Icelandic holidays come with a grammatical surprise hiding in their most everyday phrases. The two biggest festivals — jól (Christmas) and páskar (Easter) — are plural nouns, so the greetings gleðileg jól and gleðilega páska take plural agreement on the adjective. That single fact catches out almost every learner, because in English "Christmas" and "Easter" are singular. This page covers the festive vocabulary, the agreement it forces, the prepositions you use to say "at Christmas / over Easter," and the old Icelandic calendar (þorri, góa, þorrablót) that still lives in fixed phrases. (For the broader cultural picture, see countries/culture-grammar-notes; for date formatting and numbers, see numbers/dates-and-time.)
The number surprise: jól and páskar are plural
In English, Christmas and Easter are singular: "a merry Christmas," "this Easter." In Icelandic they are plural-only nouns, and they don't even share a gender:
| Holiday | Gender & number | Greeting | Adjective form |
|---|---|---|---|
| jól (Christmas) | neuter plural | Gleðileg jól! | neuter plural gleðileg |
| páskar (Easter) | masculine plural | Gleðilega páska! | masc. pl. accusative gleðilega |
| hvítasunna (Whitsun) | feminine singular | Gleðilega hvítasunnu! | fem. sg. accusative |
So "Merry Christmas" is Gleðileg jól — the adjective gleðilegur ("merry, happy") in its neuter plural form because jól is neuter plural. And "Happy Easter" is Gleðilega páska — here gleðilega is the masculine plural accusative, because páskar is masculine plural and the greeting is really an unspoken "[I wish you] a happy Easter," whose object sits in the accusative. The two greetings look similar but rest on different gender and case — a perfect snapshot of why agreement matters.
Gleðileg jól og farsælt komandi ár!
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! (gleðileg = neuter plural, agreeing with jól)
Gleðilega páska, sjáumst eftir fríið!
Happy Easter, see you after the holiday! (gleðilega = masculine plural accusative, agreeing with páskar)
Við óskum ykkur öllum gleðilegra jóla.
We wish you all a merry Christmas. (gleðilegra jóla — genitive plural after óska, 'wish'; still plural)
Verbs and pronouns go plural too
Because jól and páskar are grammatically plural, everything that agrees with them is plural — not just the greeting adjective. The verb is plural, the suffixed article is the plural -in/-arnir, and a pronoun referring back is þau (them).
Jólin eru loksins komin — ég er búin að baka allan daginn.
Christmas is finally here — I've been baking all day. (jólin eru komin: plural article -in, plural verb eru, plural participle komin)
Páskarnir voru rólegir í ár, við vorum bara heima.
Easter was quiet this year, we just stayed home. (páskarnir voru rólegir — masculine plural throughout)
Notice jólin eru komin literally reads "the Christmases are come," and páskarnir voru rólegir "the Easters were quiet." English forces you to say it singular; Icelandic forces you to say it plural. Don't fight it — jólin and páskarnir are simply plural the way English "the holidays" is.
"At Christmas / over Easter": the holiday prepositions
To say when something happens relative to a holiday, Icelandic uses fixed prepositional phrases, mostly with á ("at, during") or um ("around, over"). They are lexicalised — learn them whole, with the article.
| Phrase | Meaning | Structure |
|---|---|---|
| á jólunum | at Christmas | á + dative plural + article |
| um jólin | over/around Christmas | um + accusative plural + article |
| um páskana | over Easter | um + accusative plural + article |
| á páskunum | at Easter | á + dative plural + article |
| á aðfangadag | on Christmas Eve | á + accusative (the day, 24 Dec) |
| á gamlárskvöld | on New Year's Eve | á + accusative (the evening) |
The pattern: á + dative for "at/during" (á jólunum, á páskunum) and um + accusative for "over/around" the holiday period (um jólin, um páskana). Both keep the plural and the article.
Við förum alltaf til ömmu á jólunum.
We always go to grandma's at Christmas. (á jólunum — á + dative plural with article)
Hvað ætlarðu að gera um páskana?
What are you going to do over Easter? (um páskana — um + accusative plural with article)
Á aðfangadag borðum við hangikjöt klukkan sex.
On Christmas Eve we eat smoked lamb at six o'clock. (á aðfangadag — the day itself, accusative)
The national day: þjóðhátíðardagurinn, 17. júní
Iceland's national day is þjóðhátíðardagurinn — þjóð (nation) + hátíð (festival) + dagur (day) + the article — the 17th of June (sautjándi júní), commemorating the founding of the Republic in 1944. The date was chosen as the birthday of Jón Sigurðsson, the leader of the independence movement. You say you do something á þjóðhátíðardaginn (accusative, "on the national day") or simply sautjánda júní ("on the seventeenth of June," with the ordinal in the accusative).
Á þjóðhátíðardaginn, sautjánda júní, er skrúðganga og fjör í bænum.
