There are three main characters in the saga: Gunnar, Njal, and Kari, each the focus of one of the story's three sections.

One of the greatest fighters Iceland has ever known, Gunnar is an adventurer turned farmer who becomes Njal's closest friend and who is admired and loved by Njal's three sons. Yet Gunnar is a man who lives and therefore dies by the sword—or, rather, the halberd—and his heroic death is an important element in the fatal web of circumstances leading to the novel's central episode—the burning alive of Njal and his family.

Wise, second-sighted Njal, who cannot grow a beard and whose temperament differs so greatly from that of his best friend, is the real hero of the novel to modern readers. He is slow to anger and reluctant to shed blood, although when his time...