Sunday Whatever – Njal the Beardless, Life Coach by Michael Bloor

A piece that didn’t fit neatly into any category and yet was just too good to let to. So, a Sunday Treat from long time friend of the site Michael Bloor. Check out his back catalogue, it’s impressive.

Njal the Beardless, Life Coach

All of Alan Arkwright’s university colleagues were frightened of Prof Blenkinsop, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. ‘Bloodlust’ Blenkinsop would probably have been a good deal happier in life if he’d been a Field Marshall in the army, say, or the Governor of Dartmoor Prison. As a mere dean in an undistinguished university, his powers over his subordinates, although considerable, were less than the power of life and death. It seemed to grieve him that he wasn’t empowered to order a mere lecturer, like Alan, to attack a machine gun emplacement armed only with a pair of scissors. Naturally, he sought some compensation in belittling comments and sneering humour.

A favourite blood sport, as they passed each other in the corridors, was for the dean to refer to Alan’s comparative lack of academic publications. ‘Publish or perish’ is the clarion call in the modern university. Bloodlust affected puzzlement that Alan had not yet perished. The dean liked to link Alan’s lack of publications to Alan’s specialist field, that of Oral History – the the study of the transmission of historical facts by word-of-mouth, from generation to generation and from epoch to epoch. ‘Better switch from oral history to the printed word, Arkwright, that’s if you want to get enough publications under your belt to be given a new contract.’ Etc, etc. Managerial threats in the guise of collegial advice.

On Saturday last week, Alan had been in Sadlergate seeking a new pair of shoes to replace his tattered and leaky suede boots. He’d suddenly noticed Bloodlust on the other side of the road, waiting to cross at the traffic lights. Alan’s nerve failed him. He executed a swift left-turn into the Oxfam second-hand bookshop, and hid behind a photographic display of Famine Relief in The Yemen. A minute limped and dragged by: no new customers entered the shop.

Alan filled his lungs and lived once again. He noticed the bearded guy at the shop till was looking at him. Alan smiled and feigned interest in the books displayed behind him. A Penguin Classics volume caught his eye: Njal’s Saga.* He’d never read it, never thought of reading it, but he knew it occupied a small niche in the Oral History canon.

Contained within the saga is a short passage about a calamitous defeat for Viking forces at The Battle of Clontarf in Ireland on Good Friday in 1014. Sigtrygg Silkbeard, the Viking King of Dublin, had called forth a Norse alliance of warriors to attempt to wrest the crown of the High King of Ireland from King Brian Boru. Vikings came from all over the western islands – The Hebrides, The Isle of Man, The Orkneys, The Faroes, and from Iceland. Nevertheless, the Vikings were out-numbered by the Irish and eventually forced to retreat back towards Dublin. But Dublin, in those days, was sited just on the south bank of the tidal River Liffey, with only one bridge over the river to Clontarf. The Irish managed to cut off the Vikings’ retreat to the bridge and the retreat became a rout. The Vikings tried to ford the river, but there was a very high tide that day, coinciding with the time of the retreat, and many of the warriors were drowned. The saga singles out the fate of one Icelandic warrior, Hrafn the Red:

“Hrafn the Red was chased into a river, and there he seemed to see down into the depths of Hell itself, with devils trying to drag him down. He said, ‘Your dog has run twice to Rome already, Saint Peter, and would do it a third time if you allowed it.’ Then the devils released him and he managed to reach the other bank of the river” (p.348).

A nineteenth-century Irish scholar, knowing the reported date of the battle, had calculated the tide pattern for that day. And, just as the sagaman had written, there was indeed a very high Spring tide that afternoon. The saga had only existed in oral form for three long centuries before the sagaman transcribed it. A testimony to the potential historical accuracy of oral histories.

Alan bought the book and figured he’d skim through it to get to the bit about the Battle of Clontarf and the drownings. But the battle occurs close to the end of the book and, as he read on, Alan found himself being drawn into the drama of the saga. Two firm friends, the lawyer and wiseman Njal Thorgeirson, and the great warrior Gunnar Hammundson, through a succession of misfortunes and misunderstandings, find themselves in opposite camps in an increasingly furious blood-feud, that culminates in the slaying first of all of Gunnar, and then the burning of Njal and his family in their own house. Various of those burners eventually perish in The Battle of Clontarf.

Alan is much taken with Njal’s character. First of all, unusually, he is beardless and is the butt of jokes and insults about his masculinity (despite the sons who perish with him at the burning). Secondly, he is a sage: he foresees the damage and blood-letting that lies ahead and uses all his powers of persuasion and knowledge of Icelandic law to seek to set things right. And thirdly, because he is indeed foreseeing, he knows that all his efforts will be in vain: he only desists when his sons are slain and his house is well alight. The saga is a story of Fate and Honour. Njal knows his fate, but the honourable course is to struggle against it to the last.

With so much ill-luck and misunderstanding, it only takes one Iago-like evil figure to stir the pot. In this case, the malevolent devil is Gunnar’s second cousin, Mord Valgardson. Fairly or not, Alan sees parallels between Mord and Bloodlust Blenkinsop. And rightly or not, Alan takes courage from Njal’s honourable death. No more skulking in Oxfam bookshops. From now on, like a saga hero, Alan will take arms against Fate. He will ‘do the deed and abide it.’

*Njal’s Saga, translated by Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pȧlsson. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.

Michael Bloor