Category Archives: Myth

Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman: A book review

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Skinwalkers

As I worked on a recent post, Favorite Fictional Detectives, I realized I didn’t remember the details of Skinwalkers, a key Tony Hillerman novel that I read soon after it was published in 1986.  I read it again and found it to be a thoroughly satisfying mystery.  I offer this brief review to encourage others who may not know Hillerman’s work to give it a look.

***

Officer Jim Chee, of the Navajo Tribal Police, tosses and turns one night in the airstream where he lives in the desert.  When his closest neighbor, a feral cat, shoots through the pet door, Chee gets up to peer out the window at what might have scared it so badly.  Probably a coyote, he thinks.  For a moment, thinks he sees a shape in the darkness.  Then the night explodes.  Three shotgun blasts tear holes in the trailer just above the bed where Chee was sleeping moments before.

In the morning, as he cleans up his trailer, Chee makes a frightening discovery.  Among the shotgun pellets that litter the floor is a small bone pellet.  Navajo witches, or skinwalkers, inject bone into the bodies of people they want to kill.  The bone produces the fatal “corpse sickness.”  This bone fragment links three apparently separate killings that Lt. Joe Leaphorn, a senior tribal detective, has been trying to solve without success.  When Leaphorn and Chee join forces, their first problem is persuading anyone to talk, when tradition holds that speaking a skinwalker’s name will attract his harmful attention.

Chee is learning to be a traditional Navajo healer.  With a background in college psychology classes, he understands his role to be restoring people to the core Navajo values of beauty and harmony.  Skinwalkers have fallen away and try to take others with them.

Leaphorn is not a believer, but he learned by hard experience that other people are.  Early in his career, when he ignored talk of witches, three murders and a suicide were the result.  As he and Chee grope through the dark, a very real menace is watching from a direction they do not expect.

This book represents fine storytelling, with characters and a setting that are outside our normal experience.  It’s one of the best mysteries I’ve read, and I suspect it will make you want to read more of Tony Hillerman’s work.

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Scott Fenstermaker’s blog, “People-Triggers,” aims to “Understand what makes us do what we do.” In a fine article called, “The Personal Myth,” Scott explores some recent research on the importance of the stories we tell ourselves in shaping and creating our experience of self and world. “People who come out of psychotherapy testing higher on well-being indicators tend to tell similar personal stories with themes of conquered demons and redemption.The newer story may be no more factually true than the old, because all personal stories are fables, but the newer version is healthier.” In 1983, James Hillman wrote Healing Fictions, a book with a similar argument. This article quotes and links to some up-to-date research emphasizes the importance of the “screenplays” we’re always composing in our heads.

peopletriggers's avatarPeople-triggers

“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we do know that just ain’t so.” —Mark Twain

MythsSome (very reputable) psychologists are absolutely convinced that DNA is destiny. Other (very reputable) psychologists are convinced that your personality is shaped by what happens to you as an infant – or perhaps even in the first few minutes of life. This is what I love about psychology: the theories are all over the map and yet somehow everyone is still credible.

One very interesting dimension to personality has to do with the stories that we tell ourselves. Research has increasingly revealed that our personal life stories – our mental self-narratives – contribute substantially to our personalities and behaviors. An excellent New York Times article from 2007 summarizes much of this current research.

As the interpreter of our world, the mind is very…

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Pandora’s box, repression, and gun violence

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From my perspective, the big news this week was the start of senate hearings on gun violence, which evoked a wide range of passions across the spectrum of public opinion.  More poignant than any testimony in Washington was the death of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15 year old honor student who performed at President Obama’s inauguration on the 21st.  The day before the speechifying began, Hadiya was shot and killed in public park in a “nice” section of Chicago, about a mile from the president’s house.  Police think it was a case of mistaken identity.

I thought of Hadiya Pendleton as I was out walking the dogs in a “nice” local park.  I remembered a lecture one of my psych professors gave 20 years ago.  We were studying defense mechanisms, and of these, repression gets a lot of bad press.  Nobody wants to be repressed or live in a repressive society.

My professor expressed an alternate view in his lecture:  repression kept a lid on many antisocial behaviors.  He quoted James Hillman who said, “What used to be the darkest dreams of Freud’s neurotic patients are now played out on our streets.”

