At 7:33:30 PM on Wednesday, February 15, 2012, Alan Thompson
wrote:

>>> They intended (to go) north to (the) country (typo:
>>> herað?).

>> <Héraða> is correct: it's the genitive plural, and <til>
>> takes the genitive. I think that the intended sense may
>> be 'to the northern districts', though <norður> here is
>> clearly the adverb, and it's literally 'north to the
>> districts'.

> My query was really with the long vowel <é> rather than
> the ending.

Yes, it occurred to me after I posted that that was probably
what you'd meant.

> I see that Zoega and Gordon list <herað> but C-V lists
> <hérað>. Why would this be?

I've run into a number of words with an <e> whose length is
given differently in different sources. In this word, at
least, the modern language has <é>, but most sources seem to
normalize the Old Norse as <herað>. I'm pretty sure that
the vowel actually has changed, but I'm not sure how old the
change is. It's definitely visible in the 19th century
spelling <hjerað>, though.

Brian