Annotated Text: An Icelandic Folktale (B2) | Icelandic Grammar

Folktales are the perfect bridge between the dialogues you've been reading and the saga prose still ahead of you. They use the same narrative grammar as the sagas — a chain of preterite verbs, occasional slips into the historical present, reported speech pushed into the subjunctive — but in a simpler, more repetitive form, with stock phrases that recur from tale to tale. This page reads the opening of a real one: Gilitrutt, a troll story collected by Jón Árnason (1819–1888) in Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri and long in the public domain. We present the excerpt first, then take it apart.

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The text below is a genuine public-domain folktale — the opening of Gilitrutt from Jón Árnason's collection (digitised at snerpa.is, with the standard printed text on Wikisource). Every Icelandic sentence is authentic to the source; nothing has been invented. For a clean teaching excerpt we have lightly abridged — a few connecting sentences are omitted (marked by the gaps between rows) and the clause en konan tók ekki líflega undir það is shown as its own line. One digitisation slip has been corrected: the feminine stórskorin, agreeing with kerling, for snerpa.is's stray masculine stórskorinn.

The text

The opening of Gilitrutt: a young, hardworking farmer marries a lazy wife; one autumn he gives her wool to work, she won't touch it, and then a strange old woman appears.

Icelandic	English
Einu sinni bjó ungur bóndi austur undir Eyjafjöllum.	Once there lived a young farmer east under Eyjafjöll.
Hann var ákafamaður mikill og starfsamur.	He was a man of great energy and industrious.
Hann var nýkvæntur, þegar þessi saga gjörðist.	He was newly married when this story took place.
Kona hans var ung, en duglaus og dáðlaus.	His wife was young, but useless and listless.
Eitt haust fékk hann henni ull mikla og bað hana að vinna hana til vaðmála um veturinn.	One autumn he gave her a great deal of wool and asked her to work it into homespun cloth over the winter.
En konan tók ekki líflega undir það.	But the wife did not respond eagerly to that.
Einu sinni kemur kerling ein heldur stórskorin til konunnar og bað hana að greiða eitthvað fyrir sér.	One day a rather coarse-featured old woman comes to the wife and asked her to do something for her in return.

And, a little later, when the farmer learns his wife has promised the stranger her name-guess as payment:

Icelandic	English
Var þá bóndi hræddur og segir, að nú hafi hún illa gjört, því þetta muni tröll vera, sem ætli að taka hana.	Then the farmer was frightened and says that now she has done badly, for this must be a troll that means to take her.

Read it once for the story. Now read it again for the four grammatical engines that run it.

1. The opener: Einu sinni + past verb

Every folktale tradition has its "once upon a time," and Icelandic's is Einu sinni — literally "one time," "on one occasion." It's a fixed dative phrase (einu sinni) and it almost always launches the tale, followed immediately by a past-tense verb. The two most common shapes are Einu sinni var… ("once there was…") and, as here, Einu sinni bjó… ("once there lived…").

Einu sinni bjó ungur bóndi austur undir Eyjafjöllum.

Once there lived a young farmer east under Eyjafjöll. — the once-upon-a-time opener: 'Einu sinni' (one time) + preterite 'bjó' (lived). The fronted adverbial puts the verb second (V2), before the subject 'ungur bóndi'.

Two things deserve a look. First, this is V2 in action: the fronted Einu sinni fills slot one, so the verb bjó leaps to slot two, before the subject ungur bóndi. Second, the indefinite hero is introduced with the numeral/article einn — here inside Einu sinni, and a moment later in kerling ein ("a [certain] old woman"). This use of einn as a referent-introducer ("a certain, one particular") is a hallmark of storytelling grammar: it sets a brand-new character on the stage. Einu sinni even literally contains it (einu = the dative of einn).

Einu sinni kemur kerling ein heldur stórskorin til konunnar.

One day a rather coarse-featured old woman comes to the wife. — 'kerling ein' uses 'einn' (here feminine 'ein') as a referent-introducer: 'a certain old woman' newly stepping into the story.

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The opener is Einu sinni var… ('once there was…') or Einu sinni bjó… ('once there lived…'). It fronts an adverbial, so the verb comes second (V2), before the subject. New characters are introduced with einn ('a certain one') — kerling ein, bóndi einn — which is your storytelling cue that a fresh figure has arrived.

