Middle voice

The middle voice (also called the mediopassive) is a special form of the verb in Icelandic, easily identified by its -st ending, that has several purposes:

• 🔄 to indicate reciprocity (an action performed by people to each other),
• ↩️ to indicate reflexivity (and action performed by someone/something on itself),
• 😴 to indicate passive meaning.

The middle voice can also change the meaning of a verb completely. Other verbs exist only in the middle voice.

Usage

Reciprocity

This usage of the middle voice is restricted to specific verbs (see a list here). Think of it as a shorthand way of saying “each other”:

Eigum við að hittast á morgun?
Sjáumst eftir helgi!
Þið megið ekki heilsast með handabandi!
Sigrún og Jón kysstust í sófanum.
Börnin og foreldrarnir haldast í hendur á leið í skólann.

Because the meaning of -st here is essentially “each other”, the subject has to be plural (in meaning, not necessarily grammatically):

Þau hafa ekki talast við lengi.
Fólkið hittist úti á götunum.

Reflexivity

This usage of the middle voice is also restricted to specific verbs (see a list here). It’s an easy way to say that someone or something performs an action on itself:

Hann datt fram yfir sig og meiddist.
Skólabörnin setjast á bekkinn.
Ásdís klæðist rauðum kjól.

Passive

This usage of the middle voice is fairly productive, that is to say you can add -st onto lots of different verbs to create a passive-like meaning, instead of using a passive construction with vera + past participle:

Mikil ærsl heyrast í garðinum.
Nýja bókin seldist ekki vel.
Það sést ekki neitt í myrkrinu.
Ég fæddist árið 1990.

This usage of the middle voice is limited to verbs where the agent (doer of the action) can easily be left out if not known or relevant. This means that unlike with the passive voice, the preposition af cannot be used to indicate who the agent is.

If the meaning of the verb requires there to be an agent (for example kaupa – someone has to be the buyer), then the passive voice must be used instead:

🚫 Húsið keyptist í fyrra.
✅ Húsið var keypt í fyrra.

Sometimes there is a difference in nuance between the middle voice and passive voice:

Vínflaskan kláraðist á hálftíma.
Vínfláskan var kláruð á hálftíma.

In the first example, there is no clear agent – maybe no one drank the wine and it just finished itself? The second sentence begs the question, Well who exactly drank all the wine? 🍷

Other verbs can only be made passive through use of the middle voice and can’t be used with the vera + past participle construction:

Vettlingarnir mínir týndust en fundust strax aftur.

Changed meaning

Some Icelandic verbs get a different meaning when used in the middle voice. Sometimes the meaning seems to be somewhat related to the standard meaning, but other times it is quite far removed:

Active voice		Middle voice
gera	to do	gerast	to happen
sýna	to show	sýnast	to seem
taka	to take	takast	to succeed

See the full list here.

Middle voice only

Some Icelandic verbs exist only in the middle voice. These are often derived from nouns:

ferð “journey”	→	ferðast	to travel
tölva “computer”		tölvast	to waste time on the computer
vesen “hassle”		vesenast	to mess about with, tackle, negotiate

This pattern of creating middle voice verbs form nouns is particularly productive, with spontaneous formations like facebookast “to hang out on Facebook” and snappast “to Snapchat” used in informal spoken language.

Middle voice verbs can also be formed from adjectives, with the meaning “to get/become [adjective]”:

brjálaður “infuriated”	→	brjálast	to become infuriated
eldri “older”		eldast	to get older, age
grennri “slimmer”		grennast	to get slimmer
nálægur “near”		nálgast	to get near, approach
veikur “ill”		veikjast	to get ill
villtur “lost”		villast	to get lost

Formation

The middle voice ending, -st, is easy to apply to any verb and is the same in all persons, numbers, moods and tenses. There is one rule about how to apply the ending:

• Remove the final consonant part of the ending from the relevant form (present/past, singular/plural, etc.), unless the ending is -um, and add -st.

For example:

Present	ég breyti þú breytir … við breytum	→	ég breytist þú breytist … við breytumst
Past	ég breytti þú breyttir … við breyttum		ég breyttist þú breyttist … við breyttumst
Past participle	breytt		breyst

Weak verb

að heilsast	Person		Indicative		Subjunctive
			Present	Past	Present	Past
Singular	1st	ég	heilsast	heilsaðist	heilsist	heilsaðist
	2nd	þú	heilsast	heilsaðist	heilsist	heilsaðist
	3rd	hann hún hán það	heilsast	heilsaðist	heilsist	heilsaðist
Plural	1st	við	heilsumst	heilsuðumst	heilsumst	heilsuðumst
	2nd	þið	heilsist	heilsuðust	heilsist	heilsuðust
	3rd	þeir þær þau	heilsast	heilsuðust	heilsist	heilsuðust

Strong verb

að fást	Person		Indicative		Subjunctive
			Present	Past	Present	Past
Singular	1st	ég	fæst	fékkst	fáist	fengist
	2nd	þú	fæst	fékkst	fáist	fengist
	3rd	hann hún hán það	fæst	fékkst	fáist	fengist
Plural	1st	við	fáumst	fengumst	fáumst	fengjumst
	2nd	þið	fáist	fengust	fáist	fengjust
	3rd	þeir þær þau	fást	fengust	fáist	fengjust