> I know several people have already posted
> translations that are more or less correct,
> but just to show Erich and I are doing the
> work, heres what we came up with:
Thank you! It helps to know that people are
participating - it's encouraging for Konrad
and me. Any other lurkers there?
Your translation is good. I only see one mistake;
the common one of misunderstanding 'inn mesti
kynþáttr'.
> 'settusk' seems to have a middle-voice ending;
> I don't think I saw the use of the middle voice
> in the online lessons, but I translated it,
> by analogy with the Attic middle voice, in a
> reflexive sense: 'they put themselves' (actually,
> in Attic Greek, it could have meant 'they put
> there for their own sake', or, more likely, some
> complicated idiomatic meaning).
> Could we get a brief digression on the use of
> the middle voice?
Yes!
First the historic perspective. The Indo-European
middle voice was in its death-throes in Proto-Norse.
The only remnant in Old Norse is the duality of the
verb 'heita'. It has two sets of endings, one for
transitive meaning and one for intransitive meaning.
Ek heit hann Hauk.
I call him Haukr
Ek heiti Haukr.
I call myself Haukr
Sometime in the Proto-Norse period a new middle voice
was built - using the reflexive pronoun.
Hann ver sik. -> Hann versk.
He defends himself.
The meaning is originally reflexive but over time many
idiomatic usage cases develop. I'm tight on time here;
perhaps Konrad could be bothered for a few examples?
For the grammatical endings see this site:
http://hem.passagen.se/peter9/gram/index.html
Kveðja,
Haukur