At 10:53:23 PM on Thursday, March 17, 2011,
startrekdataandworf wrote:

> As part of my study of Old Norse, I figured that going
> through some texts and trying to translate them would be
> beneficial. I've found it quite enlightening. However,
> there are the occasional words that I cannot find the
> translation of, no matter how hard I try. I realize that
> umlaut/transformation has a lot to do with my problem, but
> even when I account for that (or, rather, think that I
> have accounted for that), I still cannot find anything
> that'll bring me any closer to the meaning of the word.

> This brings me to my question: What do you do? Surely
> you've much more experience, and thus have come upon a
> similar quandary in times passed. Do you give up? Skip the
> word? I've spent an hour - or more - on a single word at
> times. 'óhægenda', from Yngvars saga Víðförla, has been
> the most infuriating;

Initial <ó-> is very likely to be the negative particle; in
both Zoëga and Cleasby & Vigfusson it's normalized as <ú->
instead. The <æ> is also a potential source of confusion.
Old Norse <œ> merged with <æ>, and both are now written <æ>.
Cleasby & Vigfusson write both as <æ>, following the modern
convention, as does the text that you're using here, but
Zoëga distinguishes them. Thus, if you're using Zoëga, you
need to check both <úhæg-> and <úhœg->. This word has a
suffix that can appear either as <-end-> or as <-ind->,
depending on the text and normalization; both Z and CV use
the <-ind-> version, so you want to look for <úhægind-> and,
in Z, for <úhœgind->. Finally, of course, the ending can be
inflectional, as indeed it is here.

> I've managed to figure out closely enough the translation
> of 'átti' (something to do with being married?), though
> I'm still having trouble with it.

Look at the list of irregular verbal forms at the end of
Zoëga (e.g.,
<http://norse.ulver.com/dct/zoega/irregular.html#1>). The
fourth entry is for <á> and <átt>, which are identified as
forms of <eiga>; <átti> is close enough to make this worth
checking. Sure enough, the entry in Z for <eiga> shows
<átta> as the 1st person singular past tense form, and
<átti> would be the corresponding 3rd person form. CV gives
<átti> directly as the 3rd person sing. past tense form.
Reading through the definitions in Z, you quickly find the
relevant one.

The list of irregular nominal forms is similarly useful.
In this context it's worth noting that it helps a lot to be
able to recognize from the form and context of an unknown
word what its likely part of speech is; that's something
that comes with experience.

With nouns you have to be alert to the possibility that the
postposed article is present (e.g., <maðrinn> 'the man'
instead of <maðr> '(a) man').

Occasionally you'll run across a word that's simply not in
any dictionary that's available to you. If it's a compound,
you may be able to infer its meaning from those of its
elements. If not, you may still find one or two related
words from which with the help of the context you can infer
a likely meaning. Occasionally I've been unable to find a
word but have found its negative in <ú-> or the reverse.

There are probably other tricks that I use, but those are
the ones that come to mind at the moment.

Brian