At 5:41:44 AM on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, AThompson wrote:
> Nú býst (búast) Unnur í brott úr Færeyjum og lýsir því
> fyrir skipverjum sínum að hún ætlar til Íslands.
> Now makes-ready (to go) away out-of (the) Faroes and
> proclaims that before (or for the benefit of ?) her crew
> that she intends (to go) to Iceland.
Both from context and because <skipverjum sínum> is dative,
I take it to be the former: 'and announces to her crew
that'.
> Ólaf feilan
> Olafr Faelan (probably Icelandic form of Irish Faelan)
Pretty nearly certainly borrowed from OIr. <Fáelán>.
> Vikrarskeið.
Just as a matter of interest, the name also occurs in early
sources as <Vikarsskeið> and <Víkarsskeið>. (As Icelandic
Wikipedia says, <Nafnið kemur fyrir í nokkrum fornritum en
óvissa er um hvernig á að stafsetja það, heimildum ber ekki
saman> 'The name occurs in several early sources, but it is
not known how it should be spelled, as the sources do not
agree'.) The same story appears in Landnámabók, save that
in that version she is Auðr djúpúðga Ketils dóttir flatnefs.
> Þar brjóta þau skipið í spón (spánn).
> There, they (who are they?) break the ship into pieces
> (the ship is dashed to pieces).
<Þau> is neuter nom./acc. plur., so probably not 'who'. The
<-skeið> of the place-name is neuter ('race; race course;
ground suitable for racing horses; strip of land between two
fields'); it seems a bit of a stretch, but perhaps <þau>
refers to <Vikrarskeið> construed in the plural, with
reference to shoals just off the beach. (The Landnámabók
version uses the impersonal construction.)
Brian