At 11:00:09 PM on Friday, July 19, 2013,
elliot.holland@... wrote:

> I've done a few of the sentences and have gathered a few
> questions, mostly words I don't know. You were right Rob,
> about these having more challenges than the others.

> *I'm having problems with the word "Fjölmenni" know that
> it means "many people", but it's not declined like a noun,
> so I'm not sure what part of speech it's in.

> *I cannot find a translation for "hið" anywhere. Maybe
> it´s a verb in the past, but I cannot find the present form.

Var þar fjölmenni mikið og hið skörulegsta lið, ríða nú
leið sína og koma í Tungu.

<Fjölmenni> is a neuter noun that declines like <klæði> in
the table of noun declensions at the back of Zoëga. Here
it’s the nominative, though the dative and accusative are
identical. <Hið> is the modern spelling of <hit>, the
neuter nom./acc. sing. of the definite article (citation
form <hinn>, nom. sing. masc.); here’s it’s the nom. sing.

> *viðtökur I believe is a feminine plural accusative weak
> noun, based on the declination of saga (because of the
> vowels), if so, though, that would mean that viðtökur is
> not the object of "vera," and in that case, there must be
> another verb in that phrase that I translated as another
> part of speech.

Eru þar allgóðar viðtökur.

<Viðtökur> is the nom. plur. of the weak fem. <viðtaka>.
It’s a little odd, because the meaning of the plural is
'hospitality', which is a little different from the literal
plural of 'reception, receiving', Zoëga’s gloss for the
singular. The only verb here is <eru>; as a form of <vera>
it doesn’t take an object, and <viðtökur> is actually its
*subject*. If you translate <viðtökur> as 'hospitality',
you’ll want to translate <eru> as 'is' rather than the
literally correct 'are'.

> *I cannot find a translation for sæmilegar. It's obviously
> and adjective describing "gjafar" *Sama is, I think a
> verb. The only thing I found was "befit," but that doesn't
> sound right, especially because it doesn't take a dative
> object, and "vinum go frændum" are in the dative case.

Snorri gaf Þorkatli gjafar sæmilegar ...

The modern language makes such adjectives with <-leg->; the
normalized ON spelling used by Zoëga (and many others) makes
the same element <-lig->. Since the citation form of an
adjective is the nom. sing. masc., you’re looking for the
adjective <sæmiligr>. However, another difference between
modern and older spellings gets in the way. The ON vowels
<œ> and <æ> have fallen together in the modern language as
<æ>. Thus, when modern spelling is used, and you can’t find
something with <æ> where it ought to be, see if it actually
has <œ>. That’s what’s happened here: the word in Zoëga is
<sœmiligr> 'honorable, becoming'.

Note, by the way, that CV follows the modern practice in
this respect and uses the headword <sæmiligr>. CV is
consistent in this but does mention when the older vowel was
<œ>. Here, for instance, if you backtrack up to the verb
<sæma> 'to honor' to which it’s clearly related, you’ll find
that CV does mention that that verb is ‘really’ <sœma>.

Brian