>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: llama_nom

>> og sagði hver firn voru er Gunnar skyldi hafa óhelgað þá alla er hann
>> hafði vegið
>>
>> I think 'er' is here equivalent to 'at' "that" (Zoega II.3, rather
>> that "when" Zoega II.2): "and said what an abomination it was that G.
>> should have declared outlaws all those whom he had killed."

> From: AThompson
>
> Maybe. Compare: `It is unfortunate when something happens' with `It is
> unfortunate that something happens' Both completely appropriate in

English

> and shows that you cannot fully separate the idea that an event

happens from

> its occurrence in time.

Fair point. If I had to guess one, in this context, I'd pick "that",
but I could be wrong.

> If `that' had been meant here why not use `at' (að)
> as occurs regularly throughout the text?

The use of 'er' in this way is perfectly normal Old Norse grammar, as
far as I know, I suppose just a special instance of its use as a
relative pronoun. In such instances, rather than referring back to a
noun in the main clause, 'er' represents a clausal subject, whether
prefigured by 'þat' or not. See Zoega and CV under 'er', also
Nygaard: `Om brugen af konjunktiv i oldnorsk' § 40, note 2 [
http://runeberg.org/anf/1883/0355.html ]. But as Nygaard writes:
"Sometimes, when 'er' stands in place of 'at', it can be uncertain as
to whether the clause might not be more correctly understood as a
temporal clause." Here's one from Faarlund, p. 256, his translation:

fannsk þat á öllu, er hon þóttisk vargefin
"it showed in everything that she thought she was marrying beneath her"

Interestingly, according to Nygaard, 'er' and 'at' are each attested,
in this last example, in different manuscripts of Njáls saga, which
could support the idea that there's no temporal reference in that one.
Some other examples of 'firn' (not that this will necessarily decide
the matter):


With ER:

Hann hljóp að Kjartani og rak hann niður og kvað mikil firn er
auvirð það lagðist að konum
"He charged at K. and knocked him down and said it was a great outrage
{ ?that, ?when } that wretch lay with women"


With EF:

og eru það mikil firn ef eg skal taka af þér ill orð
"and that is a great outrage if I take insulting words from you"

og sagði Jökull það mikil firn ef menn skyldu ræna þá þar í dalnum
"and J. said it would be a great outrage if men should rob them there
in the valley"


With AT (apparently the most usual collocation):

eru þat hin mestu firn, at þér ætlið fyrir at leggja á allt fólk ánauðarok
"that is a very great outrage that you intend to lay the yoke of
bondage on the whole people"

Slíkt er firn mikil, at ótíginn maðr skal eiga systr okkra.
"It is a great outrage that a commoner should marry our sister."

Þorgeir vildi drepa boðsmennina og kvað firn í að þeir voru leyndir
svikum slíkum
"Th. wanted to kill the messengers and said it was an outrage that
they were hidden with such tricks"

Slíkt eru firn mikil að Íslendingar skuli til þess fara hingað í
land að drepa umboðsmenn
"It is a great outrage that Icelanders should come to this country to
kill stewards"

"Þetta eru firn mikil," segir drottning, "at þú trunsar við fagnaði
þessum
"This is a great outrage," says the queen, "that you turn up your nose
at this welcome"

mæltu margir menn svo að Njáll heyrði að slíkt væru mikil firn að
hafna fornum sið og átrúnaði.
"many people said in N.'s hearing that it was a great outrage to
abandon the old ways and faith"

firn er, at fund minn girniz flausta meiðr
"it's shocking that the tree of ships [man] desires to meet me"


(Incidentally, the singular verb in some of these is because it is
agreeing with the (clausal) subject, rather than the plural complement
'firn'. Obviously there's some fluctuation on this. In English we
have to say "it is" or "they are", but Icelandic allows "it are" when
the complement is plural.)

> Point on plurale tantum taken but I regarded the proclamation

against each

> separate dead body as a separate abomination in its own right J
> Alan

Can we find any examples where 'firn' is definitely used as a count
noun like this? I still suspect that it might be more natural to
suppose that he's referring to the whole sorry business as 'firn'.
But if it is ever used of multiple shocking things, presumably that
would be an alternative possibility, at least as far as the grammar
goes. As ever, I could be mistaken!

LN