> nær hvorum vænna horfið.

Zoega has under 'horfa' "to look": hvárum horfir vænna "who is more
likely to get the better", but isn't the neuter past participle of
this verb 'horft'? 'horfið' here looks like the modern spelling of
'horfit', neuter of 'horfinn', infinitive 'hverfa'. Or am I getting
confused here? Could 'horfit' be the past participle of 'horfa' too?

'vænna' is presumably the neuter of the comparative "more promising",
so literally "it had looked (i.e. was looking) nearly more promising
for each of them" = "it looked like it could go either way", or as you
tranlated "it was a near thing".

> hitt er þeir höfðu áður fengið.
> had acquired before (already?)

already: that would be my guess. I see that MM & HP have the same. I
don't know how wise it is to try to reason these things out, but I
suppose Tófi won't necessarily know of these previous adventures, only
that they've just got some wealth here.

> Gunnar kveðst það vilja.
> Gunnar declared-himself to want that (did he want to be guided or

did he want the
trehttp://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norse_course/post?act=reply&messageNum=7488asure?)

My guess, for what that's worth, would be that the immediate meaning
is that he wanted to be guided. I could be wrong.

> Þeir komu að þar sem viður var borinn saman mikill.
> They came to there where (the) wood was carried (collected) much

together.

I see MM & HP take this as chopped wood "to where a number of trees
had been piled up."

> og var mér skotið hér á land

Not a correction, I just thought I'd call attention to this as an
example of the verbs of throwing and thrusting taking the dative for
the thing thrown or thrust, this came up recently [
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norse_course/message/7462 ]. As is
the rule, the dative object is preseved in the passive and the past
participle is neuter: þeir skutu mér hér á landi : mér var skotit hér
á landi.

LN