Time and frequency

Time

Adverbs of time in Icelandic are often phrases, like í dag or á morgun. You might be tempted to break these phrases down into their individual components. Whilst this is sometimes helpful, there is often not much logic to which prepositions and which cases are used in adverbial time phrases.

Basic phrases of time

These are best learnt as fixed phrases:

	← ←	←	↓	→	→ →
Day	í fyrradag	í gær	í dag	á morgun	ekki á morgun heldur hinn
Week	í þarsíðustu viku	í síðustu viku	í þessari viku	í næstu viku	í þarnæstu viku
Month	í þarsíðasta mánuði	í síðasta mánuði	í þessum mánuði	í næsta mánuði	í þarnæsta mánuði
Year	í hittiðfyrra	í fyrra	í ár	á næsta ári	á þarnæsta ári

As you can see, depending on the exact phrase and unit of time, we have a mixture of á and í. There are also different cases, for example í dag has the accusative, but í þessari viku has the dative. There’s no rhyme or reason here! 🫠

There’s also a corresponding set of phrases to talk about time of day, which is even less predictable:

	←	↓	→
Morning	í gærmorgun	í morgun	í fyrramálið
Evening	í gærkvöldi	í kvöld	annað kvöld

Frequency

There are 5 basic adverbs of time and frequency in Icelandic:

	alltaf
	oft
	stundum
	sjaldan
	aldrei