At 5:28:46 AM on Sunday, June 30, 2013,
elliot.holland@... wrote:

> You might be able to see my thought process from this
> sentence.

> "Lagðist og mjög ómjúkt á með þeim Arnkatli feðgum.

> --lays (himself, reflex) (leggja, legg, lagða, lagiðr,
> laginn) and very ómjúkt (noun?) in with them (dat. sing.
> mas.) Arnkatli (name dat.) father and son (mas. dat. pl.)

> --(it) lays/puts much ómjúkt with them, Arnkatli, father
> and son."

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a so-called
reflexive form is necessarily reflexive in meaning. It can
be, but it can also be reciprocal or passive, or simply
change the meaning of the verb. Here it’s even worse: the
verb is actually <leggjast á> 'to arise', which you’ll find
in Zoëga s.v. <leggja> (15). I don’t think that one would
be likely to guess that meaning, but one can sort of see how
it might have arisen as an extension of 'to lay itself on',
the more or less literal sense of the phrase.

<Og> can be 'also' (like German <auch>) as well as 'and'.
Its placement here is a fairly good indication that it’s
'also': if it were 'and', it would probably be the first
word.

The negative prefix can be <ó-> or <ú->; in the modern
language it’s the former, but in Zoëga and CV it’s <ú->.
This <ómjúkt> will be found in Zoëga as the adjective
<úmjúkr> 'harsh' (literally 'un-soft'). <Ómjúkt> is the
neuter nominative singular, and as you suspected, it is
functioning here as a noun, 'harshness'. <Með> is often
more appropriately read as 'between' or 'among' than as
'with'; here it’s 'between'.

Much harshness also arose between Arnkell and his father.

Brian