The human psyche has not changed in 100 years, but our world has altered dramatically.  Men no longer need to wear boiled shirts, and women are free to bare their ankles.  We’ve learned to embrace the individual conscience and the search for an “authentic me,” but we don’t know what to do if someone’s “authentic me” turns out to be a sociopath.

We’ve found out the hard way that you  can’t just unrepress the good stuff.  When we let our angels out of the box, the demons get a pass too.  Which brings to mind the story of Pandora.

In order to punish humans for Prometheus’ theft of fire, Zeus sent Pandora to earth with a sealed jar (later mistranslated as “box”) and instructions not to open it.  We all know what happens in folklore with orders like that.

Pandora by John Waterhouse, 1896

By the time Pandora got the lid back on, all the evils of the world had been released.  Only hope remained in the jar.  Pandora’s dilemma is ours.

When it comes to our violent behaviors, inhibition was not such a bad thing.  Now that it’s out of the box, the question becomes, what do we do with our hope?

Are we there yet: apocalyptic yearnings

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The Last Days of Pompeii by Karl Briullov, 1827-1833. Public Domain

The Oakland Hills Fire which broke out in October, 1991, was a major disaster by any estimate: 25 people died, 150 suffered injuries, and 3300 homes were destroyed. What I remember about the event, however, was an account by an independent journalist (whose name I have forgotten) who covered people arriving at evacuation shelters.

He said that a few were upbeat, almost giddy, as they talked of starting over.  The journalist said they were the first to be taken to counselors.  On-scene mental health triage workers assumed they were hysterical, most in need of hearing how terrible it was that they had lost everything.  How sad you must feel.  Have a kleenex.

I’ve always wondered about that.

The first historical accounts I know of that detail people waiting for the apocalypse date from December, 999, when groups across Europe trekked to high ground to wait for the millennial rapture.  The name, “rapture,” says it all.  It’s not the kind of disaster you read about in the papers.  It’s a chance to start over for true believers.  This is the hope picked up by new age proponents of the Mayan apocalypse, since the Mayans themselves left no hints of when the world will end.

The apocalyptic dream is the hope for a new heaven and earth that are better than this one.  Who wouldn’t like one of those, especially this year?

All the worlds religions tell us this world is not our home, but the mature voices in those religions do not hold out the hope of a cosmic get-out-of-jail-free card reserved for some chosen group.  They tell us that heaven and earth are transformed when an individual turns transformation.  Like Dante at 33, understanding he’d lost his way in a dark wood.  Like Rainer Maria Rilke who was viewing an ancient statue of Apollo when he heard an inner voice say, “here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.”

So tomorrow when we wake and the world looks the same, we can remember that it is not.  The sun will have turned from it’s southern trajectory, beginning its road back to summer.  And as we savor the morning coffee and the good things in our lives, we can take a moment to contemplate that turn toward a new heaven and earth.  The first steps lie with each and every one of us.

The end of the world as we know it

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Having slept through Black Friday, the next big event on my calendar is the Mayan apocalypse, scheduled for December 21.

I had no intention of blogging about this until I received the Winter 2012 issue of the University of Oregon Quarterly, where an article by Alice Tallmadge, “Doomsday or Deliverance?” discusses this prophecy in the context of end-of-the-world folklore.

Associate professor Dan Wojcik, director of the UO folklore program, plans to travel to Chichen Itza, one of a huge number of visitors expected for the event, which for some heralds the shift to a higher world age, in the same spirit as the Harmonic Convergence of 1987.  The main organizer of that event, as well as the biggest publicist of 12/21/12, was Jose Arguelles (1939-2011).  In his obituary, the New York Times described his philosophy as “an eclectic amalgm of Mayan and Aztec cosmology, the I Ching, the Book of Revelation, ancient-astronaut narratives, and more.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Alice Tallmadge reports that sales of survivalist goods have spiked in recent months.  A recent Reuters poll found that 15% of people worldwide, and 22% of Americans believe the world will end during their lifetime.  The apocalypse has been a feature of Christian theology from the start, but professor Wojcik notes a recent uptick in secular end-time beliefs:  pandemics, overpopulation, and climate change are seen as threats to the planet without any hope of spiritual redemption.

Things that have a beginning have an end, from gnats, to humans, to stars, and all of creation in the western view of time as linear.  When the world survives a predicted ending date, the error is put down to miscalculation; the expectation persists.  What is it about end-time predictions that continue to fascinate most of us and motivate many believers?  The old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” doesn’t hold in this realm.

