William wrote:

>See Fjolsvinnsmal 30 for a clever use of this type of
>confusion (Víðópnis völum) concerning the golden cock
>perched on the \\world-Tree. The stanza speaks of a
>luminous scythe found among Vidofnir\'s feathers.
>Vidofnir, the \"wide open\", perched atop the Tree,
>represents the open sky.

Obi Wan (or Eysteinn or whoever) has taught you well...

public static void main (String[] args)

I just wanted to highlight the point about common forms.

A normal weak feminine noun (don\'t worry, we aren\'t
there yet!) ends with \'a\' in the nominative and \'u\' in
the accusative; like so:

nom. kona Sunna
acc. konu Sunnu

Remember (and this you have learnt already) that \"A u
in a grammatical ending changes a preceding \'a\' to
an \'ö\' by *U-MUTATION* \". This is what happens
to \'vala\'.

nom. vala
acc. völu

Also know that in Old Icelandic \'v\' and \'u\' cannot
coexist; this is what happens to \'völva\'.

nom. völva
acc. völu

There is no problem with this in the modern language,
though, we now decline it like this.

nom. völva
acc. völvu

And since we\'re already here we can note that the
Icelandic word for \'computer\' is formed on the basis
of \'völva\'. The idea is that it is a merger of two
words \'tala\' = number and \'völva\' = sybil, thus \'tölva\'.

nom. tölvu
acc. tölvu (OIce \'tölu\';)

OIce: Haukr á tölu. Óskarr á ok tölu...
MIce: Haukur á tölvu. Óskar á og tölvu...

Oh, well, back to Java...

Haukur