leader, who had been taken captive, and sent them home free to their father. The leader bade Thorwald to come out and go away a free man; but Thorwald swore that he would never go thence alive unless King Sweyn were loosed and set free with all his men. The leader did this

at