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non_radical_centrist  1yr ago (astralcodexten.substack.com)   1352 thread views

Your Book Review: Njal’s Saga

astralcodexten.substack.com

It's a book review submitted to Scott Alexander's blog for his book review contest(not by me, I just enjoyed reading it). It a summary of an Icelandic Saga that's half-fable, half-historical record of a series of legal proceedings in medieval Iceland, and how society that teeters between civilization and barbarism.

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In that sense we are not living in civilization, just the echoes of cowardice and submission of those who came before us and failed to maintain honor and dignity. And our tradition is to carry on with their cowardice and indignity in return for the same poultry amount of silver shillings some loser, whose name was never recorded, had accepted in return for swallowing his humanity.

That's certainly a very different take than the reviewer's. Their attitude was that if instead of accepting silver, a person sought blood to avenge their kin, blood feuds would never end. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. But 50 silver shillings for an eye lets people get back to stability.

There is, however, a whole lot of humanity on display and the story, in my opinion, is much better read as such.

I'm sure there is, but there are also tons of stories with deep emotional resonance. I had to read a couple every year in highschool English. I found the historical/political/legal analysis much more interesting.

I know that's their point, and that's a very common point being made, but it loses all significance. The humanity exists inbetween killing and making amends. Swinging from one to the other. I think 'everyone', on some level, understands that just the same as people obviously understand you can't avenge every killing with more killing. Which equally goes for the people in the story.

As an example from real life, it seems very self serving and onesided to pin civilization on the meek at the same time we have hundreds of thousands of people dying from corporations selling extremely addictive drugs, where they use part of the profit to pay themselves away from any serious consequence. When 'everyone' knows many of the instigators of that system should just be tortured to death for all the harm they've caused, and that no amount of money can right their wrongs.

To that end there are tons of stories with deep historical/political/legal analysis, and they all fail to extrapolate any meaningful reality based observations since they exist as vessels to carry a theory and not as an extension of reality. I think that minimizing the humanity and reality of the story so it can exist as a self congratulatory vessel for the endlessly meek is doing it a great disservice that also distorts it quite heavily.

I don't think the instigators should be tortured to death. I think your quotes on the everyone are very wide.

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