Document Type
Review
Publication Date
1985
Abstract
There is little recommend this book. It is ill-conceived and poorly executed. The author's thesis is that the saga-writer intentionally distorted and varied his presentation of the law of the lawbooks in order to show a society being destroyed by uncontrolled egoism, pride, and envy, a society characterized by willful arbitrariness, disorder, and disarray, with few rules to respect and little respect for the few rules that were there. The validity of the thesis is never really tested because the law which the saga-writer distorts is not even minimally established, nor for that matter is the law the saga-writer does portray with sufficient care.
Recommended Citation
Miller, William I. Review of Njáls saga: Rechtsproblematik im Dienste soziokultureller Deutung, by C. L. Gottzmann. Scandinavian Stud. 57, no. 1 (1985): 84-5.