Hi Alyssean,
I think many of these are just standard phrases,
and analysis can only bring you so far. In the
end one has to accept the general usage such terms
have had, and still have. In some cases the exact
meanings may even have been lost. One can then only hope
that a careful consideration of modern meanings will
make one feel more comfortable with certain older meanings
that one chooses among the alternatives.

The meaning, after comparing several translations, seems
to be that horses often have a habit of "shying away"
from direct human contact: Often they may indeed be inquisitive,
but when you try to approach them within a couple of feet
the usually "move away" -- hence the preposition "undan",
as our Swedish friend documented so well with examples
from Swedish.

("to shy" = to recoil)

And so I do very much agree with you that the text
by itself does not supply you with sufficient evidence for
particular meanings. It is more like recognizing a situation
before one's inner eye, that make things clear. Of course,
Iceland being a unique setting, it is a matter of "knowing
your Icelandic" first, before you are able to see the meanings
clearly. Myself, having the handicap of only knowing Norwegian,
I find that things often make sense in terms of Norwegian
references. But then, of course, I do miss things when the text
touches upon things that are typically Icelandic and that
differ elsewhere.

"Ok er hann kom til hrossanna, þá elti hann þau, ok váru þau nú
skjörr, er aldrei váru vön at ganga undan manni, nema Freyfaxi einn;
hann var svá kyrr sem hann væri grafinn niðr."

The general meaning here (a crucial point in the tragedy)
is that Einarr _wanted_ to take one of the other horses.
But on that particular day, the horses that were quite easy
to approach on other days, were now recoiling from contact.
And strangely enough it was _only_ the forbidden Freyfaxi
that made himself available that day -- because he stood
as if his feet were buried in deep sand.



kyrr - don't rock the boat, but stay 'kyrr'.
(still, quiet, peaceful)


Best regards
Xigung



--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Alan Thompson" <athompso@...>
wrote:

> Hi Xigung
>
> Thanks for your reply. Your analysis is enlightening on a general

level, but I have to say, for me, the text still does not provide
sufficient evidence that it is the sheep that are being moved to the
shieling or that sel here refers the pastures rather than the shed. I
guess we'll just have to leave it at that.

>
> With respect to the "ganga undan" issue from another of my messages,

I suspect you are right, but I still can't help thinking that a horse
being ridden could be visualised as a horse "walking out from
underneath a man," just that the horse isn't totally successful
because the man remains on its back!

>
> By the way, your computer does weird things to my text. I wonder:

does that happen for anyone else, either when you read their messages,
or when they read mine? It seems to happen mainly when I have my
keyboard set to the Icelandic keyboard.

>

I think it is because the new "unicode" is incredibly complicated,
with thousands and thousands of strange characters from all over
the world. One therefore has to make sure that one chooses the
right settings, both when sending, as well as when receiving
unicode/formated text. I have little experience with it yet.
But as a rule, it is good to consider that what you send always
tends to behave in almost any strange way, whenever you
dare to go beyond good old ASCII. Personally, I have often
used the iso-8859-Latin-1 chars. But I know now that lots of
people were probably never able to receive it properly.
Maybe that is why there are quite a few new systems around
that go beyond the once so simple HTML, and now you have "java
script", "XML" and other stuff that I do not quite understand.

> Alysseann