I imagine some doctoral advisor with five great manuscripts and six students. This translation seems to have come from the sixth student.
The translator's own notes show indifference to the text: "characterization on the whole [is] somewhat superficial. We look in vain for the ... heroic struggle [of] Njal's saga, ... the dialogue lacks the bite of quick retort; the humor is crude ..." Given that introduction by the text's own English author, it's hard to be stirred by this rendering.
There is so much that can be exciting here. Iceland, around 1000 AD, had a strong democracy and rule of law. In that rough time, man-slaying was not necessarily a crime - not for good and stated reason. If wrong was done, it was made right in local court (the "Thing") or in the nation's high court ("Althing"). Lawsuit was a serious matter, and the preferred way of resolving conflict. Women had property rights in divorce, granted by law and enforced by neighbors who wanted peace no matter who had to die for it. Read Njal's saga - even jury selection had a gut-gripping intensity, when everyone in the room was armed for battle.
Perhaps this translator had only a lesser work to render into English. Half of the sagas were below the median; great products can't come from inferior materials. Still, I'm sure this translator could have worked harder. A tension with the Norwegians could have been called out. English, even British suffixes replaced the originals and lost their savor, for example where "Nollarsstead" renders "Nollar's home". Some sentences simply defy sense, as in "... I've been living in great discomfort and now I want to marry." Huh? 'Discomfort' is horniness? Or lack of house manager? No matter what the words, a translator should present the sense of a passage.
I value the literature of early Europe, and I am sure that Iceland's early democracy will interest modern Libertarians (or Heinlein fans, or Ayn Rand fans). I am very sorry that this is not the book that shows that value or stirs that interest.
//wiredweird
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