At 6:31:52 AM on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, Alan Thompson
wrote:

[...]

>> Eigi treystust menn að raska kosti þeirra fyrir Þorleiki.

>> Persons (men) dared not to disturb their (Kotkell´s
>> family´s) situation (ie drive them from their farm, kostr,
>> Z5) for (because of, fyrir, Z11) Þorleikr.

> My reading is closer to Grace's: I take <raska kosti
> þeirra> 'disturb their state/condition' to refer to any
> action that would inconvenience or annoy them.

> To support my translation, I refer to Laxdæla Saga, Mál og
> Menning (RIP L), 1993 student´s edition which provides
> this explanation of the expression: „raska kosti: (hér)
> flæma burt af jörðinni.“ Which I translate as „(drive away
> from the farm/landholding“

Interesting. I just checked to see what M&P do, and they
make it simply 'annoy', and I now see that CV s.v. <kostr>
translates it in this sentence as 'meddle with, disturb'.
Fritner s.v. <raska> uses it to illustrate the sense 'krænke
noget (e-u), forgribe sig derpaa', which, if I understand
correctly, covers a whole range from 'offend' to 'lay
violent hands on'. The phrase isn't footnoted in the old
Altnordische Saga-Bibliothek edition, so the editor (Kålund)
apparently didn't think that it was problematic. Perhaps
one had to have been a native speaker to be sure of the
intended sense?

Brian