--- "Scott Schroder" wrote:

>>From: "Fred and Grace Hatton" <hatton@...>

> >Haukadals og komu sér þar er eigi mátti finna þá fyrr en riðið

væri að

> >þeim.
>
> >Hawkdale and came themselves there where not (none) might find

(them) then,

> >who before were (had) ridden after them.
>
> I'm not certain percisely how it would be better translated; but

vera in the

> subjunctive could give a
> slightly different meaning; "who would have rode after them" (?)

The sentence, without a doubt, means: "... and stopped in a place
where they could not be found unless (lit. until) someone would
ride right up to them."

They are hidden away by the landscape - you would need to run
bang into them in order to know they were there.

>> Urðu því engir menn varir við brautferð þeirra.
> >
> >(that) no men anticipated their get-away.
>
> It has been my practice that when I came across the dative því,

especially

> in a context such as this with verða in the plural, I would

interpret it not

> as a general "it is the case that...." or "there was the

occurence...." type

> structure but that því = "of this" "because of this" etc.
> Literally, Urðu = These things occurred því = because of it
> Which would be normalized into
> Because of these things
> or simply
> For these/this reason(s)
> no men anticipated their get away.

"Því" simply means "therefore". The origin is "(af) því" = "for
that (reason), (because of) this", but the word was (even then)
hardly sensed as a dative - it had practically "fossilized" into
an adverb.

Regards,
Eysteinn