I wonder if it parallels our continuing love for disaster film?  Stories of terrible struggle and danger where we get to imagine ourselves among the survivors or among the happily raptured, coming through the ordeal to enjoy “a new heaven and earth.”  The ultimate do-over.

They don’t get any better than one of my all time favorite “disaster films,” made decades before the phrase was coined:  San Francisco (1936), with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Jeanette MacDonald surviving the 1906 earthquake.

Here’s hoping all our December disasters turn out as well!

And finally, for extra credit, here’s a different kind of celebration, with REM performing “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine).  Enjoy!

Njal’s Saga: some concluding remarks.

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1879 title page in Swedish. Public domain

It took me a while to get the gist of  Njal’s Saga. The first time through, I could have used a Cast of Characters; much of the effort was just keeping track of people whose names I couldn’t pronounce.  In rereading key sections aloud with the group in Iceland – the mode of presentation the author intended – the drama and human passion began to emerge.  And as I read these passages again while writing posts for this blog, a larger picture appeared.

Njal’s story is framed by the end of an era.  The best minds of the time made wrong decisions and couldn’t hold back the tides that swept outworn institutions away.  The suffering was intense and the body count was high.  “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,” said Yeats at a similar time.

As I read of the battle at Thingvellir, a moment of near civil war, I kept thinking of similar periods.  Of the fall of Troy, the Mahabharata war, the end of the Roman Empire, and the “great war” in Europe.  And I thought of our own time, that Andrew Bacevich likens to the period of the Peloponnesian War, when the Athenian empire bled itself dry.  We know our current mode of living cannot be sustained.  We know that our leaders don’t have the wisdom the times demand, and like Matthew Arnold, we find ourselves, “Wandering between two worlds, one dead the other powerless to be born.”

Does Njal’s Saga offer any insight for times like these?

Not directly, for simple platitudes would be of no help.  It does offer up a number of vivid characters, some of whom manifest courage and generosity in the face of disaster, and others whose self-centered designs bring the disasters about.  We can’t help but ask ourselves who we want to emulate.  And something very interesting happens at the end of the tale.

By the end of the saga, Kari, who survived the killing of Njal, and Flosi, the chieftan who led the killers, have hunted and fought each other across Iceland, Scotland, and Ireland.  Both crossed Europe on foot to seek absolution in Rome.

Flosi returns to Iceland first.  Kari’s ship is wrecked on the coast in a winter storm, though his crew survives.  They wash up near Flosi’s homestead, and make their way there during a blizzard.  When they arrive, the saga tells us Flosi recognized Kari at once and “jumped up to meet him and kissed him, and then placed him in the high seat by his side.  He invited Kari to stay there for the winter.  Kari accepted.  They made a full reconciliation.  Flosi gave Kari the hand of his brother’s daughter, Hildigunn.”

The next summer, Flosi set out for Norway in a ship in bad condition, that he said was “good enough for an old man doomed to die.”  The ship was never seen again.  Kari named one of his sons, Flosi, and this Flosi’s son grew up to be “the most distinguished man of that line.”

Marriages like this, in folklore and myth, are never one dimensional affairs – a sacred marriage also takes place that brings new life to our broken world.  The Pandava line survives the Mahabharata war, and Aeneas leads the survivors out of Troy.  Monks on the coast of Ireland preserve the wisdom of Rome, and poppies grow in Flanders field.

The sacred marriage in alchemy. Public domain.

For the rest of us, who won’t see a new dawn anytime soon, we can remember the words of Tolkien, who was inspired by the sagas of Iceland as he wove his own account of surviving Mordor, a hell he experienced first-hand at the Battle of the Somme.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” Frodo tells Gandalf.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the times we are given.”

Njal’s Saga, part 3

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Gunnar looks back at his home, 1898 illustration. Public domain.