2. The narrative preterite — and a slip into the historical present

The backbone of the tale, exactly as in saga prose and in any English story, is a chain of preterite (simple past) verbs: bjó ("lived"), var ("was"), fékk ("gave"), bað ("asked"), tók ("took/responded"). This is the default narrative tense; events happened and are over.

Eitt haust fékk hann henni ull mikla og bað hana að vinna hana.

One autumn he gave her a great deal of wool and asked her to work it. — narrative preterite chain: 'fékk' (gave), 'bað' (asked). 'fékk … henni' = 'gave her' (dative of person + accusative of thing).

But watch the verb when the mysterious old woman appears: kemur ("comes"), a present tense, dropped into the middle of a past-tense narrative. This is the historical (or narrative) present — a storyteller's device that switches to the present at a dramatic or pivotal moment to make it vivid, "and now this strange woman comes to her." Icelandic folktales and sagas do this constantly, jumping between preterite and present within a single paragraph. The same move recurs in the farmer's reaction: Var þá bóndi hræddur (preterite "was") og segir (present "says").

Einu sinni kemur kerling ein til konunnar.

One day a strange old woman comes to the wife. — the historical present 'kemur' (comes) interrupts the past-tense narrative to spotlight the pivotal arrival. English does the same in lively storytelling: '…and this woman comes up to her.'

Var þá bóndi hræddur og segir…

Then the farmer was frightened and says… — note the tense switch within one sentence: preterite 'var' (was) → historical present 'segir' (says). Folktales mix the two freely.

For an English reader the move is familiar (we do it when we tell a story animatedly), but in Icelandic narrative prose it is far more pervasive and stylistically neutral. Don't "correct" it to a uniform past; recognise it as the genre's pulse.

3. Reported speech and the subjunctive

Now the richest grammar in the excerpt. When the farmer's words are reported — not quoted directly but folded into the narration with að ("that") — the verbs inside the report go into the subjunctive. Look at his frightened reaction:

… segir, að nú hafi hún illa gjört, því þetta muni tröll vera, sem ætli að taka hana.

… says that now she has done badly, for this must be a troll that means to take her. — three subjunctives in a row: 'hafi' (has, subj.), 'muni' (must/will, subj.), 'ætli' (intends, subj.). Reported speech after a verb of saying drives the subordinate verbs into the subjunctive.

The indicative forms would be hefur ("has"), mun ("will/must"), ætlar ("intends"). In the reported clause they become the subjunctive hafi, muni, ætli. Why? Because the content is presented as the farmer's claim, filtered through his perspective rather than asserted by the narrator as fact — and Icelandic marks exactly that "according to him, not vouched for by me" stance with the subjunctive. It is the grammar of indirect speech: a verb of saying or thinking (segja, halda, óttast) opens an að-clause, and the verb inside that clause shifts to the subjunctive.

Direct (indicative)	Reported (subjunctive)	Meaning
hún hefur illa gjört	…að hún hafi illa gjört	that she has done badly
þetta mun tröll vera	…að þetta muni tröll vera	that this must be a troll
tröllið ætlar að taka hana	…sem ætli að taka hana	that intends to take her

This is where English and Icelandic part company most sharply. English reported speech adjusts the tense ("he says she has done badly" → "he said she had done badly") but has no mood shift — there's no special "reported" form of the verb. Icelandic instead deploys the subjunctive to flag that the words belong to the reported speaker, not the narrator. An English speaker's reflex is to leave the indicative in place (*að hún hefur illa gjört), which sounds, to an Icelandic ear, like the narrator vouching for it as fact rather than reporting the farmer's view.

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After a verb of saying/thinking + að ('that'), the reported verb goes subjunctive: hefur → hafi, mun → muni, ætlar → ætli, er → sé. It marks the clause as someone's reported claim, not the narrator's assertion. English has no equivalent mood-shift — don't transfer the indicative.

