George Webbe Dasent

The Story of Burnt Njal from the Icelandic of the Njals Saga George Webbe Dasent

In two respects these Icelanders win more of our sympathy than the Greeks and Trojans; for they, like ourselves, are of Northern blood, and in their mighty strivings are unassisted by the gods. In the present volume Sir George Dasenfs preface has been shortened, and his introduction, which everyone who is interested in old Icelandic life and history should make a point of reading in the original edition, has been considerably abridged. The three appendices, treating of the Vikings, Queen Gunnhillda, and money and currency in the tenth century, have been also exised, and with them the index. There remains the Saga itself (not a word of Sir George Dasent ssimple, forcible, clean prose having been touched), with sufficient introductory matter to assist the reader to its fuller appreciation. Sir George Webbe Dasent, D. C. L., the translator of the Njals Saga, was born in 1817 at St. Vincent in the West I ndies, of which island his father was A ttorney-G eneral. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he was distinguished both as a Jine athlete and a good classic. He took his degree in 1840, and on coming to London showed an early tendency towards literature and literary society. The Sterlings were connected with the island of St. Vincent, and as Dasent and John Sterling became close friends, he was a constant guest at Captain Sterlings house in Knightsbridge, which was frequented by many who afterwards rose to eminence in the world of letters, including Carlyle, to whom Dasent dedicated his first book. Dasenfs appointment in 1842 a private secretary to Sir James Cartwright, the British Envoy to the court of Sweden, took him to Stockholm, where under the advice of Jacob Grimm, whom he had met in Denmark, he began that study of Scandinavian literature which has enriched English literature by the present