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Rating: 
Summary: The Forking Paths of Njals Saga
Review: Jon Karl Helgason's review of the myriad forms taken by the matter of Njals Saga bases itself in the discipline of translation studies. This recognises that translations are new works in their own right and are constrained as much by the poetics and ideology of the receptor culture as they are by linguistic elements of the original. Helgason prefaces his study proper with a useful and concise overview of the precepts of translation studies which places his book (and then indeed, this review) at the latter end of the Njals Saga tradition which is not a fixed literary work but rather an ongoing textual tradition, exposed to many and varied influences. These influences, as they apply to the 'rewriting' (translation and/or adaptation) of Njals Saga in the UK, US and Scandinavia between 1861 and 1945, are investigated in some detail. The focus remains firmly on how modern nations, via their literary operatives and agencies, have claimed the saga as an item of variously descended ancestral literature to be applied in the creation or remoulding of a national identity. This process ranges from the obvious, with Njals Saga as the figure head of a proud and distinct cultural heritage in the newly-independent Iceland, to the more obscure with English and American versions recalling Medieval Iceland as the heir to Ancient Greece and, as it were, the cradle of civilisation in the north. There is also a particularly revealing chapter on the role of Njals Saga in distinguishing a Scandinavian identity, separate from other Germanic peoples, during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. The focus is almost exclusively on culture and politics, dealing with the motivation and potential goals of each version at the expense of any analysis of the final works. Thus we learn much of the saga's Nineteenth-Century translation into fledgling written Norwegian, but are left to wonder how the divergences from previous editions in Danish (which hitherto had exerted a cultural and literary hegemony in Norway) may have affected the re-reading of the saga. These differences, while linguistically minor, are touted as sufficient to identify the saga as a culturally and nationally distinct product, but the significance of their impact, if any, on the sense of Njals Saga is not developed. One translator is noted to have 'shortened many of the sagas' but there is neither analysis of how this rewriting altered sagas structurally or artistically, nor investigation into the constraints upon that elision. The only significant analysis of a rewritten saga product is given to the turn of the century adaptation and abridgement by the American, Allen French. Via an exclusive focus on the ideological constraints of the various rewritings, the literary and linguistic investigations teasingly hinted at in the title and introduction remain, alas, unfulfilled. Helgason adopts Jorge Luis Borges's metaphor of the garden of forking paths - the medieval Njals saga inspires inter- and intra-lingual translations, in turn sparking derivatives as diverse as Renaissance Poetry, Victorian Drama, and Twentieth Century children's story books. He provides us with a thorough account of where and why the path forks, but, unfortunately, little insight into where each new turn may take us.
Rating:
Summary: The Forking Paths of Njals Saga
Review: Jon Karl Helgason's review of the myriad forms taken by the matter of Njals Saga bases itself in the discipline of translation studies. This recognises that translations are new works in their own right and are constrained as much by the poetics and ideology of the receptor culture as they are by linguistic elements of the original. Helgason prefaces his study proper with a useful and concise overview of the precepts of translation studies which places his book (and then indeed, this review) at the latter end of the Njals Saga tradition which is not a fixed literary work but rather an ongoing textual tradition, exposed to many and varied influences. These influences, as they apply to the 'rewriting' (translation and/or adaptation) of Njals Saga in the UK, US and Scandinavia between 1861 and 1945, are investigated in some detail. The focus remains firmly on how modern nations, via their literary operatives and agencies, have claimed the saga as an item of variously descended ancestral literature to be applied in the creation or remoulding of a national identity. This process ranges from the obvious, with Njals Saga as the figure head of a proud and distinct cultural heritage in the newly-independent Iceland, to the more obscure with English and American versions recalling Medieval Iceland as the heir to Ancient Greece and, as it were, the cradle of civilisation in the north. There is also a particularly revealing chapter on the role of Njals Saga in distinguishing a Scandinavian identity, separate from other Germanic peoples, during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. The focus is almost exclusively on culture and politics, dealing with the motivation and potential goals of each version at the expense of any analysis of the final works. Thus we learn much of the saga's Nineteenth-Century translation into fledgling written Norwegian, but are left to wonder how the divergences from previous editions in Danish (which hitherto had exerted a cultural and literary hegemony in Norway) may have affected the re-reading of the saga. These differences, while linguistically minor, are touted as sufficient to identify the saga as a culturally and nationally distinct product, but the significance of their impact, if any, on the sense of Njals Saga is not developed. One translator is noted to have 'shortened many of the sagas' but there is neither analysis of how this rewriting altered sagas structurally or artistically, nor investigation into the constraints upon that elision. The only significant analysis of a rewritten saga product is given to the turn of the century adaptation and abridgement by the American, Allen French. Via an exclusive focus on the ideological constraints of the various rewritings, the literary and linguistic investigations teasingly hinted at in the title and introduction remain, alas, unfulfilled. Helgason adopts Jorge Luis Borges's metaphor of the garden of forking paths - the medieval Njals saga inspires inter- and intra-lingual translations, in turn sparking derivatives as diverse as Renaissance Poetry, Victorian Drama, and Twentieth Century children's story books. He provides us with a thorough account of where and why the path forks, but, unfortunately, little insight into where each new turn may take us.
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