Njal, the Burners and the Rule of Law

Or Why I Became a Lawyer

In the 1970s a college buddy married an Icelandic gal. I went there for the wedding. While there, we visited Thingvellir. Sometime later I read Njal’s Saga.

I just re-read Njal’s Saga and am dipping in and out of William Ian Miller’s book, Bloodtaking and peacemaking : feud, law, and society in saga Iceland.

After college I co-founded a small company in Austin devoted to intensive, 30-day one-on-one English courses for middle- and top-management executives from the steel and glass industries from Monterrey, Mexico. Our company had to fold when the Mexican peso devalued in the early 1980s.

Adrift, I did what many adrift liberal arts majors did: I went to law school, with the vague notion of becoming a water lawyer. Water law was and still is big in my native Colorado, and my uncle, Philip Danielson, was a famous water lawyer. I thought, why not?

Well, my law school did not offer any water law courses during my time there. But I did take immigration law, and from 1985 until last month, I’ve done nothing but. (Last month I successfully concluded my last case, a birthright citizenship case that took over 19 years to litigate. I’ve switched my Colorado bar license status to “inactive.”)

So what does all that have to do with Njal’s Saga?

Simplifying to a near-kindergarten level, Njal’s Saga recounts a roughly 50-year blood feud in medieval Iceland, culminating in the deaths of Njal and many of his kin by being burned alive in their home. Njal was skilled in Icelandic law, and the fundamental quote for me is, “With laws shall our land be built up, but with lawlessness laid waste.” Central to life in Iceland at that time was the annual gathering at the Althing at Thingvellir, where for three weeks many feuds and disputes would be litigated, arbitrated and/or settled according to Icelandic law, which was, at that time, almost rococo in complexity.

As far as we can tell, life in medieval Iceland was a mix of the drudgery of pastoralism in a harsh environment, punctuated by raids, feuds and killings, often sparked by insults to one’s honor or a family’s honor, mediated by the annual Althing.

In short, I was struck by the fact that a (periodically) very violent society would “cease fire” on an annual basis to settle (or at least postpone) disputes with words rather than weapons. I figured, that’s for me. Hence, the law.

The sobering tragedy, however, is that, then as now, the rule of law is a fragile bulwark against our seemingly bottomless addiction to aggression. Despite Njal’s legal prowess, he could not prevent his own death, nor the years of continued feuding thereafter. (And Miller reminds his readers, over and over, that the threat of violence was constant, even during the Althing.)

Today’s “burners” are similarly addicted to fighting, and only time will tell if our legal system is strong enough to keep anarchy and further bloodshed at bay. Things look dark, but I have hope, hope in the dark.