In order to follow this discussion, it will help if you’ve read two earlier posts:

  1. Njal’s Saga, an Introduction: http://wp.me/pYql4-2sS
  2. Njal’s Saga, part 2: http://wp.me/pYql4-2tb

Scholars suggest that the author wove together two separate stories, an oral “Gunnar’s Saga,” and a related but distinct, “Njal’s Saga.”  Both men die during attacks on their homes.  Historically 18 years passed between the events; Gunnar died in 992 and Njal around 1010.  In the last third of the saga, Njal’s son-in-law, Kari, mounts a campaign of revenge against the killers which threatens the stability of the nation.  A pitched battle breaks out at the Althing, the National Assembly, which was sacred ground where fighting was forbidden.  When reconciliation finally comes, it signifies the dawn of new vision of life and its purpose.

Once the saga gets going, certain scenes come alive like movies – I know there’s a screenplay here…

***

Soon after Gunnar and Hallgerd were married, they attended a feast with Njal and his wife, Bergthora.  In no time, the two women were at each other’s throat.  The insults grew so extreme that Gunnar dragged Hallgerd out of the hall. Soon after that, she had one of Bergthora’s slaves killed.  Bergthora paid her back in kind, initiating a feud that escalated and took the life of free retainers and then kinsmen on both sides.

The killings took place while the husbands were at the Althing which  convened for two weeks every summer.  Aside from social activities, this was the time for legal action on matters the lower courts couldn’t settle.  It was also where “compensation” for killings was determined.

If you killed a man, even in self defense, you confessed it in front of witnesses.  A hidden killing was treated as murder and could result in exile for life.  A killing confessed was manslaughter and terms of compensation could be set:  a slave was worth seven ounces of silver, a freeman fifteen, and a kinsman as much as 200.  It may seem cold, but the system was designed to break the cycles of revenge that the old ethic of “honor” and blood retribution entailed.

Gunnar and Njal tried to keep up with the legalities of the killings-for-hire their wives initiated, but it became harder as stakes were raised.  Each killing drew more people, bound by family and friendship, into the feud.  Into this deadly mix came Mord Valgardsson, son of Unn,  who despised Gunnar and Njal.

If Hallgerd spawned chaos and harm, she did so in a half-unconscious manner.  She was reactive, without clear designs or premeditation.  Mord, by contrast, was cunning, able to weave elaborate snares for his enemies.  Our tour leader, Robert Willhelm, pointed out the similarity of Mord’s name to Mordred, King Arthur’s  son and nemesis.

During a famine, Hallgerd sent a servant to steal food from a man who refused to sell any to her husband.  When Gunnar, with his concept of honor, discovered the theft, he slaped his wife, who had already buried two husbands who hit her.  Hallgerd warned Gunnar that she would never forget the blow.

Njal prophesied that if Gunnar killed two members of the same family and broke the legal settlement for the killings, he would die soon after.  Through trickery, Mord ensured that Gunnar killed the son of a man he’d already slain.  In addition to a financial settlement for the killing, the Althing court sentenced Gunnar to three years in exile.

In one of the most poignant scenes, as Gunnar and his brother rode to the harbor, Gunnar’s horse slipped while fording a river.  Springing off the horse, Gunnar looked back at his farm and said, “Lovely is the hillside – never has it seemed so lovely to me as now, with its pale fields and mown meadows, and I will ride back home and not leave.”

That autumn, Mord sent word that Gunnar was home alone and 40 of his enemies mounted an attack.  Firing arrows from the second floor, Gunnar killed two assailants and wounded eight.  Then a man named Thorbrand got close enough to cut Gunnar’s bowstring.

Gunnar defending his home, 1898. Public domain.

Gunnar turned to his wife and asked for two strands of her waist length hair for a new bowstring. Hallgerd said, “Does anything depend on it?”

“My life depends on it,” Gunnar said, “for they’ll never be able to get me as long as I can use my bow.”

“Then I’ll recall,” she said, “the slap you gave me, and I don’t care whether you hold out for a long or short time.”

Gunnar wounded eight more attackers before he finally fell, exhausted and wounded in fifteen places.  One of the attackers said, “His defense will be remembered as long as this land is lived in.”

Gunnar’s mother was ready to kill Hallgerd who fled the house.  Gunnar’s friends raised a burial mound, and one night, as two of Njal’s sons passed by, they saw the mound open.  Four lights shone and cast no shadows.  The brothers heard Gunnar’s spirt sounding content as it spoke skaldic verse.

