That is true Arlie.
I also use for example Geir T. Zoëga's English-Icelandic dictionary.
That usually works, because Old Norse is mostly a subset of modern
Icelandic, with only very small differences in spelling. And the
differences in spelling are usually predictable too.

I think the reason why there is no Eng.-ON dictionary available,
is because it is not necessary when you merely read ON texts
and are not interested in learning to *speak* Old Norse -- an
almost impossible task any way -- see the posts by Gordon who
has discussed this topic in a very interesting way.

Also, maybe the first philologists who began to explore Old Norse
texts were mostly Icelanders and other Scandinavians, and here
quite a few words recur in both languages, so that they usually
knew what to look for, if they had a need for it.

*But* when the Zoëga dictionary of Old Icelandic finally gets launced
onto the net in html-form, then the "reverse lookup" process will
become much facilitated, because you can then always use the computers
"Search and find" feature, and look for the English word you are interested in.

And of course you can already do it that way, if you download from a
suitable net-site copies of, say, Njål's saga. You will then need
two copies of Njåls saga, one English one and one Old Norse one.
If both have the same chapter numbers you can usually find the word
you seek without too much trouble.

Keth

>Hi,
>
>On Tue, May 29, 2001 at 10:36:25AM -0500, Brady.Boyd wrote:
>> Hello:
>>
>> I am curious if anybody knows of any online English to Old Norse dictionary
>> that is available?
>>
>> Thank you.
>
>As far as I can tell, there's nothing at all, neither offline nor online,
>in print or out of print.
>
>Everything I've seen has been focussed strictly on going from ON to English.
>The best I've been able to do for going the other direction has been to
>take a side trip through modern Icelandic.
>
>Very annoying. I found it really useful to explore synonyms when I was
>learning Latin. (It helps in getting an idea of shades of meaning.)
>
>--
>Arlie
>
>(Arlie Stephens arlie@...)
>
>