At 3:48:28 AM on Sunday, January 9, 2011, Andrew Higgins
wrote:

> What is the feeling out there regarding using Cleasby
> Vigfusson vs. Zoega as Old Norse dictionaries?? For my
> studies I tend to use Zoega backed up by EV Gordon's
> dictionary in the back of his Old Norse primer (the one I
> learned from) and occasionally Michael Barnes glossary

It's actually compiled by Anthony Faulkes.

> I have not purchased a Cleasby Vigfusson (yet) although
> have been tempted!!!

Zoëga is essentially an abridged version of CV with a more
convenient arrangement and a few revised definitions; it's
the most generally useful of the dictionaries available to
me, but there are times when it's simply not adequate. CV
has a wealth of cultural information that's lacking in
Zoëga, and on occasion I've found his extra citations
useful. I rarely use Gordon's glossary nowadays, though I
remember it as being surprisingly comprehensive for its
size.

The Faulkes glossary is limited in coverage, but it does
sometimes suggest alternative translations not to be found
in Zoëga or CV.

If you can fight your way through the Danish, Fritzner's
ordbok, available at
<http://www.edd.uio.no/perl/search/search.cgi?appid=86&tabid=1275>,
is sometimes helpful. It has even more citations than CV
and subcategorizes meanings even more thoroughly. The
online version is missing spaces between some words; if that
gets to be too annoying, Google Books has PDFs of all three
volumes (A-H, HL-P, R-Œ).

I've occasionally found Theodor Möbius's Altnordisches
Glossar useful; it's from 1866, so Google Books has a PDF.
(In view of the title, it's probably unnecessary to note
that this one's in German.)

Sverrir Hólmarsson, Christopher Sanders, and John Tucker,
Íslensk-ensk orðabók / Concise Icelandic-English Dictionary
(Reykjavík: Iðunn, 1989), is online via a search interface
at
<http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/IcelOnline/Search.TEId.html>.
The interface is smart enough to recognize inflected forms.
This is for modern Icelandic, but I've occasionally found it
helpful none the less.

Brian