Heil Arlie!

> I'm sorry I'm so late with this. I was away the weekend
> it came out, and after that it was Christmas week, which
> tends to be chaotic.

You hardly have to apologize to me - I haven't done a thing
here for a long time. It's strange that a period of time that,
when you look at the calendar, seems full of vacation can end
up so exceptionally busy.

> I hope your exams went well.

So do I - but I won't know for a few days still.

> I've done things a little differently this time.
> My initial translation is in ordinary text, with
> comments in (). As usual, I had a lot of trouble
> in the first pass, and don't really think I'd have
> gotten anywhere without the hints provided by Konrad's
> vocabulary list. This time, instead of correcting
> earlier translation/comments based on that list, I'm
> putting revisions in [], so you can see what sort of
> things I'm struggling with.

Thanks! That gives me lots of extra information.

> > Nú litlu síðar kømr Sigurðr í búðina til bróður síns ok mælti:
> >"Tak þú nú silfrit, nú er samit kaupit."
>
> Now a little later Sigurð comes into the booth to his brother
> and said: "Take you now the silver, now (it) is the same bargain".

The participle 'samit' is from the verb 'semja'.
We've translated "Nú er samit kaupit" as
"Now the bargain is struck".

>> Hann svarar: "Ek fekk þér silfrit skömmu."
> He answered: "I gave you the silver a little while ago."

Correct.

> > "Nei", segir Sigurðr; "ek hefi ekki á því tekit."
>
> "No", says Sigurð, "I have not taken it from that".
> (I am so lost with these little adverbial phrases like "á því"...)
> [After reading Konrad's vocab list:
> "No", says Sigurð, "I have not touched it".

A combination of verb and preposition is (in my book)
called 'a phrasal verb'. Both English and Icelandic are
crawling with them. The meaning is usually unpredictable.
When I was learning English at school I remember this as
one of the most difficult things.

It's so unfair :-) Say I've learnt the meaning of the
English verb COME. I think I'm doing alright - but then
a mean little phrasal verb like COME TO turns up. There
is no way on Earth that I can figure out from the meaning
of COME and that of TO that COME TO means 'regain consciousness'.

It's the same with Icelandic. You think you know what
KOMA means - you even know how to conjugate the verb.
You also think you know, more or less, what the preposition
FYRIR means. But that's just not enough to figure out
that KOMA FYRIR means 'destroy'.

Sometimes we're lucky and English and Icelandic have a
similar phrasal verb - KOMA FRAM is close in meaning as
well as form to COME FORTH.

More later.

Kveðja,
Haukur