Hi Grace!

I hope I can help with
ef þó væri mõrg õnnur til.

ef and þó are both conjunctions which can be used separately or together.
Although they look like the English "if" and "though", I believe the sense
of them when put together in this context is more like our conjunction
"since".

væri is the past subjunctive of vera meaning "were". vera til is really a
phrasal verb - we have lots of those in English where we use a verb plus
preposition and it´s the prep which slightly alters the meaning of the verb.
In this case the "til" alters the meaning of vera slightly - from "to be" to
"to exist" or in more everyday language "to be there"

mõrg õnnur are both neuter plural forms of margr (many) and annarr (other).
Many other what, you might ask?! Well, in the previous sentence he had been
talking about þeim hesti and since hestr is a masculine noun I would have
expected "many other" to be in the masculine plural. But perhaps he's
thinking more generally of any horse - masc/fem so he used the neuter plural
to account for both. (Or perhaps he thought he'd used word hross which is
neuter anyway!!!)

So put all together and you get ... since there were many other horses
there.

Kveðja,
Sarah.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred & Grace Hatton" <hatton@...>
To: <norse_course@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 2:07 PM
Subject: [norse_course] troubles with the translation


> Could someone help me out with these sections that I clearly didn't get.
>
> ef þó væri mõrg õnnur til.
> if he were to (see) another day (?)
>
> er aldri váru võn at ganga undan manni,
> there was little hope of getting them under saddle,(or the horses
> weren’t used to having people near them?)
>
> Thanks!
> Grace
>
> Fred & Grace Hatton
> Hawley, Pa.
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