Knowing a bit of German or Dutch helps as well.

I posted my amateur translation of 1200 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874

At first it stumped me, but I spent some time on it and it started to become intelligible. I didn't look up any words until after I was done, at which point I looked up "uuif" (woman/wife) since I wanted to know what manner of amazing creature had saved the protagonist :D