Perfect

Usage

The present perfect aspect in Icelandic is used to talk about something that happened in the recent past, or an event in relation to the present:

Ertu búinn að borða?
Hann hefur aldrei komið til Íslands.
Við höfum búið í Mosfellsbæ í fimm ár.

Time constructions such as á fimmtudaginn or í fyrra cannot be used with the present perfect. Instead, use the simple past tense. However, constructions expressing a duration, such as í fimm ár, can be used.

The past perfect aspect is used to talk about one past event in relation to another:

Það hafði snjóað lengi þegar ofanflóðið skall á.
Hann var búinn að borða þegar ég hringdi.

Formation

There are two perfect constructions in Icelandic.

vera búinn að

Búinn is an adjective that means “done” and is the simplest way to form the past perfect in Icelandic, through the construction vera búinn að. This structure is used more frequently than hafa + past participle, particularly in speech and informal writing, and for some speakers it indicates a more recent connection to the present time than the hafa construction.

It’s used as follows:

Lilja er búin að kaupa nýjan bíl.
Við erum búin að bíða lengi eftir aðstoð.
Barnið er búið að kasta upp.
Ertu búinn að borða?
Eru þær búnar að sjá kvikmyndina?

Because búinn is an adjective, we have to remember to agree it with the subject in gender and number. It follows the same inflection as opinn.

To avoid repeating a verb or verb phrase when answering a question, we can insert the pronoun það. It’s in the dative case because the preposition að takes the dative:

Er hann búinn að opna gluggann?
Já, hann er búinn að því.

To talk about something that has only just happened, we can add the prefix ný-:

Pabbi er nýbúinn að hringja.
Ég er nýbúin að drekka kaffibolla.

Búinn can also be used without a verb phrase. Here it means variously “finished/done” or in the case of kaffið, “run out”:

Eruðið búnir?
Kvikmyndin er búin.
Kaffið er búið, við þurfum að kaupa meira.

Finally, búinn can be used with a noun using the preposition með (+accusative):

Ég er búin með heimaverkefnið.
Sindri er búinn með peningana.

hafa + past participle

The other way to form the perfect is with the auxiliary verb hafa plus a past participle in the neuter singular (also known as the supine form). The past participle is always in this form regardless of the gender or number of the subject:

Hann hefur aldrei farið til Frakklands.
Við höfum oft séð norðurljósin.

This way of forming the perfect has a slightly more formal air to it than vera búinn að and is less frequently encountered in speech. It does however occur, and there is for some a subtle distinction between the meaning of the two structures:

Ertu búin að fara til Spánar?
Hefur þú farið til Spánar?

For some speakers, the first sentence in this example implies a specific, recent trip (perhaps the person being asked mentioned the other day that they were going to Spain). The second one implies some kind of life experience, something like “have you ever been to Spain?”.

vera + past participle

Verbs that relate to motion or a change of state can form a perfect-like construction using vera and the past participle. Unlike in the hafa construction outlined above, the past participle agrees with the subject in gender and number (it functions more like an adjective). For example:

Hann var farinn þegar ég kom heim.
Framkvæmdir eru hafnar.

This construction is really used to indicate the state of something, whether or not someone has arrived or left for example, or whether something has started. All of the verbs that can be used with this vera construction can also be used with hafa, but there is a nuanced difference in meaning:

Hún hefur farið til Íslands mörgum sinnum.
Hún er komin til Íslands.

Here, the first sentence translates roughly has “she has been to Iceland many times”, whereas the second is more like “she has arrived in Iceland”.

The following verbs can form a perfect tense with vera. This list is by no means exhaustive but is intended to give you a rough idea of which kinds of verbs can be used in this construction:

Motion	Change of state
detta falla fara flytja flýja ganga hlaupa koma renna rísa sleppa (strong conjugation) springa	byrja deyja fæða hefja hverfa hætta ljúka sofna vakna verða