Njal's Saga
Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems-from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to the terrible consequences when decent men and women are swept up in a tide of violence beyond their control. It is populated by memorable and complex characters like Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a powerful warrior with an aversion to killing, and the not-so-villainous Mord Valgardsson. Full of dreams, strange prophecies, violent power struggles, and fragile peace agreements, Njal's Saga tells the compelling story of a fifty-year blood feud that, despite its distance from us in time and place, is driven by passions familiar to us all. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction, chronology, index of characters, plot summary, explanatory notes, maps, and suggestions for further reading.
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- "Monopoly on violence" always sounds scary, but the alternative is what... A duopoly on violence? It's worth reading Njal's Saga from Iceland. They had a government with no monopoly on violence, and the saga is essentially about an endless blood feud.
Short of eliminating violence altogether, restricting it to one institution, that is democratically controlled, may be the best that we can hope for. Only a single "owner" of violence has a chance of keeping it at bay.
- Someone else mentioned Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbirdge". It's the one of his 5 major novels I haven't read. "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Return of the Native" are okay, but the two that really are magnificent are:
"Jude the Obscure" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/153
"Tess of the D'Urbervilles" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/110
You can sense his fury at the society he was depicting. You might not want to read either of these, particularly "Tess", if you're prone to depression.
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Frontier in American History" (1921) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22994
This collection leads off with Turner's essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893). It's considered by some the most influential historical essay about America ever written. Historians went back and forth on his claims for decades, and people pointed out many issues with them. It seems like the critics predominate now. But it's still worth reading, particularly since (right or wrong) his ideas influenced the way we think of ourselves. Turner was a very good writer - he was a noted orator, and his essays have an oratorical quality - and the other essays in the collection are pretty good, too.
Owen Wister, "The Virginian" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1298
Zane Grey, "Riders of the Purple Sage" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1300
And the sequel: "The Rainbow Trail" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5067
"The Virginian" (1902) and "Riders" (1912) established many of the themes and tropes for the "standard" western, and they're still fun to read. But the genre comprises many other kinds of writing - e.g. A. B. Guthrie, Elmer Kelton, and the next writer.
Willa Cather's novels:
The "plains trilogy" (the stories are set in Nebraska and Colorado, but otherwise unrelated):
"O Pioneers!" (1913) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24
"The Song of the Lark" (1915) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44
"My Ántonia" (1918) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19810
And not quite a hundred years ago, but a wonderful novel:
"Death Comes for the Archbishop" (1927) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69730
A few brief mentions: James Joyce's "Ulysses", though I had a tough time getting through it; some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories (e.g. "The Minister's Black Veil"); "Njal's Saga" (I liked the Penguin edition with the translation by Magnusson and Pallson); the great works of classic fantasy (Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, William Morris, Arthur Machen); the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
- Tempting, thanks. Wasn't one of the original Norse sagas about Greenland? I haven't read it either, but I can say that Njal's Saga (mainly on Iceland) is very good.
- Njal's Saga was my favorite, so far. With others I've read (Canterbury Tales, Decameron, 1001 Nights) it was mainly the wow-this-is-pretty-different factor keeping me reading.
- The gold standard of Icelanders Sagas is: https://sagas.is/vara.php (love for the little old website). It's complete, as it contains all the sagas and tales.
This is a good selection from above: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/53454/the-sagas-of-the-icela... (notably missing: Njal's Saga, but that's also available separately).
There are more sagas, though. Just not of the Icelanders.
For example the saga of the Volsungs.
If you are interested in general norse mythology then yes, Gaiman's book is really nice. The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda are primary sources and not a difficult read.
Everything I mentioned (except Gaiman's) is published by Penguin and is a good translation.
- This is precisely the category error the author is making: because the Middle Ages were an era of epic poetry, therefore all the descendant institutions from the Middle Ages belong to the methods/standards of epic poetry. It's nonsense on stilts.
Forcing Pindar's odes, Homer's epics, Njal's Saga, Dede Korkut, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Arthurian legends to follow the rules of the scientific method, and citation, and falsifiability, and judging them as stylistically and culturally deficient because they didn't sufficiently cite their influences would be bonkers. They would be ruined as pieces of art.
The reverse—allowing an R1 university to produce scientific knowledge using the rules of High Middle Ages poetry—is similarly ludicrous and ruinous.