4. Folklore vocabulary

Finally, the lexicon of the supernatural — the words that populate these tales and that you'll meet again and again across the genre:

Word	Gender	Meaning
tröll	neuter	troll — a giant, often malevolent being (as feared here)
huldufólk	neuter	"hidden people" — beings living unseen in rocks and hills
álfar	masc. pl.	elves (singular álfur) — close kin to the huldufólk
draugur	masculine	a revenant, the walking dead; a ghost with a body
kerling / skessa	feminine	old woman / ogress — the troll-woman is often a skessa

In our excerpt the dangerous visitor is named with the ordinary word kerling ("old woman") until the farmer's dread reveals what she really is — þetta muni tröll vera, "this must be a troll." That reveal is typical: folktales let a stranger pass for human until the supernatural truth breaks through.

Þetta muni tröll vera, sem ætli að taka hana.

This must be a troll that means to take her. — 'tröll' (neuter), the folklore noun at the heart of the tale; named only when the farmer grasps the danger.

Sagt er að huldufólk og álfar búi í klettunum og hólunum.

It is said that the hidden people and elves live in the rocks and the knolls. — the genre's stock beings: neuter 'huldufólk' and masculine plural 'álfar'; note the reported-speech subjunctive 'búi' (live) after 'sagt er að'.

Why folktales bridge to the sagas

The grammar you've just dismantled — Einu sinni + preterite, the historical-present jolt, the subjunctive in reported speech, einn introducing a new character — is exactly the grammar of saga narrative, only gentler. Folktales are shorter, their sentences less embedded, their vocabulary smaller and more repetitive; the same stock phrases (Einu sinni var, Svo bar við að…, Það er sagt að…) recur until they're automatic. Read a dozen of them and the saga's tense-mixing and subjunctives will already feel like home. That's the pedagogical gift of the folktale: it teaches the sagas' machinery one low-stakes, charming story at a time.

Common Mistakes

❌ … segir, að hún hefur illa gjört.

Mood error — reported speech after 'segir að' takes the subjunctive 'hafi', not the indicative 'hefur'. The indicative makes it sound like the narrator's own assertion.

✅ … segir, að hún hafi illa gjört.

… says that she has done badly. — subjunctive 'hafi' marks it as the farmer's reported claim.

This is the number-one transfer error: leaving the reported verb in the indicative, as English does.

❌ Einn sinn var ungur bóndi…

Form error — the fixed opener is the dative phrase 'Einu sinni' (one time), not '*einn sinn'.

✅ Einu sinni var ungur bóndi…

Once there was a young farmer… — the frozen dative 'Einu sinni'.

❌ Einu sinni ungur bóndi bjó undir Eyjafjöllum.

Word-order error — after the fronted 'Einu sinni' the verb must come second (V2), before the subject: 'bjó ungur bóndi'.

✅ Einu sinni bjó ungur bóndi undir Eyjafjöllum.

Once there lived a young farmer under Eyjafjöll. — V2: fronted adverbial, then verb, then subject.

❌ (reading) 'kemur is a mistake in a past-tense story.'

Misreading — 'kemur' (present) is the deliberate historical present, switching to the present at a dramatic moment. It's a feature, not an error.

✅ (reading) 'kemur is the historical present, jolting the narration into the present for vividness.'

Correct — folktales and sagas mix preterite and present freely.

Key Takeaways

The folktale opener is Einu sinni var/bjó… ("once there was/lived…"), a fronted dative phrase that triggers V2 (verb before subject). New characters arrive with einn ("a certain one"): kerling ein, bóndi einn.
Narration runs on the preterite, with frequent jolts into the historical present (kemur, segir) at dramatic moments — a stylistic feature, not an error.
Reported speech after a verb of saying/thinking + að pushes the verb into the subjunctive (hafi, muni, ætli, búi), marking the words as someone's claim, not the narrator's fact. English has no such mood-shift — don't leave the indicative.
Folklore lexicon to own: tröll (troll, neut.), huldufólk (hidden people, neut.), álfar (elves, masc. pl.), draugur (revenant, masc.), kerling/skessa (old woman/ogress, fem.).
Folktales are the sagas' grammar in simpler, repetitive form — the ideal stepping stone from dialogues to saga prose.
Source: the opening of Gilitrutt, a genuine public-domain tale from Jón Árnason's Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri.

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