|
Hey LN these are good - very thorough thanks very much
Patricia
-------Original Message-------
From: llama_nom
Date: 10/10/2007 23:36:21
Subject: [norse_course] Re: Njall 69 part 1 (notes for all)
Alan: in (the) Island,
In the (Land) Isles, pl.
Alan: into a certain wood
Accusative plural.
Patricia: drowsiness
Yes, literally "sleep-heaviness" (cf. 'höfugr' "heavy").
Patricia: After that Thorgeir (the other one) prepared himself to
leave from under Three Horns as twelfth man
Yes, I think the way it works is that 'Þríhyrningr' is the name of the
mountain. His farm is called 'undir Þríhyrningi', or if you're
talking about leaving it, 'undan Þríhyrningi'. 'við hinn tólfta
mann', i.e. with eleven others.
Alan: (the) shepherd of them, Þórhild (and ?).
Grace: of that? Þórhild's.
Alan, I'd guess "...and Skarp-Heðinn." (Þórhildr is Skarp-Heðinn's
wife.) Presumably MM & HP's paraphrase "the shepherd from
Thorolfsfell" comes from the idea that the shepherd is based at the
farm they own there (see Chapter 25).
Grace, this is an idiom where the pronoun is used in apposition to a
name. It looks a bit bizarre here, from an English point of view,
because the pronoun is plural "of them", whereas only one name is
mentioned, in the singular. But really its short for 'þeirra
Þórhildar ok [ANOTHER PERSON OR PEOPLE]' (and who exactly that is you
have to fill in from the context), I'm guessing probably 'þeirra
Þórhildar ok Skarp-Heðins'. If the shepherd had worked for Thorhild
alone, you could say 'hennar Þórhildar' "Thorhild's shepherd".
There's a bit about this in the grammar section at the back of
Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse, section 164. The examples given
there are:
þit Höttr "you and Höttr"
þit móðir mín "you and my mother"
þeir Gizurr "Gizurr and his party"
þeir Grímr ok Helgi "Grímr and Helgi" or "Grímr and Helgi and their
men" (Gordon: "In the 3rd person it is not always clear whether teh
apposition is partial or complete. [...] Complete apposition was the
more frequent in such expressions.")
Alan & Patricia: 'Is it that you found the sheep?'
Grace: "Whether you found the sheep, (or not)?"
"Did you find the sheep?" 'hvárt' (modern 'hvort') = "whether" when
it introduces an indirect yes/no question (in reported speech). But
Old Norse 'hvárt' can introduce a yes/no question in direct speech too
(unlike English 'whether').
Hon spurði, hvárt hann fyndi sauðina.
She asked whether/if he found the sheep.
Hon mælti: "Hvárt fannt þú sauðina?"
She said, "Did you find the sheep?"
Note also the modern 2nd person past singular indicative 'fannst' for
earlier 'fannt'. This isn't reflexive!
Alan: 'I found that which would be-of-greater-importance,' he says
Apart from its use to form future tense, 'muna' can add a sense of
likelihood to a statement; the speaker is saying it's very probable,
in their opinion: "I found something that's probably [even] more
important [than that]" or "...most likely..." or colloquially
"something that I bet is more important." Of course, he knows full
well that it's more important, so it's a bit of an understatement, in
the tradition of all those saga moments where someone is asked if
there's any news and they say "No not really, except..." and then
report some major event.
Alan: Njál knew then fully who each one had been
Yes, he recognised them from the man's description. Was your
underlining of 'Njál' in your translation intentional?
Alan: `A good servant are you, if (only) many were similar,
Yes, or "if only there were many such" (i.e. "if only there were more
like you"). 'ef' + subjunctive can sometimes have this sense of "if
only". For more examples, see 26.b here [
everything.
Yes, Zoega lists it under: 'gørr' adv. compar., 'gørst' adv. superl.
"more, most fully".
A Norse funny farm, overrun by smart people.
Homepage: http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/
To escape from this funny farm try rattling off an e-mail to:
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
| ||
|
|