AThompson" wrote:
>
> Hereâs my translation and grammar notes. Comments on underlined
sections would be appreciated.
> vinsælli: (ll. 686, 688) I presume this is the comparative form.
Hi Alan,
I agree shat vinsælli ought to be the comparative form.
You might look upon it as if the "l" has the property
of being able to absorb the "r" that is standard for the comparative
form, hence you get a doubling of the "l". I see it,
in other words, as a contracted form of "vinsælari".
(but I haven't checked it with the grammar books yet, so it
is only a hypothesis thus far)
> sem mest skip (l. 678), sem mest land (l. 679): What function is sem
performing in these phrases?
To me it seems like an English "as":
à þenna tÃma kómu sem mest skip af Noregi til Ãslands.
At this time ships came "as most" from Norway to Iceland.
To me it seems like a description of the intensity of
the ship traffic. "The traffic was at its maximum", we might
say today. Maybe short for "as it was when it was greatest".
The combination "sem mest" is not uncommon. Here is another example
from Njáls saga:
"Hljópu þeir á hesta sÃna og hleyptu út á Skaftá sem mest máttu
þeir og urðu svo hræddir að þeir komu hvergi til bæja ..."
"They jumped onto their horses and rode out to Skaftá as fast
as the could, and they became so scared that they neither came
to the farm ..." (something like that -- interesting btw,
that there are two similar verbs hleypa and hlaupa)
Well, as you see in the example, it only makes sense to translate
"sem mest" with "as fast as". And so one sees that the "sem" part
has something to do with the English word "as" in such contexts.
Regards
Xigung