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Passive voice

The passive voice🇮🇸 þolmynd in Icelandic is used to:

  • 🥷 Deemphasise or conceal the agent (the “doer” of an action);
  • ⏺️ Create sentences with dummy það.

Most verbs can be used in the passive voice:

Húsið var málað í fyrra.
Þessi bjór var bruggaður á Akureyri.

They can also include an agent, introduced by af:

Bókin var skrifuð af Yrsu.
Peningunum var stolið af gestinum.

Formation​

The passive voice is constructed using vera or verða and the past participle of another verb. The form of the past participle is determined by the case the verb governs.

Verbs governing the accusative​

To form the passive with verbs that govern a direct object🇮🇸 beint andlag in the accusative:

  • the direct object is changed into the nominative,
  • the past participle has to agree in gender and number with the object,
  • vera or verða has to agree in person and number with the object.

For example:

Jakkinn (kk. et.) var framleiddur (kk. et.) í Kína.
Þessar kökur (kvk. ft.) voru bakaðar (kvk. ft.) í morgun.

This sentence structure is essentially the same as the one used for adjectives. In fact, many adjectives are derived from past participles, such as spenntur, pirraður and saddur.

Indirect objects in the dative can also be included in passive constructions:

Mér var gefinn nýr bakpoki í jólagjöf.
Krökkunum var sagt að klára matinn sinn.

Verbs governing the dative and genitive​

To form the passive with verbs that govern a direct object in the dative or genitive:

  • the direct object stays in the dative or genitive,
  • the past participle has to be in the 3rd person neuter singular (supine) form,
  • vera or verða also has to be in the 3rd person singular.

Let’s see what this looks like:

Farþegunum var hleypt um borð í flugvélina.
Glugganum hefur verið lokað.
Hennar er saknað sárlega.

Usage​

Generally, the passive voice is used when it’s not particularly important who did the action. The passive is a way of bringing an object, whether direct or indirect, to the foreground:

Áhersla er lögð á góða þjónustu.
Viðskiptavinum verður boðin skemmtileg upplifun.

There can be some crossover with the middle voice, although the middle voice and passive are not fully interchangeable. There is often a nuanced distinction between the two constructions:

Passive  Hurðin var opnuð.
Middle voice  Hurðin opnaðist.

In the first example here, the use of the passive implies that the door was opened by somebody, i.e. a person opened it. In the second example, the middle voice makes it sound like the door just opened all by itself, without any human intervention.

This distinction can be used for humorous effect, or to deflect blame:

Passive  Vínflaskan var kláruð.
Middle voice  Vínflaskan kláraðist.

Here the passive again implies that somebody finished off the wine, whereas the middle voice seems to suggest that the wine magically drank itself! 🍷

With dummy það​

A cool feature of Icelandic is the use of the passive voice in so-called “dummy það” sentences. In sentences like these, það has no meaning and doesn’t refer to a previously mentioned noun. It’s literally just there to fill a gap in the sentence. Let’s take a simple example:

Það var dansað alla nótt.

Here það doesn’t refer to people, a neuter noun or anything else. It’s just there because as standard, Icelandic requires a subject in every sentence, and there isn’t an actual subject available. Maybe we don’t know who was dancing, or it’s not particularly relevant to the topic at hand. We need to put something there, and that thing is það. 💃🕺

But what does this sentence actually mean? Essentially, it means something like “people were dancing all night” or “there was dancing all night”. This kind of construction works with lots of different verbs:

Það er lítið spjallað í kaffipásunni.
Það er borðað mikið kjöt í Argentínu.

Often, sentences like these start with some kind of adverb of time, place or manner. In that case, the það is dropped, as something else has taken its place in the first slot in the sentence:

Í bakaríinu er bakað og eldað allan daginn.
Lengi var drukkið það kvöld.

The past participle itself can also be fronted:

Hellt er upp á kaffi alla morgnana.

See V2 rule for more on verbs and word order.

“New” passive​

In recent years, there has been a rise in the use of passive constructions with dummy það where the object of a verb governing the accusative stays in the accusative, instead of being changed into the nominative as set out above. This is known as the “new” passive, and is more common amongst younger speakers.

Although the new passive isn’t accepted as an officially “correct” sentence structure, its use its nonetheless prevalent. Let’s take a look at an example:

New passive  Það var barið mig í gær.
Traditional passive  Ég var barinn í gær.

Verbs that can’t be used in the passive​

Some verbs cannot be used in the passive voice, such as eiga, heyra, hljóta and týna. In this case, we need to use the active voice or some kind of alternative construction:

⛔️ *Húsið er átt af frægri leikkona.
✅ Fræg leikkona á húsið.
✅ Húsið er í eigu frægrar leikkonu.

We can use heyrast and týnast in the middle voice however:

Dularfullt suð heyrðist í eldhúsinu.
Vinglösin týndust í flutningunum.