"""hvat leika er. GJ "what game was afoot". Zoega quotes this
and a
similar idiom: 'segja hvat í leikum er', both defined "say what the
game is, what is the matter"""
That's exactly how I saw it, it seemed to me to be a scholarly kind of
colloquialism, from the first writer of this Saga
Patricia
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 7:03 PM
Subject: [norse_course] Re: Hrafnkell
791-825 / Alan´s Translation
leitaði lífs. Gwyn Jones has "The first thing Sam did
was to look
for life", which would have been my guess too.
hvat
leika er. GJ "what game was afoot". Zoega quotes this and a
similar idiom: 'segja hvat í leikum er', both defined "say what the
game is, what is the matter".
þá er umskipti á orðit með
þeim. GJ "by this time the battle was
over". The outcome or
result of the battle had been decided. Cf.
the second definition in
Fritzner: 'umskipti' "outcome of a clash
between enemies".
(1)
umskipti hafa nú orðit ok mun Vandill drepinn, ok leggjum á
flótta
"the
fight's decided now and Vandil will have been slain; we'd
better
flee"
(2) þá mun hér verða skjótt umskipti at ek mun láta drepa
þik
"then it won't take long to decide the outcome of this; I'm going to
kill you"
(3) berjask til umskiptis
"fight to a
conclusion"
var þat trúliga gört. GJ "but the job had been
thoroughly done".
From the context, and maybe from the way the next
sentence follows
on with no adversative conjunction, I assumed it refers
to the
killing rather than the examination.