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there is the additional fact that
     Hoskuld is the son of Thrain Sigfusson. Old hostilities do not die. (One might even
     question the wisdom of Njal’s fostering the son of his own sons’
     bitter enemy.) The other motivation for the killing has to do with the rules of feud.
     Lyting’s killing of Hoskuld Njalsson (Ch. 98) required vengeance by the
     Njalssons, and when Lyting is killed by Amundi in Ch. 106, the Njalssons direct their
     vengeance quite properly at the most prominent member of the offending family, who
     happens to be Hoskuld Thrainsson, their own foster-brother. It is a tragic clash of
     loyalties, and the Njalssons follow the course they think they must.
    The two greatest crises in the saga, the death of Gunnar and the burning
     at Bergthorshvol, both occur when an arbitrated agreementhas been
     broken. It was agreed that Gunnar should go abroad for three years after killing
     Thorgeir Otkelsson. When he breaks the agreement and decides to remain at home (Ch. 75)
     he invites the attack which will cause his death, as Njal has warned him. Later, the
     settlement which good men have carefully arbitrated for the slaying of Hoskuld is
     nullified by the unforgivable insults exchanged by Flosi and Skarphedin (Ch. 123).
    The final legal scene in the saga (Chs. 141–4) is the longest,
     dramatizing finally and fully both the intricate complexity of the law and the futility
     of the law, even in face of the fact that the burning at Bergthorshvol was an
     unjustifiable act. After the lengthy formulaic presentation of the suit against the
     burners, Eyjolf Bolverksson (Flosi’s lawyer) makes a number of attempts, using
     the fine points of the law, to quash the case. Thorhall Asgrimsson is able to meet each
     objection and save the case. It is a fine battle between the best lawyers in the land,
     told from the point of view of the spectators and creating the excitement of a good
     tennis game in which the advantage alternates between the two sides:
     ‘Everyone.… agreed that the defence was stronger than the
     prosecution… they agreed that the prosecution was stronger than the
     defence.’ Finally Eyjolf serves his final ace (end of Ch. 144), to which there
     is no answer. In a proper court this would have been the end of the procedure, but in
Njal’s Saga
it is the occasion for violence. No scene better
     illustrates the failure of law and the failure of the Althing than when the lawyer
     Thorhall thrusts his spear into his infected leg, hobbles to the Fifth Court and kills
     the first kinsman of Flosi’s that he meets, thus initiating the total disorder
     of the battle at the Althing (Ch. 145). ‘With law our land shall rise, but it
     will perish with lawlessness.’
CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN
    The pagan Germanic ethic of honour, courage and the blood feud is well
     illustrated in
Njála
. Men fight and die to enhance or at least
     preserve their good name. Hrut and Gunnar and Skarphedin and Kari and Flosi are noble
     men in the old mould, moved by a keensense of personal honour. The
     saga has a pleasing abundance of epic situations – fights against overwhelming
     odds, heroes who set out on a journey despite warnings of danger, men caught in a
     difficult position because of divided allegiances. The narrative derives much of its
     impetus and interrelatedness from the rules of feud and the requirements of honour.
    But there is another, softer strain in the saga. Njal, the central figure,
     never lifts a weapon, and he gains respect because of his jurisprudence, his prophetic
     wisdom and his good will. Gunnar, in many ways the perfect Germanic hero, fights (in
     Iceland at any rate) only when provoked to do so, and with great reluctance. Hoskuld
     Thrainsson never lifts a weapon, not even the one he is carrying on that fateful day
     when he is slain in his own field. Snorri the Godi is one of the most respected men in
     the land, but when Skarphedin taunts him