> `vánt at húsum' (line 620). Does this mean that the buildings were
poor in quality or poor in number, ie there weren´t many of them?
CV cites Heimskringa: ór húsi litlu ok vándu. So maybe it means
that what houses there were weren't much good, rather than that it
was lacking 'vanr' (with a short vowel) in houses. But I'm not sure.
> `kálf ok kið' (line 627) while grammatically calf and kid are
singular, does this mean that Hrafnkel literally reared a single
calf and a single kid or is this a more general expression for the
raising of animals?
I think it's collective. That's how Gwyn Jones takes it: "he kept
calf and kid for feeding" (rather than "a/one/the calf and the
a/one/the kid). In Hervarar saga og Heiðreks it says:
Hafa vil ek hálft allt,
þat er Heiðrekr átti,
al ok af oddi,
einum skatti,
kú ok af kálfi,
kvern þjótandi;
þý ok af þræli
ok þeira barni.
"I want a half of what Heiðrekr owned, of awl and spear-tip, unsplit
(?) treasure, of cow and calf, [and] whirring mill, of bondsmaid and
thrall and of their child." Hlöðr is claiming half of the kingdom,
rather than asking for everything in it to be cut in half (although
this being a tragic tale, the end result is much the same!).
One that I've been wondering about is this from Hálfs saga:
Konungr gaf þeim Handi ok Hrindi land at búa á ok þar með þræl ok
ambátt.
I have a translation by W Bryant Bachman and Guðmundur Erlingsson
which renders this oddly "a man and woman servants as well." How
can they tell it's just one man and several women?! Seems more
logical to take it as either one of each, or several of each. Maybe
several? What's the going rate for rewarding fishermen for finding
a prophetic merman?
> `náliga væri tvau höfuð á hverju kvikindi'. (line 629) I
interpreted this to mean that the survival of both man and beast
depended on the survival of the beast. Is that how others see it?
Clearly he was irradiating them to increase productivity. Something
his neighbours might want to look into at the next alþingi. I think
it just means that there were a lot of animals. CV quotes this and
just mentions that it's said "of a great increase in stock", as well
as one another instance of the idiom, which is in Harðar saga ok
Hólmverja, end of ch.5 as printed here.
Grímur keypti þá land suður frá Kluftum er hann kallaði á
Grímsstöðum og bjó þar síðan. Grímkell fékk öll búsefni Grími en
Högni galt fyrir landið. Grímur rakaði brátt fé saman. Voru tvö
höfuð á hvívetna því er hann átti. Var hann skjótt hafður í hinni
bestu bóndatölu [
http://www.snerpa.is/net/isl/hardar.htm ].
If you want to look up the translation, Patricia, it's quite near
the beginning and Grímr has just married Guðríðr. Gwyn Jones
translates the phrase in Hrafnkels saga as "so that it could just
about be said that there were two heads on each of his beasts." I
couldn't find it here [
http://www.usask.ca/english/icelanders/concordance_contents.html ]
on the page devoted to either saga, but it's normally a good place
to look for this sort of thing.
> 'lagðisk veiðr mikil' (line 630) Does this mean fish were
plentiful or that a lot of fishing was done?
> `gerðisk mönnum búshgindi' (line 631) Does this mean `(means of)
supporting (the) household occurred for men', ie they became self-
sufficient?
Gwyn Jones: "That same summer there was a big run of fish in
Lagarflot, which proved a great help towards housekeeping in the
district, and that held good every summer."
What is the subject of 'af slíku gerðisk gerðisk mönnum
búshoegindi'. Is it a sort of subjectless sentence? Maybe "from
that [the quantity of fish] *it* was very helpful to the running of
the farm" = "from that, they derived great help" = "that was very
convenient for them"?