Probably because of his boastfulness. IIRC it wasn’t considered a good thing to boast about your achievements or be too proud of your achievements in Viking Age Norse society.
BTW, I’ve always thought the sagas would make good TV soap operas-- especially Njál’s saga.
From Njal’s Saga (but you knew that already), which I read and enjoyed as a college student many years ago.
As I said above I think Njal’s saga could be easily made into a modern-day soap opera. The English form of Njal/Niul/Niall is Neil. Njal was a medieval Icelandic lawyer married to a wealthy woman who got entagled in a marriage dispute between a friend and a FOAF’s wife. In particular Hallgerd and Gunnhild would be great villainous characters. “YOU HIT ME! I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!”
Good subject for a poll: “Would you watch a soap opera based on a medieval story?”(assuming you watch soap operas as a guilty pleasure. Or hey forget soap operas, what about plain TV drama?)
EDIT to the last post: I’m not of course implying that hitting your partner or being hit by your partner is a good thing or should be forgivable.
Of course not. 
The few sagas I’ve read have some nasty personal relations going on.
That’s why I say they’d make great period dramas… who else agrees with me?
Thanks, that makes sense but I thought it was kind of harsh, its one thing to be boastful and to be full of it but another to be actually capable of doing what you’re boasting about. Its not a nice character trait but you have to give him props for actually pulling it off.
Personally I found the saga rather uninteresting though it did have its moments, everytime they came to an agreement you just knew some jerk would break it and a new round of blood-letting would begin and the last third was more like a legal drama than anything else.
But… HALLGERD! She’s such a vamp that if I were an actress and someone was adapting Njáls saga into a drama I would go audition for the role of Hallgerd (and if they were doing Laxdaela saga it would be Gudrun). Seriously, most female characters in the sagas would make meaty dramatic roles in plays and TV series.
Part of Game of Thrones is shot in Iceland. That popular series is a bloody soap opera–with a hint of the supernatural. I’d be interested in sagas adapted for the screen…
It certainly could be interesting if done well, as much as I dislike the whole fascination with ‘gritty and realistic’ in storytelling these days when its not appropriate (Man of Steel, I’m looking at you) it could work well for an adaptation of Njal’s Saga.
I did like Gunnar and Njal, both men trying to do the right thing while everyone else around them were determined to screw it up.
Ian McKellen should play Snorri Goði. I don’t think he does many TV dramas… Romola Garai should play Hallgerðour.
Hallgerður
I’ll start:
Njál: ?
Gunnar: Richard Armitage
Hallgerður: Romola Garai
Hoskuld: ?
Snorri Goði: Ian MacKellen
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What fascinates me about the sagas is the morality. This was a time when a blood feud with your rival was accepted when I could goad my (hypothetical) husband/boyfriend to kill someone else… when one of the reasons you could divorce your husband or wife was for crossdressing. Imagine a world in which that sort of thing still existed in Iceland and Scandinavia…
[Translation](http://www.vsnr-webpublications.co.uk/The%20Story%20Of%20Raud %20And%20His %2Sons) of the story.
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A random thought occurred to me:
Quite a few of the family sagas would make good Western plots.