> > But I was wondering, does the idiom 'taka föng sín'
> > actually exist in the sense of "take/seize one's opportunity"?
>
> I think I can safely say absolutely not.

Thanks, Eysteinn, I suspected this might be the case. It's easy for
an English reader to see the dictionary definition "means,
opportunity" and jump to conclusions when the word appears next to a
word meaning "take." But we can't take it for granted that Icelandic
would match the English idiom.

> eftir föngum "according to one's means"
> hafa föng á einhverju "have the means to do something"
> eftir því sem föng eru á "as far as possible"
>
> I'm not sure if any of these three actually occur in medieval
> text, but this one does:
>
> hafa föng til einhvers "have the means to do something"

http://www.lexis.hi.is/corpus/leit.pl?lemma=&ofl=&leita=1&flokkar=Fornrit&m1=f%F6ng&l1=Leita&lmax=1

There are some examples of 'hafa föng á e-u' here.

Vilda ek nú, frændi, geta veitt þér meira lið, en eigi hefi ek föng á því.




--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Eysteinn Bjornsson"
<eysteinn@...> wrote:
>
> --- "llama_nom" wrote:
>
> > But I was wondering, does the idiom 'taka föng sín'
> > actually exist in the sense of "take/seize one's opportunity"?
>
> I think I can safely say absolutely not. The word is
> immediately comprehensible as "stuff", "things", "luggage",
> both in the syntactic and semantic contexts. On top of
> that, it is such a common expression that there is really
> no room for doubt.
>
> I do realize that the word is sometimes used metaphorically
> ("means" rather than "opportunity"), but these expressions
> are fixed, and also immediately recognizable as such, e.g.
>
> eftir föngum "according to one's means"
> hafa föng á einhverju "have the means to do something"
> eftir því sem föng eru á "as far as possible"
>
> I'm not sure if any of these three actually occur in medieval
> text, but this one does:
>
> hafa föng til einhvers "have the means to do something"
>
> As you can see, here we always have a clear metaphorical
> relationship, i.e. "föng" = "vistir" (provisions), i.e. the
> "means" to do something. "Opportunity" is too far of a semantic
> stretch, I think.
>
> But I am quite sure that "taka föng sín" can only mean one
> thing, and that is what it has meant to the Icelanders as
> far back as history reaches. But if you were to insist that
> is must mean "pick up one's means", there is not much I can
> do about it, of course ;-)
>
> > I found a couple more examples, both I think refering
> > to "luggage."
> >
> > taka föng þeirra og hafa til skips (Króka-Refs saga).
> > taka föng sín á öxl sér (Ezekiel 12:12).
>
> And so they do. I'll check the concordance later to day for
> all the available examples.
>
> Best,
> Eysteinn
>