Sagas of Iceland · Part 9 · Njáls saga I · B2
Gunnar of Hlíðarendi
Part 9 of the Sagas of Iceland: the first half of Njáls saga, the greatest of the sagas. Gunnar, the finest warrior in Iceland, and his friend Njál, the wisest lawyer; two wives who start a feud; a slap that is never forgotten; and the moment Gunnar, sentenced to exile, looks back at his farm and cannot leave. Second and third conditionals for choices, would rather and had better, decide / refuse / agree to, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria. Part of the story includes violent death, told briefly.
Tonight we begin the greatest of all the sagas: Njáls saga. It is long, so we will tell it in two parts. Tonight’s hero is Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, the best warrior in Iceland, and the most peaceful. He never wanted to kill anyone.
Because other people would not leave him alone, Marcos. And because, at the moment when he could have saved his life by leaving Iceland, he turned and looked back at his home, and he made a choice. Tonight’s grammar is the grammar of choices.
Njáls saga, written in the late 13th century, is the longest and most admired of the Sagas of Icelanders. Its first great hero is Gunnar Hámundarson of the farm of Hlíðarendi: tall, handsome, gentle and so skilled that he could jump higher than his own height in full armour and shoot arrows like no one else. His closest friend is Njál, a farmer who is the wisest lawyer in Iceland.
Gunnar marries Hallgerd, nicknamed Long-legs, a beautiful, proud and dangerous woman. Hallgerd and Njál’s wife, Bergthora, hate each other, and they have each other’s servants killed, one after another; each time, Gunnar and Njál calmly pay compensation to each other and stay friends. When Hallgerd sends a slave to steal food from a neighbour, Gunnar is ashamed and slaps her face. She says she will remember it.
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