Personal pronouns
A personal pronoun🇮🇸 persónufornafn is used in Icelandic to refer to one or more people or as a substitute for a noun:
Bollinn er ekki fullur, hann er tómur.
Hún er mjög gáfuð kona.
Það er svo gaman að fara út á lífið!
Icelandic has the following personal pronouns, all of which decline for case.
On the Overview tab, click on each pronoun to find out more about it. If you’re 🤘hardcore and want to see all the case forms of all personal pronouns, click the Full declension tab.
- 👀 Overview
- 🤯 Full declension
First person
Singular
The first-person singular pronoun is ég “I”. It declines as follows:
| Nominative | ég |
|---|---|
| Accusative | mig |
| Dative | mér |
| Genitive | mín |
Plural
The first-person plural pronoun is við “we”. It declines as follows:
| Nominative | við |
|---|---|
| Accusative | okkur |
| Dative | okkur |
| Genitive | okkar |
Like other plural personal pronouns, við can be used inclusively to talk about the subject and other people:
Við Katrín ætlum að mála húsið saman.
This means the same thing as ég og Katrín.
Second person
Singular
The second-person singular pronoun is þú “you” (one person only). It declines as follows:
| Nominative | þú |
|---|---|
| Accusative | þig |
| Dative | þér |
| Genitive | þín |
Plural
The second-person plural pronoun is þið “you, yous, you lot, you guys”. It declines as follows:
| Nominative | þið |
|---|---|
| Accusative | ykkur |
| Dative | ykkur |
| Genitive | ykkar |
Like other plural personal pronouns, þið can be used inclusively to talk about the subject and other people:
Ætlið þið Jón að kaupa nýjan bíl?
This means the same thing as þú og Jón.
Third person
Singular
Icelandic has three third-person pronouns that can act as substitutes for nouns. They decline as follows:
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | hann | hún | það |
| Accusative | hann | hana | það |
| Dative | honum | henni | því |
| Genitive | hans | hennar | þess |
See how they refer back to various nouns in the examples below, where English would just use “it”:
Bíllinn er glænýr. Viltu ekki kaupa hann?
Björn bakaði súkkulaðiköku í gærkvöldi – hún var svo girnileg!
Ljósið er svo fallegt. Það ljómar í svörtu myrkrinu.
Það has some additional uses as a filler or “dummy” pronoun. See the section below for an explanation.
hann and hún
Hann “he” and hún “she” can also be used to refer to humans and animals by their natural (i.e. non-grammatical) gender:
Snæfríður situr og starir út í loftið. Henni leiðist.
Loðbert er kát kisa. Hann er alltaf að mala.
In the case of animals, the animal’s biological sex takes precedence over the grammatical gender of the name for the species, as in the example about 🐱Loðbert above.
hán
Hán is a pronoun used by some non-binary people in Icelandic. It can’t act as a substitute for nouns like hann, hún or það. It declines as follows:
| Nominative | hán |
|---|---|
| Accusative | hán |
| Dative | háni |
| Genitive | háns |
Some examples:
Reyn var að senda mér SMS – hán er á leiðinni.
Háni finnst ofsa gaman að prjóna.
Hán is often used with the neuter form the adjective:
Hán er svo skemmtilegt!
As in other languages, if you’re not sure which combination of pronoun and adjective gender to use, ask the person which they prefer.
Unlike “they” in English, hán can’t be used as a generic pronoun to talk about a person of unknown gender in sentences like “Whoever is elected, they’d better sort out this mess.”
það
In addition to its use as a substitute for singular neuter nouns, það also has a special role as a generic filler or “dummy pronoun”. What this means is that það is just filling a gap in the sentence and doesn’t refer to anything in particular:
Það er pirrandi hvað hann mætir alltaf seint.
Það skiptir ekki máli hvort við löbbum eða keyrum.
It’s also used in “there is/are” sentences, where it is always singular:
Það er einhver hundur að gelta endalaust í garðinum.
Það eru bara tvær bjórdósir eftir í kælinum.
Það is also used in passive constructions:
Það var dansað alla nóttina.
Það er verið að byggja nýtt íbúðahús úti á Granda.
It can also appear after a verb or preposition before a dependent clause:
Ég óska þess að það hætti að rigna.
Enginn meiddist í slysinu. Ástæðan fyrir því er að bílstjórinn bremsaði tímanlega.
The reason það is used after a verb or preposition in sentences like the above is that the verb or preposition requires some kind of “target” (🤓 technically an object for a verb, or a complement for a preposition) for the case it governs.
For example, óska governs the genitive case, but because að is a conjunction and doesn’t decline for case, þess (genitive of það) is inserted right after the verb to “receive” the genitive case governed by óska.
Finally, það is also used to make a verb or clause starting with að into a noun (gerund):
Það að geta ekki tjáð sig hefur slæm áhrif á geðheilsuna.
Bara það að hún mætti í kvöld er stórkostlegt.
maður
The pronoun maður “one” is used to talk about a generic person. It’s not as formal as its English equivalent and is therefore more commonly used:
Maður má ekki leggja bílnum sínum hérna.
Það er dónalegt að senda manni óumbeðna typpamyndir! 🍆
It declines like the noun maður “person” from which it is derived:
| Nominative | maður |
|---|---|
| Accusative | mann |
| Dative | manni |
| Genitive | manns |
Plural
Icelandic has three third-person plural pronouns. They decline as follows:
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | þeir | þær | þau |
| Accusative | þá | þær | þau |
| Dative | þeim | þeim | þeim |
| Genitive | þeirra | þeirra | þeirra |
All three can be used about groups of people or as replacements for nouns:
Þjófarnir stálu demantinum og nú sitja þeir í fangelsi.
Viltu halda þessum pokum eða á ég að henda þeim?
Allar þessar peysur eru svo fallegar – ég get varla valið á milli þeirra.
When used about groups of people:
- þeir is used about a group of 🚹 males or about a 🚻 mixed group;
- þær is used about a group of 🚺 females; and
- þau is used about a 🚻 mixed group or as the plural of hán.
The use of þeir to refer to a mixed group is considered increasingly out-of-date, although it still remains relatively common, particularly in contexts where it refers back to a masculine noun:
Nemendurnir eru svo latir. Þeir skila aldrei heimaverkefnum.
This usage is generally accepted as it makes clear that þeir is referring to the masculine plural noun and not some other group.
Obsolete pronouns
Now and again, you might come across two pronouns that have generally fallen into disuse in modern Icelandic. The first is vér, an old-fashioned synonym of við which is now considered highly formal. The other is þér (not to be confused with the dative case of þú), which was the formal second-person pronoun (akin to German Sie or French vous).
Both of these pronouns are still occasionally used to give an old-fashioned or quaintly formal tone. They decline as follows:
| Nominative | vér | þér |
|---|---|---|
| Accusative | oss | yður |
| Dative | oss | yður |
| Genitive | vor | yðar |
Agreement
Vér uses the first-person plural verb form, just like við. Þér uses the second-person plural verb form, like þið:
Vér mótmælum allir!
Þér verðið að koma seinna.
With þér, either the singular or plural form of the adjective is used when addressing a single person:
Þér eruð dónalegur!
Þér eruð dónalegir!