Sarah,
Thank you for your comments, especially those about
'hinn' and 'goðu' which I genuinely misunderstood. My inappropriate translation
of 'vil' however, was pure carelessness.
Early retirement probably gives me more leisure
than most people to study Old Norse. Consequently I can do 'Boðvar'
and still have lots of time to go over Gordon's 'Introduction to Old
Norse' again. On re-reading this, I find there are difficult words or phrases
for which Gordon provides a translation in his notes, but gives no grammatical
or semantic reasons to explain how his interpretation comes about, and
often I cannot work out the reasoning behind this. Is there any noble soul out
there who has the skill and the time to help me out ? I wish there
was an Open Universiry course on Old Norse!
Anyhow, on with the translation:
Eigi þorir hann heim at fara heldr. Nú gengr
Boðvarr móti dýrinu;
Not dare he home to go on the
contrary. Now goes Boðvarr against beast the.
On the other hand, he didn't dare go
home. Now Bothvar moved against the beast
þat hfir honum, at sverðit er fast í umgjörðinni,
er hann vildi bregða því.
That befell him, that sword-the
is fast in scabbard-the, which he wanted to draw it.
It was just his
luck that the sword stuck fast in the scabbard, from which he wanted
to draw it.
Boðvarr eggjar nú fast sverðit ok þá bragðar í
umgjörðinni, ok nú fær hann brugðit
Bothvar urges now fast sword-the and
then stirs in scabbard-the, and now was able moved
Boðvarr now worked to free the sword
which was stuck fast, and then he was able to jiggle
umgjörðinni svá at sverðit gengr ór
slíðrunum
scabbard-the so that sword-the goes
out of sheath-the
the scabbard so that the sword
slipped from the sheath.