Hi David,

Don´t know if this will help. It comes in three parts. If the
grammar get too tangled, you can skip to "names" at the end for some
lighter reading. If it's too much to take in one sitting, try it in
little bits. If it's still too confusing, look at other people's
explanations: one is bound to do the trick. Different ways of
learning suit different people. Alan says "no pain, no gain", but
it's also good to learn gently in waves, like the tide coming in,
and leave it when your head gets too full, and come back to it when
you feel like. The general principles of agreement between nouns
and adjectives is the same as in Latin, Greek, Russian and German.


Stems.
Inflections and agreement between nouns and adjectives.
Case.
Names.


STEMS.

Sad truth is, there´s no sure-fire way to know what endings a noun
will take just from the dictionary form. There are sometimes clues,
but not always reliable. That´s why Old Norse dictionaries have to
identify which group a noun belongs to. One way of doing that is to
give the gender (either masculine, feminine or neuter) plus the
genitive singular form (see below for explanation of these terms)
and the nominative plural -- and maybe other forms, for rarer or
irregular types.

a-stem, i-stem, etc. are labels often used for
different "declensions" of nouns. (In Latin, these are sometimes
just numbered: first declension, second declension, etc.) These are
the various types of noun, each of which types has its own set
(pattern or "paradigm") of inflectional endings. You´re right that
they refer, confusingly enough, to letters that no longer exist in
Old Norse. Consonant stems historically added the endings directly
onto the word, with no intervening stem vowel. E.g. a-stem, *harmaz

> harmr; u-stem *skelduz > *skealduz > skjöldr; i-stem *gastiz >

gestr; consonant stem *mannz > maðr. The * here indicates a
hypothetical ancestral form. (Sometimes the missing letters leave a
trace by mutating the vowel of the root.)

Some declensions have only nouns of a particular gender. Others may
have various genders, e.g. there are masculine and feminine i-stems
(each declined somewhat differently in Old Norse); and there are
both masculine and neuter a-stems, declined quite similarly, though
not exactly alike; but the o-stems are all feminine.


INFLECTIONS and AGREEMENT.

Adjectives tend to be more regular than nouns and can be classed
together in one group with just a few differences due to regular
assimilations and contractions. In Proto Norse (the ancestor of Old
Norse), adjectives were classed according to different stem stypes
of their own, but in Old Norse, only traces of ja-/jo-stems survive
in a few adjectives: ríkr, ríkjan; feigr, feigjan. Otherwise, all
adjectives follow the adjectival a-/o-stem declension.

Adjectives must be inflected in various ways to "agree" with nouns
(see below), but ADJECTIVES TAKE NO NOTICE OF WHICH STEM TYPE A NOUN
IS. So the nominative masculine plural of `gamall' "old"
is `gamlir' regardless of whether these are old a-
stem `geldingar' "wethers" or i-stem `grísir' "hogs".

Old Norse nouns take different endings depending on NUMBER (singular
or plural), GENDER (masculine, feminine or neuter; mostly an
arbitrary grammatical idea not strictly related to actual physical
properties, e.g. `nótt' "night" is feminine, `dagr' "day" is
masculine, `barn' "child" neuter, `maðr' "person, man"
masculine, `kona' "woman" feminine, but `kvenmaðr' "woman"
masculine), and CASE -- see next section.

Any adjective describing a noun "agrees" with the noun, which means
that it has to have adjectival endings indicating the same number,
gender and case as the noun. In other words, if the noun is
feminine singular accusative, then any adjective that describes it
has to take a feminine singular accusative ending for adjectives.
Some of the adjective endings are the same as the noun endings (góðr
maðr, masc.nom.sg.), but others are different (góða höll,
fem.acc.sg.). E.g. in the nominative:

góðr maðr "a good man"
góðir menn "good men"
gott barn "a good child"
góð börn "good children"
góð kona "a good woman"
góðar konur "good women"

There is an entirely different but simpler pattern of adjective
endings -- of number, case and gender -- used if the noun is
definite, góði maðrinn "the good man", þessi góði maðr "this good
man". (This is a distinctively Germanic feature, not found in Latin
or Greek.) This is called the "weak" declension of adjectives.
Similarly simple "weak" patterns are used for comparatives and
present participles.


CASES. This is the really alarming bit, because English nouns and
adjectives don't change according to case. But actually English
still has cases for personal pronouns.

I see, nominative (ON ek)
you see ME, accusative (ON mik)
this land is MINE; it´s MY land, genitive (ON mín)
give ME this land: give it to ME, dative (ON mér)

And we still have gender too in the 3rd person singular: he (acc.
him, gen. his, dat. him) and she (her, her, her) -- and as in these
English examples, in some Old Norse words, the same inflection does
more than one job. The only difference with Old Norse is that there
most adjectives and nouns change in this way too, and they often
have different forms in the accusative and dative.

góðr maðr sér mik "a good person sees me"
ek sér góðan mann "I see a good person"
mér þykkir maðrinn góðr "the person seems good to me"

góð höll stendr hér "a good hall stands here"
ek sér góða höll "I see a good hall"

ek sér hana "I see it" (feminine = "her")
hún sér mik "she sees me"

þessir menn eru góðir "these people are good"
þessar konur eru góðar "these women are good"

góðs manns hús "a good person's house"
gott hús manna "a good house of people" (hús "house", neuter)
góðra manna hús "a house of good people"

hús góðrar konu "the house of a good woman"
gef þat góðum manni "give it to a good person"
...góðum mönnum "to good people"
...barni góðra manna "to a child of good people"
gott barn gefr henni gott gull "a good child gives her good gold"
(gull "gold", neuter)


NAMES. If you're just interested in making up names, don't worry
about all the different cases. Names of individuals and peoples
would normally be given in English in the nominative -- that's the
dictionary form, e.g. Þórr (accusative Þór, genitive Þórs, dative
Þóri), Freyr (acc. Frey, gen. Freys, dat. Frey) -- or else adapted
to English spelling. When adapted to English spelling, one practice
used by a lot of translators is to remove the final –r of the
nominative singular inflection when it comes after a consonant,
thus: Thor, Odin, Frey. But Baldr keeps its –r because in this name
it´s part of the root Baldr (accusative Baldr, genitive Baldrs,
dative Baldri). Hymir keeps his –r in English transcriptions
because there the –r follows a vowel. A bit arbitrary, but that´s
just how they do it. I suppose it's traditional. In the name Óðinn
(accusative Óðinn, genitive Óðins, dative Óðni), the final –r of the
nominative has been assimilated to the /n/. *Wóðanaz > *Wóðanz >
*Óðanr > Óðinn, and then the double /nn/ was extended to the
accusative by analogy. It´s usually transcribed Odin according to
the system most used nowadays.

You would probably quote the Old Norse name of a people in the
nominative plural when writing in English, Grikkir "Greeks", Þroendr
(a Norwegian tribe). A literal "father of all (but not
Alföðr `Allfather' = Odin)" I suppose would be `föðr alls' -- but
that might still suggest the god to non-Icelandic readers, just by
virtue of being put into Old Norse.

Llama Nom