Icelandic Pronouns: Overview

Pronouns are the small words that stand in for people and things — ég (I), þú (you), hann (he). The single most important thing to grasp before you learn any of them is that Icelandic pronouns are fully declined for case, exactly as nouns and adjectives are. Where English keeps a faint trace of case (the I/me, he/him, they/them split), Icelandic keeps the whole machine: every personal pronoun has four distinct forms, one for each of the four cases. This page maps the entire system at a high level; the detail pages give you the complete paradigms.

Four cases, not two

English speakers already have a two-way case instinct: I does things, me has things done to it. Icelandic extends this to a four-way system — nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive — and the choice between them is driven by the verb, the preposition, or the grammatical role of the pronoun in the sentence. Take the first person singular, "I/me." In English it has two shapes. In Icelandic it has four:

So "I/me" runs ég / mig / mér / mín across the four cases. The accents are not decoration — they are phonemic. Mín (genitive, "of me / my") is a different word from a stem like min-; the í changes both the sound and the meaning. Getting ég, mig, mér, mín exactly right, accents and all, is your first pronoun task.

The personal pronouns at a glance

Here is the full set in their nominative (dictionary) forms. Every one of these declines through four cases — the complete table lives on the paradigm page, but you should recognise the cast first.

Two features of this list will be new to an English speaker. First, the third person singular splits by grammatical gender, and that gender follows the noun, not biological sex — a table (borð, neuter) is það, a clock (klukka, feminine) is hún. Second, and more striking, the third person plural splits three ways: þeir for an all-masculine group, þær for an all-feminine group, and þau for a neuter group — or for any mixed-gender group. A man and a woman together are þau. English has nothing like this; "they" is just "they." The paradigm page covers the consequences in detail.

það: "it" and the dummy subject

The neuter það does double duty. It is the third-person neuter "it" (replacing any neuter noun), and it is also the dummy subject that fills the subject slot when there is no real one — the equivalent of English "it" in "it's raining" or "there is."

This is the same word you would use to mean "it" pointing at a neuter object, so context tells you which job það is doing.

The reflexive: sig / sér / sín

When the object of a verb refers back to the subject of the same clause, the third person switches to the dedicated reflexive pronoun. It has no nominative (you can't be the subject and the reflexive object at once), so it begins at the accusative: sig (acc.), sér (dat.), sín (gen.). It covers "himself, herself, itself, themselves" — for any third-person subject, singular or plural, any gender.

First and second person have no special reflexive — they simply reuse the ordinary object forms (mig, þig, okkur, ykkur) — so sig/sér/sín is the genuinely new piece, and it gets its own page.

Possessives agree with the thing owned

Icelandic possessives — minn (my), þinn (your), okkar (our), and so on — behave like adjectives: they agree in gender, number, and case with the noun possessed, not with the owner. So "my" is minn, mín, or mitt depending on the gender of what you own, and changes again for case. The third person, however, mostly uses the genitive of the personal pronoun — hans (his), hennar (her), þeirra (their) — which do not inflect. This is a substantial topic with its own page; for now, just register that "my book" forces a choice of form that English never asks for.

The relative sem never changes

To link a clause to a noun — "the man who lives here," "the book that I read" — Icelandic uses the single relative word sem. Unlike everything else in this overview, sem is completely invariant: it never declines, never agrees, never changes for who/which/that. Where English picks among "who, which, that" (and German declines its relatives for case and gender), Icelandic just says sem every time.

This is a rare and welcome simplification, so it gets its own page.

The universal þú: no polite "you"

Here is the headline cultural-grammatical fact, and competitors routinely skip it. Icelandic has no T/V politeness split — no "tu/vous," no "du/Sie," no formal versus informal "you." You address everyone as þú: a close friend, a stranger on the bus, your professor, an elderly neighbour, a government minister. The social calibration that English, German, and French speakers instinctively reach for — choosing a respectful pronoun for distance or deference — simply does not exist in modern Icelandic.

There was once a polite plural þér used as a respectful singular (the way French uses vous), but it is now archaic — you will meet it only in old texts, some church language, or very stiff officialese, and using it with an ordinary stranger today sounds antiquated. Default to þú with absolutely everyone. (Note: do not confuse this archaic polite þér with the everyday dative þér, "to you," which is alive and well — same spelling, different job.)

A note on number: the lost dual

In Old Norse, við and þið were specifically dual pronouns — "we two," "you two" — distinct from true plurals (vér, þér) meaning "we/you all." Over the centuries the language collapsed the system: today við simply means "we" and þið "you (plural)," covering two people or two hundred. The old true plurals vér and þér survive only in archaic, liturgical, or grandly formal registers (you will hear vér in hymns and old proclamations). You do not need to produce them, but it is worth recognising them, since their existence explains why the everyday "we/you-plural" forms look the way they do.

Common Mistakes

The verb decides the case. Sjá ("see") takes an accusative object, so "me" is mig, never ég.

Prepositions govern case. Með ("with") takes the dative, so "with me" is með mér. Reaching for the nominative ég after a preposition is the most common case error English speakers make.

Til ("to/for") takes the genitive, so "for me" is til mín. The four cases all surface in everyday speech; you cannot get by with just two.

Reaching for a "polite you" actually makes you sound odd. There is no T/V distinction; þú is correct with everyone.

A man and a woman together are þau. Defaulting "they" to one form (or to the masculine) misses the three-way gender split.

Key Takeaways

• Personal pronouns are fully declined for four cases — "I/me" alone has four forms: ég / mig / mér / mín.
• The verb or preposition picks the case; ask "what role?" not "what's the word for 'me'?"
• The third person singular splits by gender (hann / hún / það); the plural splits three ways (þeir / þær / þau), and a mixed group is neuter þau.
• The reflexive sig / sér / sín ("himself/themselves") has no English equivalent and refers back to the subject.
• The relative sem is invariant; possessives agree with the noun owned.
• þú is universal — there is no polite "you," and reaching for one sounds archaic.