> Yður væri mikið gefanda til að þér hefðuð ekki illt átt við Gunnar.

MM & HP "You would give a lot now, never to have molested Gunnar."

What does your other translation say (in The Complete Sagas of the
Icelanders), Patricia?

For anyone with access to Faarlund's Syntax of Old Norse, see Section
8.3.3, p. 133-134, and Section 9.3.5, pp. 215-216, 219.

*

"The present participle is used with 'vera' in a gerundive sense. This
construction expresses what can, should or needs to be done. The
subject of the sentence then has a object role with respect to the
participle, which then has a 'passive' meaning."

hverir hlutir elskandi eru fyrir soemdar sakar góðrar meðferðar eða
hverir hlutir hatandi eru fyrir úsoemdar sakar
which things should be loved because of their decency and good conduct
or which things should be hated because of their indecency

er yðr þá eigi segjandi saga til
then it will not be necessary to tell you the story

"This construction was used to translate the Latin gerundive, and
eventually it changed into a subjectless construction where the
complement of the participle remains a complement, even in the
accusative. In addition, the agent can be expressed in the dative. The
participle is in the neuter nominative (ending in -a), but sometimes
it also ends in -i, which should be considered an uninflected form."

þess er fyrst leitanda hvaðan skurðarskírn hófsk
first we must examine where circumcision came from

í þeirri er skiljandi hvat manni sé geranda
it it one can understand what man is to do

eigi er virðandi ásjónir manna í dómum, heldr sökina
one should not consider people's looks when judging them, but rather
the case

*

"The present participle or the infinitive with 'at' may be used with
'vera' to express obligation or possibility. " (p. 215) (We've had
some examples with the infinitive recently: 'ok átti sem mest at
vinna' "and he had a lot (i.e. too much) to do"; 'nú er að verja sig'
"now is the time to defend oneself", as Faarlund translates that last
one.)

LN