I used f2c and fort95 (f2c converts from FORTRAN to C code, and fort95 wraps this so it can be called the same way as the GCC FORTRAN compiler, g77), and I can post the recipes if anyone fancies having a go themselves.
The Debian builds are a real PITA due to slice, which is a perl utility which requires the addition of some binary perl libraries to the scratchbox environment (Do a search for "Debian slice" and grab the .dsc, .diff, .tar.gz and look at the deps).
Here's fixed packages of slice (ran the first part of octave building to see if slice ran and it did):
Any information about ports of octave and gnuplot for the N900? I searched but the only threads with anything on octave seem to be inactive and very old.
http://qwerty12.maemobox.org/slice/
If it wont work for you, do: