Gunnar Refuses to Leave Home     p. 133

"Fair is Lithe: so fair that it has never seemed to me so fair; the corn fields are white to harvest, and the home mead is mown: and now I will ride back home, and not fare abroad at all."

The Story of Burnt Njal

From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga

By the late
Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L.

With a Prefatory Note, and the Introduction, Abridged, from the Original Edition of 1861

New York E. P. Dutton & Co.
London Grant Richards
1900

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED

The design of the cover made by the late James Drummond, R.S.A., combines the chief weapons mentioned in The Story of Burnt Njal: Gunnar's bill, Skarphedinn's axe, and Kari's sword, bound together by one of the great silver rings found in a Viking's hoard in Orkney.

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE ONE-VOLUME EDITION.

Sir George Dasent's translation of the Njals Saga, under the title The Story of Burnt Njal, which is reprinted in this volume, was published by Messrs. Edmonston & Douglas in 1861. That edition was in two volumes, and was furnished by the author with maps and plans; with a lengthy introduction dealing with Iceland's history, religion and social life; with an appendix and an exhaustive index. Copies of this edition can still be obtained from Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh.

The present reprint has been prepared in order that this incomparable Saga may become accessible to those readers with whom a good story is the first consideration and its bearing upon a nation's history a secondary one—or is not considered at all. For Burnt Njal may be approached either as a historical document, or as a pure narrative of elemental natures, of strong passions; and of heroic feats of strength. Some of the best fighting in literature is to be found between its covers. Sir George Dasent's version in its capacity as a learned work for the study has had nearly forty years of life; it is now offered afresh simply as a brave story for men who have been boys and for boys who are going to be men.

We lay down the book at the end having added to our store of good memories the record of great deeds and great hearts, and to our gallery of heroes strong and admirable men worthy to stand beside the strong and admirable men of the Iliad—Gunnar of Lithend and Skarphedinn, Njal and Kari, Helgi and Kolskegg, beside Telamonian Aias and Patroclus, Achilles and Hector, Ulysses and Idomeneus. In two respects these Icelanders win more of our sympathy than the Greeks and Trojans; for they, like ourselves, are of Northern blood, and in their mighty strivings are unassisted by the gods.

In the present volume Sir George Dasent's preface has been shortened, and his introduction, which everyone who is interested in old Icelandic life and history should make a point of reading in the original edition, has been considerably abridged. The three appendices, treating of the Vikings, Queen Gunnhillda, and money and currency in the tenth century, have been also exised, and with them the index. There remains the Saga itself (not a word of Sir George Dasent's simple, forcible, clean prose having been touched), with sufficient introductory matter to assist the reader to its fuller appreciation.

Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L., the translator of the Njals Saga, was born in 1817 at St. Vincent in the West Indies, of which island his father was Attorney-General. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he was distinguished both as a fine athlete and a good classic, He took his degree in 1840, and on coming to London showed an early tendency towards literature and literary society. The Sterlings were connected with the island of' St. Vincent, and as Dasent and John Sterling became close friends, he was a constant guest at Captain Sterlings house in Knightsbridge, which was frequented by many who afterwards rose to eminence in the world of letters, including Carlyle, to whom Dasent dedicated his first book, Dasent's appointment in 1842 as private secretary to Sir James Cartwright, the British Envoy to the court of Sweden, took him to Stockholm, where under the advice of Jacob Grimm, whom he had met in Denmark, he began that study of Scandinavian literature which has enriched English literature bu the present work, and by the Norse Tales, Gísli the Outlaw, and other valuable translations and memoirs. On settling in London again in 1845 he joined the Times staff as assistant editor to the great Delane, who had been his friend at Oxford, and whose sister he married in the following year. Dasent retained the post during the paper's most brilliant period. In 1870 Mr. Gladstone offered him a Civil Service Commissionership, which he accepted and held until his retirement in 1892, at which time he was the Commission's official head. He was knighted "for public services" in 1876, having been created a knight of the Danish order of the Dannebrög many years earlier.

In addition, to his Scandinavian work, Sir George Dasent wrote several novels, of which The Annals of an Eventful Life was at once the most popular and the best. He died greatly respected in 1896.

E. V. LUCAS.

SIR GEORGE DASENT'S PREFACE

(Abridged.)

What is a Saga? A Saga is a story, or telling in prose, sometimes mixed with verse. There are many kinds of Sagas, of all degrees of truth. There are the mythical Sagas, in which the wondrous deeds of heroes of old time, half gods and half men, as Sigurd and Ragnar, are told as they were handed down from father to son in the traditions of the Northern race. Then there are Sagas recounting the history of the kings of Norway and other countries, of the great line of Orkney Jarls, and of the chiefs who ruled in Faroe. These are all more or less trustworthy, and, in general, far worthier of belief than much that passes for the early history of other races. Again, there are Sagas relating to Iceland, narrating the lives, and feuds, and ends of mighty chiefs, the heads of the great families which dwelt in this or that district of the island. These were told by men who lived on the very spot, and told with a minuteness and exactness, as to time and place, that will bear the strictest examination. Such a Saga is that of Njal, which we now lay before our readers in an English garb. Of all the Sagas relating to Iceland, this tragic story bears away the palm for truthfulness and beauty. To use the words of one well