The Burning

Civil war surged across Iceland in the first half of the thirteenth century. In addition to land and sea battles, civic leaders were assassinated and gangs fired homes with families inside. As violence subsided an unknown author sat down to write about mob killings, burnt halls, revenge and the reconciliation that has to happen if life is to go on. Although this story was set more than two hundred years in the past, for both author and audience the tale was as true as the tragedies they had witnessed in their own lifetimes. Family genealogies, farmstead locations, and even legal texts from court hearings were included in the account. But did those events really happen? Why did an author spend so much effort to recount the distant past, when happenings of the day must have been of much greater interest? The Burning is a story about this unknown author, told alongside the author's contribution to Norse literature, the Brennu-Njall Saga. Interwoven with repeated instances of escalating violence are Viking raids, the establishment and operation of Iceland's law courts, the adoption of Christianity in Iceland, and scenes from daily life in the rugged farm communities that thrived on the Arctic Circle a millennium ago.