So I was at the base site of High Hrothgar doing my thing, right? I had my loyal housecarl with me and we were having a grand old time while I hung out in back and she took care of the heavy lifting.
So I go into the shroud hearth barrow to investigate some ghosts and learn more dragontongue, and a few SPOILERS later I'm at the gate opened by the sapphire dragon claw.
I turn the wheels to what the claw indicates and give it a spin.
I hear trap needles firing, but none hit me, because the only needlegun that's firing is on one side of the wall. Weird.
I try different permutations on the thing and search for a while, but no luck. I can't fathom what the heck I'm supposed to do here, so I call it a night.
Today I get home and try it again. This time, the dials are in a different starting configuration and won't move. I can't interact with them. I reload, and this time, don't bother untrapping a door to see what it does. This time, I can interact with the wheels, and they're in the first starting position I saw, but I still can't unlock the dragon claw door. So I reload once again. This time, when I try to unlock the trap wire on the door, I mis-aim and the trap fails. It just doesn't work. And when I advance to the wheels, they're inoperable again.
My guess is that there's so much physics going on in that barrow that certain physics events, like setting the door to unlockable, aren't occurring properly. Gaaaah.