***

Gunnar embodied the old warrior ideal of life and death with honor that won you a place in Valhalla.  The dark side of this ethos was an unending string of killings that threatened the nation itself.  Things were about to change.  Shortly after Gunnar’s death, a Christian missionary named Thangbrand arrived in Iceland.  He wasn’t the sort of evangelist you want on your doorstep, since he carried a crucifix in one hand and a sword in the other and didn’t much care which he used.

One autumn morning, as Thangbrand celebrated mass, a man named Hall of Sida approached.  “In whose memory are you celebrating this day?” he asked.

“The angel Michael’s,” Thangbrand said.

“What features does this angel have?”  Hall asked.

“Many,” said Thanbrand.  “He weighs everything that you do, both good and evil, and he is so merciful that he gives more weight to what is well done.”

Hall said, “I would like to have him for my friend.”

With his openness to new ideas and the simple way he voices his spiritual longing, Hall becomes the first convert.  In 999 or 1000, the Althing declared Christianity to be the new religion.  Mord continued to work behind the scenes fomenting trouble for Njal and his sons, and around the year 1010, 100 armed men attacked Njal’s home and burned it, with him and most of his family inside.  Only Kari of Orkney, Njal’s son in law, escaped.  He raised a force to attack the burners, and at the next Althing, when the retribution process broke down, a pitched battle erupted at Thingvellir, the spiritual heart of the nation.

Battle at Thingvellir. Public domain.

During a lull in the fighting, members of the assembly intervened to arrange a truce.  Hall of Sida stood between the combatants and said, “All men know what sorrow the death of my son Ljot has brought me.  Many will expect payment for his life will be higher than for the others who have died here.  But for the sake of a settlement I’m willing to let my son like without compensation, and what’s more, offer both pledges and peace to my adversaries.”

Things have changed.  A few decades earlier, such a statement would have cost Hall his honor, but the saga says that when he sat down, “much good was spoken about his words, and everybody praised his goodwill.”

The combatants submitted to judgement.  Cash payments were levied as well as three years exile from Iceland for the combatants.  During the exile, they slew each other in Orkney and along the coast of Ireland, but finally, when the leaders returned to Iceland, they pledged friendship to each other.  The old ways had cost too much in blood and suffering.  The survivors had no stomach for anymore fighting.  The saga ends with a sense that a new wind was blowing through the land.

Next:  reflections on the story.

Njal’s Saga, part 2

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Map of Iceland, 1761. Public domain.

A man named Hrut had a stepbrother named Hoskuld.  One day Hoskuld held a feast and Hrut was there.  Hoskuld called to his daughter, Hallgerd, who was playing on the floor with other girls.  Hallgerd “was tall and beautiful, with hair as fine as silk and so abundant that it came down to her waist.”

Hoskuld asked Hrut what he thought of his daughter.  Hrut didn’t answer at first so Hoskuld asked again.  Hrut finally said,  “The girl is quite beautiful, and many will pay for that, but what I don’t know is how the eyes of a thief have come into our family.”

For a long time after that, the brothers did not speak to each other.  Hoskuld sent his daughter to a man named Thjostolf to foster her.  “It was said that he did nothing to improve Hallgerd’s character.”

***

As we meet Hallgerd at the opening of the saga, and several important themes begin to unfold.

  • Character is fixed and largely immutable.  Our culture is built on the notion of repentance and change – “I once was lost but now I’m found,” but this is absent from the nordic pagan worldview.  Hallgerd will start a bloody feud with another woman’s family in the first part of the story.  Even when her intentions are good, chaos follows in her wake.  She will have three husbands; each will think he can handle her, and each will die a violent death.
  • Another important theme is the equality of women.  In no other medieval tradition have I seen women with foster fathers.

***

Hallgerd’s uncle Hrut became engaged to a woman named Unn, but before the wedding, like many young Icelandic men, he travelled to Norway to seek fame and fortune.  He won an honored place in the king’s court and captured a fair amount of booty after defeating a group of vikings in a sea battle.  Most importantly for the story, the king’s mother, Gunnhild invited him to her bed.  This was an offer he couldn’t refuse (though he didn’t seem to want to), for not only did Gunnhild have the ear of the king, but she was skilled in magic.

When it was time for Hrut to leave, Gunnhild asked if he had a girl back home.  Hrut said he did not.  Gunnhild put her arms around him, kissed him, and said, “I cast this spell:  you will not have sexual pleasure with the woman you plan to marry in Iceland, though you’ll be able to have your will with other women.  Neither of us comes out of this well, because you did not tell me the truth.”

