Old Icelandic - Help!

[kakademona]

hi everyone, I have a task to complete but it's beyond my knowledge... it is a test from old icelandic and it is in swedish... I can speak swedish but have no idea about old icelandic... is there anyone who can hel me? I'm adding this test here so if anybody knows anything that can help me I would be very grateful. If anybody knows swedish than it's fantastic but if not, I suppose I can ask only about question II and III - II. explain reasons for those syntactic constructions, III, 1-explain vowel change, 2-explain difference, 3. explain vowel change again... thanks!

[Linda Trostenhatten]

jeg ved inte om min svenska er gott nok til at gora den oversatning. du vet naturligvis at den text er fra egils saga?


Was it now so and when they came to the garder walked they up to an addic and discused this matter. Says Arinbjörn so: quite angry was the king now but though thought I his temper softened before we left and will now our happiness depend that we will work this out; know I that Gunnhild will set her mind to spoil your case. Now I want to give you that advice that you put togheter poem praising king Erik. Think I it would be good it will have lines twenty and read will we it when we will go before the king tomorrow.
So did my uncle Brage when he woke the anger of Bjarne Swedensking and kept for that his head.
Arinbjörn now went to his men and sat they and drank til late at night. Went he then back to the house but before he took of his clothes he walked up to the addick to Egil and asked how the poem goes.
Egil says he has written nothing and that a bird is outside his window and he has made noise so no peace he has had.

[GreenIce]

Kakademona, you should probably read anew your Old Norse grammar

1. Vowel change kǫttr - kattar - kettir:

katt- is the stem, kǫttr has U-umlaut, kettir has I-umlaut.

2. The difference ganga - gekk:

gang- is the present stem, -e- is the ablaut variation of the root vowel in the singular of past, kk comes from *ŋk which is the voiceless version of ng [ŋg] - there was devoicing in the past singular, cf. binda - batt, springa - sprakk, fá (*fanhan) - fekk.

3. Vowel change bera - bar:

It's ablaut again, the 4th class of strong verbs, just to be learned. (In fact it ideally corresponds to the underlying Indo-European alternation e-o, as IE o gave German a).