Superlative

Usage

The superlative🇮🇸 efsta stig form of an adjective in Icelandic is used to express the highest degree of a quality. It’s most commonly used in the weak inflection:

Sterkasti Íslendingurinn er Fjallið.
Besti bærinn á Íslandi er Akureyri.
Hringadróttinsaga er lengsta bók í heimi.

Unlike the comparative however, the superlative also has a strong inflection:

Atli var fyrstur til að ná tindinum.
Lilja er hávöxnust þriggja systkina.

The strong inflection of the superlative is only used as subject complement (basically, after vera and not before it). It can be followed by a qualifying phrase in the genitive case, like in the second example above (“of three siblings, Lilja is tallest”).

Like in the comparative, indeclinable adjectives are used with an the adverb instead of an ending. In this case, it’s mest:

Ísland er mest spennandi land í heimi!

note

Mest is only used with adjectives that are not inflected at all, such as hissa, sammála, hugsi and all adjectives that end in -andi, such as spennandi and þreytandi. For all other adjectives, the superlative inflection is used, regardless of how long the adjective is.

Formation

The superlative is much more regular than the comparative. Unless the adjective gets a vowel change or is irregular in the comparative, the comparative ending will be -astur:

		Comparative	Superlative
sterkur auðveldur	→	sterkari auðveldari	sterkastur auðveldastur
dýr laus		dýrari lausari	dýrastur lausastur
hávaxinn		hávaxnari	hávaxnastur
skemmtilegur auðugur		skemmtilegri auðugri	skemmtilegastur auðugastur
vinsæll brúnn		vinsælli brúnni	vinsælastur brúnastur
grár		grárri	gráastur

Once you’ve found the superlative form, you then inflect it like any adjective ending in -ur: