George W. DaSent

The Njáls Saga (in Icelandic Saga Brennu-Njáls) is one of the most famous and important of the Sagas of Icelanders. The work was written in the thirteenth century prose in Old Norse language, by an anonymous Icelandic author of considerable erudition, as inferred by the richness and depth of the topics covered in the text. The saga is a series of bloody conflicts and vendettas among members of distinguished families in Icelandic tenth and eleventh centuries, these conflicts that give rise to complicated criminal cases that are resolved in the Althing, a kind of council of notables who met each year. One of the most important characters of the saga is Njáll Thorgeirsson, whose home is attacked and burned, causing his death, from which derives the title of the work.