The sagas reveal that surprisingly complex laws and legal procedures played an important role in the Viking lands. These form the background to another supposedly true story of the late 10th century, recorded in the medieval Njal’s Saga.
Njal is an Icelandic lawyer, renowned throughout the country for skilfully contriving peaceful monetary settlements to end some of the long blood feuds that blighted all Viking societies. Despite this, he is unable to prevent his wife, best friend and finally his sons from being caught up in vendettas of their own.
Eventually he too is drawn in, and finds himself burned alive in his own house – a common act of revenge at the time. It’s a long and chilling cautionary tale full of twists and turns. Like Laxdaela Saga, it also offers plausible information on the Norse conversion to Christianity.
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