Hrut married Unn, but because of the curse, he could not please her sexually.  After conferring with her father, Unn divorced Hrut, but he kept her dowry,  creating a seed of conflict that reverberates through the story.

***   

More important themes appear:

  • Consistently in this saga, characters act in ways contrary to common sense and their own best interest.  Hrut knows Gunnhild is a prophetic sorceress.  Why would he deny having a girl back home, when there’s no indication that she even cares before he lies?  Perhaps the author appreciates how confused we can get at critical moments.  Perhaps everyone who has ever had a “What was I thinking” moment can identify with Hrut.
  • Related to this is the place of magic in the saga – it exists, but on the periphery, and when it appears, it’s a two-edged sword at best and harmful most of the time.
  • Once again we see the equality of women.  Both men and women can divorce their spouse by simply declaring themselves divorced in front of witnesses.
  • Romance and sexuality are not central to the saga, except as inciting incidents, but when they occur, they are dealt with in a frank and earthy manner.  When Unn’s father sees his daughter moping after her marriage, he persuades her to speak.  Unn says, “When he comes close to me, his penis is so large that he can’t have any satisfaction from me, and yet we’ve both tried every possible way to enjoy each other, but nothing works.”  The audience would not have been shocked, though it’s easy to imagine snickers and winks as the mead was drunk in the hall.

***

About the time Hrut returned from Norway, Hoskuld arranged a marriage for his daughter, Hallgerd.  In those days, women were charged with running the household and ensuring there was food for the family and retainers through the long winters.  Hallgerd was “bountiful and high-spirited,” and when her husband, Thorvald, berated her for running short of food, Hallgerd insulted him.  He struck her and stalked out of the house.  When Hallgerd’s foster-father, Thjostolf, saw her bleeding, he set off after Thorvald, and killed him.

Hallgerd was married a second time, to a man named Glum.  Though she loved him, a day came when “they had a strong exchange of words” and Glum struck her.  Once more, though she begged him not to, her foster-father killed her husband.

At this point, we meet the first of two principle characters in the story.  Gunnar of Hlidarendi fit the ideal of the nordic warrior.  He was “big and strong and an excellent fighter.  He could swing a sword and throw a spear with either hand…and he was so swift with a sword that there seemed to be three in the air at once.  He shot with a bow better than anyone else, and…he could jump higher than his own height, in full fighting gear…He swam like a seal and there was no sport in which there was any point in competing with him.”

After describing his martial skills, the narrator adds that he was a hunk and “very well off for property.”  As we get to know Gunnar, we find that his character matches his resume.  He’s a generous, open hearted man, honorable to a fault, and a warrior who doesn’t like to fight.  He’s related to Unn, however, and when he recovers her dowry by force, he begins to make enemies, including Unn’s second husband, another of the “bad seed” characters that populate the saga and guarantee that Gunnar will have to fight.

Gunnar at the Ranga River, where he and his two brothers defeat 30 men. 1898 illustration. Public domain.

Gunnar’s close friend, Njal supplies the wisdom Gunnar sometimes lacks. Njal (pronounced knee-AHL) was “well off for property and handsome to look at…so well versed in the law that he had no equal, and he was wise and prophetic, sound of advice and well-intentioned, and whatever course he counselled turned out well. He was modest and noble-spirited, able to see far into the future and remember far into the past, and he solved the problems of whoever turned to him.”

The strange thing about Njal was his inability to grow a beard.  Though he fathered three sons and three daughters, his enemies used this anomaly to suggest there was something lacking in his manhood.  It seems to me that legendary seers, from Tiresias to Merlin to Black Elk are always lacking in some of the cultural norms of manhood.  In particular, Njal never fights though he counsels those who do.  He and Gunnar make up for what the other lacks.  Both prospered, in large part, because Gunnar followed Njal’s advice – up until the day he met Hallgerd.

Gunnar and Hallgerd at the Althing, (the National Assembly). 1898 illustration. Public domain.

The day they met, Gunnar and Hallgerd “talked for a long time.”  Then Gunnar sought out her father to ask for her hand in marriage.  Njal told Gunnar,”Every kind of evil will come from her when she moves east.”  This time Gunnar didn’t listen to his prophetic friend.

To Be Continued