Even those students already familiar with other aspects of the Middle Ages will probably be surprised by the barbarity and bleakness of Iceland during the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Burning of Njal is a tale set primarily on the farms and homesteads of the Icelandic people. As such, it explores the often violent domestic sphere of those same Vikings who, sailing their longships, terrorized less warlike civilizations and discovered Greenland, America, and other new lands.

Geographically, the Iceland of the Middle Ages resembled the Iceland of today.

Stony and volcanic, with glaciers and hot streams, it was then and remains now a treeless land of short summers and long, dark winters. Against this desolate backdrop, the fierce emotions that drive the characters in The Burning of Njal stand out in particularly striking contrast.