--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "AThompson" <athompso@...> wrote:

>
> Here´s my translation. LN, I humbly challenge your analysis on a couple
> of points – see below for the specifics. Please feel free to show me the
> error of my ways.

Oopsh, not this time. You're right on both counts! Sorry about that,
Grace. I must have got my Old Norse head screwed on backwards yesterday...

> spurði hver (this is ambiguously f or m but unambiguously nom sg

but…) þær (this is unambiguously f pl acc agreeing with sloeðurar, I
think) mundi hafa til gefið en engi

> asked who would have given that (ie the gown) to (the pile) but no-one

Yes. My explanation of 'þær' as nominative couldn't work because then
'hver' would have to be plural 'hverjar' if it was going to agree with
'þær'. As an aside, masculine 'hverr' was originally distinct from
feminine 'hver' in the older language, but I don't whether this
distinction is still clear in the oldest manuscripts of Njála. Konráð
Gíslason and Eiríkur Jónsson's (normalized) edition from 1875 has:
'síðan tók hann upp slæðurnar ok
spurði, hverr þær myndi hafa til gefit' [
http://dp.rastko.net/projects/projectID438a3f4017f9f/projectID438a3f4017f9f_TEI.txt
]. As you say, 'hver' is ambiguous in the modern orthography of the
text we're working from.

> því að margir vita eigi er hann sjá hvort hann er heldur kona eða

karlmaður

> because many (people) do not know who see him, whether he is rather

a woman or a man

> (I think this is 3rd person pl, agreeing with `margir' and not an

impersonal construction, for which I would have expected 3rd person
sg) hvort hann er heldur kona eða karlmaður."

That's right, it must be, for the reason you say. Sorry if I confused
anyone!

LN