> Þangbrandur skaut spjóti í gegnum Þorvald en Guðleifur hjó á öxlina

og frá ofan höndina og var það hans bani.

> Thangbrand shot through Thorvald with a spear and Gudleif hewed at

the shoulder and down away (went) the arm and it was his death.

CV "hann hjó frá ofan höndina, separated, cut off the hand".
MM & HP: "G. hacked off his arm at the shoulder".

höndina = hönd + the accusative suffixed article, 'ina', so it can't
be the subject here. You're translation "away" makes me wonder if you
were thinking of 'undan' "away"? 'ofan' on its own = "down(wards),
from above".

> Holy leaping comorants, Batman! Seriously tho, we need little

numbers beside each word in the bleeping verse to tell us what order
to put the words in to even begin to make sense of it. Then it would
be good if the words would be in the dictionary. But apart from that,
it was fine!

Heh, heh. Did you spot this [
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norse_course/message/9245 ]? I
tried using different colours to show which words go with which. It
nearly worked; you just have to pretend that 'tanna' in line two is
red like the rest of 'Tekka ek við hleypi-skarfi hvarfs tanna.'

The next bit of verse isn't so tangled, but here's my attempt at
unravelling Steinunn's two stanzas that come after that [
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norse_course/message/9249 ].

Some skaldic poetry links:

http://www.septentrionalia.net/lex/index.php (Lexica poetica)
http://www.septentrionalia.net/etexts/index.php (Finnur Jónsson's
Skjaldedigtning)
http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/ugm/ (kennings of battle)
http://www.skaldic.arts.usyd.edu.au/db.php (Skaldic Poetry of the
Scandinavian Middle Ages)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IeH5Eo5Gp2QC (Google Books preview
of 'Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur Skaldischen Poetik' by
Rudolf Meissner)