Njal's saga and paper-writing:

So the paper that I've been completely unable to write for the last day now is on Njal's Saga, an Icelandic family saga. It's really interesting, particularly in the ways that it differs from other Icelandic sagas. Njal and his friend Gunnar don't like killing, and I don't think Njal himself ever kills anyone. He knows all about the law, though (and apparently every police car in Iceland has this quote from Njal's saga on it: "The land is built on the law"). In a way, this sort of implies a change in the Icelandic Weltanschauung; from Egil, who enjoys killing, we get Njal, the man of peace who uses the law to push for peace. Of course, it wouldn't be a saga if there wasn't any bloodshed, and the law doesn't really work. Does this mean that the law will never be enough, that there will always be killing and bloodfeuds? I don't think that's what the saga is saying, rather that it takes time for the law to be fully integrated into Icelandic society. There have to be more men like Njal and Gunnar and fewer like Njal's sons before this can happen.

Interestingly enough, Seamus Heaney believes that one must read the Icelandic sagas to understand the situation in the north of Ireland. I disagree. I think the difference between the blood-feuds in the Icelandic sagas and the Troubles has to do with the personal nature of the killing in the sagas. It's true that both the pIRA and Protestant groups use revenge killings, but usually the revenge is taken on a random Catholic/Protestant/police officer rather than a specific person. It all feels very clinical, really, almost as if there's a number of people who must be killed for a revenge to be complete. So for the death of some fool in the wrong place at the wrong time probably for all the wrong reasons, a small bomb somewhere, three dead and seven injured. For a child, killed because he went to the wrong school, maybe two simultaneous bombs, five dead and thirteen injured. And so on. In the sagas, though, the people who are killed are killed because of who they are, who they are related to, and who they killed. I see this as a fundamental difference; the concept of revenge killing seems fairly universal. So I'm not sure that one can get much insight into the situation in the north of Ireland from the sagas.