Hi Alan!
 
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this one but I´ve had the flu and am only just catching up with my emails.  (Also apologies if Jed has already responded and I am repeating old news).
 
You asked
How do you know the sheep are the subject here? i.e. in
.. siðan var foert í sel
 
Well, to be honest, I deduced this from the context rather than from the grammar.  It seems to be a passive construction and since animals (specifically, sheep) were driven to shielings by people, I put a subject in which wasn´t there in the original because English requires that.  As you say, Gordon has fé as a neuter noun meaning cattle, sheep, money or possessions - when we were doing the Færeyingar saga we discovered fé can have more the meaning "chattels"  (although that´s rather old-fashioned now.)
 
Cheers,
Sarah.
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Thompson
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 7:00 AM
Subject: RE: [norse_course] to Sarah from Jed re- 'foera'

Hi Jed and Sarah.

 

As I asked in my posting yesterday: How do you know the sheep are the subject here? The verb var is 3rd person singular which, normally would preclude a plural subject but I note the þau fé is used later as grammatical singular for plural sense, so I can´t rule sheep out on that score. On the other hand, there hasn´t been any mention of the sheep in the previous ten sentences of the text, so how could they suddenly become the understood subject of this sentence?

 

While I wasn´t entirely happy with my version, the best I could come up with was: “He (ie Einarr) was brought (moved) to the shieling…”.

 

Incidentally, I note that Terry Gunnell´s translation in ‘The Sagas of the Icelanders’  (ed. Jane Smiley) (Penguin, 2000) translates this line: ‘The sheep were driven up to a shieling near the head of Hrafnkelsdal, a place called Grjotteigsssel.’ The introduction states that this translation was based on the main text, AM 551 c 4to, and notes that the saga is found in more than one version; although Gordon does not specify which manuscript his text is from. Maybe the sheep are mentioned explicitly in the some of the other texts.

 

Alysseann

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald Mcharg [mailto:Gerald.Mcharg@...]
Sent: Tuesday, 18 November 2003 9:07 AM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [norse_course] to Sarah from Jed re- 'foera'

 

Sarah

           I've been looking at Zoega's definitions of 'foera' and nowhere does he provide examples of it being used in a temporal sense - but there again he doesn't give examples of it being used as an impersonal construction either. I've gone off my own interpretation of Einarr moving himself to the shieling. I like Laura's idea of moving the sheep better.

Cheers,

Jed


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