ok varð gengit lengra en hann ætlaði
"and he went further than he intended"
(Yngvars saga víðförla)
does the combination ´verða' + pp. mean exactly the same as a simple
indicative? This is how Pálsson and Edwards translate it in Vikings
in Russia. In English to say "he HAPPENED to go further than he
intended" would add a sense that it was pure chance and not intended
by anyone or caused by anything in particular: it didn´t necessarily
*have* to happen that way, it just did. Does `verða' ever convey a
similar sense, or is the auxilliary verb completely superfluous to
the meaning in such cases.
The nearest I can find in Zoega´s entry for VERÐA is:
þeim varð litit til hafs
"they happened to look seaward"
(Other examples of 'verða' + pp. are passive, or have meanings
like "to become", or with dative "to befall someone".)
And how about phrases like: hann lét verða farit "he went"; hann lét
hana verða tekna "he seized her". Zoega in these examples just uses
the English indicative, and there doesn´t seem to be any suggestion
of chance involved.
Here's another idiom where `verða' doesn't seem to add any extra
meaning: Henni varð þat fyrir at hún bítr einn þeirra til bana
(Völsunga saga), at least not in Byock's translation: "She bit one
of the brothers to death". The old Magnússon and Morris translation
has: "and the first thing she did was to bite one of those brethren
till he died." Surely no accident. On that sombre note...