On the national day, the seventeenth of June, there's a parade and festivities in town. (á þjóðhátíðardaginn — accusative; sautjánda júní — ordinal in accusative)
Sautjándi júní er haldinn hátíðlegur um allt land.
The seventeenth of June is celebrated all over the country. (sautjándi júní as the subject — nominative ordinal)
The old calendar: þorri, góa, and þorrablót
Beneath the modern calendar, Iceland keeps an old lunisolar calendar whose month names survive in fixed phrases and one very living festival. The two best-known winter months are þorri (masculine; roughly mid-January to mid-February) and góa (a weak feminine; the month after, mid-February to mid-March), followed by einmánuður ("the lone month," masculine; the last month of winter). They survive above all in á + dative phrases meaning "during."
| Old month / day | Roughly | Phrase / note |
|---|---|---|
| þorri (m.) | mid-Jan – mid-Feb | á þorranum = during Þorri |
| góa (f.) | mid-Feb – mid-Mar | á góu = during Góa |
| einmánuður (m.) | last month of winter | "the lone month" |
| bóndadagur | first day of Þorri | "husband's day" |
| konudagur | first day of Góa | "woman's day" |
The festival that anchors all this is þorrablót — þorri + blót ("a feast," historically a heathen sacrificial feast) — the midwinter feast held during Þorri, with traditional foods like hákarl (fermented shark) and súrmatur (sour preserved foods). The modern þorrablót dates from the nineteenth-century national-romantic revival, not unbroken from the Middle Ages — a fact worth keeping straight. It runs through the month bracketed by bóndadagur ("husband's day," the first day of Þorri) and konudagur ("woman's day," the first day of Góa).
Á þorranum förum við á þorrablót og borðum hangikjöt og hákarl.
During Þorri we go to a midwinter feast and eat smoked lamb and fermented shark. (á þorranum — á + dative + article; þorrablót = þorri + blót)
Konudagurinn er fyrsti dagur góu, og þá fá konur gjarnan blóm.
Woman's Day is the first day of Góa, and women often get flowers then. (góu — dative of the weak feminine góa)
English vs Icelandic: the singular/plural mismatch
The deep contrast is the one we opened with. English holiday names are singular ("Christmas is coming," "Happy Easter"), so English speakers instinctively reach for singular agreement in Icelandic and produce gleðilegt jól, jólið er komið. But jól (neuter pl.) and páskar (masc. pl.) are plural nouns — closest to English "the holidays" — so every adjective, article, verb, and pronoun around them must be plural: gleðileg jól, jólin eru komin, páskarnir voru rólegir. There is no logic to memorise away here; it's simply a lexical fact about these two words, and the most common festive phrases are exactly where it bites.
Common Mistakes
❌ Gleðilegt jól!
Number error — jól is neuter PLURAL, so the adjective must be plural: gleðileg jól.
✅ Gleðileg jól!
Merry Christmas! (gleðileg = neuter plural, agreeing with plural jól)
Jól is neuter plural; the greeting is gleðileg jól, never the singular gleðilegt jól.
❌ Gleðilegan páska!
Agreement error — páskar is masculine PLURAL, so the accusative is gleðilega páska, not the singular gleðilegan.
✅ Gleðilega páska!
Happy Easter! (gleðilega = masculine plural accusative, agreeing with plural páskar)
❌ Jólið er komið.
Number error — Christmas is plural in Icelandic: jólin eru komin.
✅ Jólin eru komin.
Christmas is here. (plural article -in, plural verb eru, plural participle komin)
❌ Hvað ætlarðu að gera í páskunum?
Wrong preposition — 'over Easter' is um páskana (or á páskunum), not í páskunum.
✅ Hvað ætlarðu að gera um páskana?
What are you doing over Easter? (um + accusative plural páskana)
❌ Við borðum hákarl í þorra.
Wrong phrase — the lexicalised 'during Þorri' is á þorranum, with á + dative + article.
✅ Við borðum hákarl á þorranum.
We eat fermented shark during Þorri. (á þorranum)
Key Takeaways
- jól (Christmas) is neuter plural and páskar (Easter) is masculine plural — so gleðileg jól and gleðilega páska take plural agreement, and so do their verbs, articles, and pronouns (jólin eru komin, páskarnir voru rólegir).
- The festive greetings differ in case as well as gender: gleðileg jól (neuter pl. nominative) vs gleðilega páska (masc. pl. accusative).
- Holiday timing uses á + dative ("at": á jólunum, á páskunum) and um + accusative ("over": um jólin, um páskana), both keeping the plural and article.
- The national day is þjóðhátíðardagurinn, the 17th of June (republic founded 1944, Jón Sigurðsson's birthday).
- The old calendar survives in á þorranum / á góu; the midwinter feast is þorrablót (þorri
- blót), running from bóndadagur to konudagur. </content> </invoke>
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