fara ("to go") is one of the first verbs you will reach for in Icelandic and one of the trickiest, because it is a strong verb with a vowel that shifts from one form to the next. It also takes an unusual perfect (with vera, not hafa), it builds the everyday "start to" construction fara að, and it has a middle-voice cousin farast with a meaning you would never guess from the parts. This page gives you the whole picture.
Conjugation
Class: strong, class 6 (ablaut a–ó–a), with a present-tense vowel change (fer). Auxiliary: vera for motion (ég er farinn "I have gone/left"); hafa is also used, especially with the supine in compound clauses.
| Principal parts | |
|---|---|
| Infinitive | að fara |
| 3sg present | fer |
| 3sg past | fór |
| Supine | farið |
| Person | Present (nútíð) | Past (þátíð) |
|---|---|---|
| ég | fer | fór |
| þú | ferð | fórst |
| hann / hún / það | fer | fór |
| við | förum | fórum |
| þið | farið | fóruð |
| þeir / þær / þau | fara | fóru |
| Person | Present subjunctive | Past subjunctive |
|---|---|---|
| ég | fari | færi |
| þú | farir | færir |
| hann / hún / það | fari | færi |
| við | förum | færum |
| þið | farið | færuð |
| þeir / þær / þau | fari | færu |
| Non-finite & imperative | |
|---|---|
| Imperative (þú) | far! / farðu (with attached pronoun) |
| Imperative (þið) | farið! |
| Supine | farið |
| Past participle (m/f/n) | farinn / farin / farið |
| Middle voice (miðmynd) | farast (3sg ferst, past fórst) |
The principal parts and where the vowels go
The four principal parts are all you need to generate the rest: fer (present stem), fór (past singular), fóru (past plural / past stem), farið (supine). The headache for beginners is that fara has three different stem vowels in play — a in the infinitive, e in the present singular (fer, ferð, fer), and ó throughout the past (fór, fórum, fóru). The e in fer is a present-tense fronting that strong class-6 verbs like fara and taka share, and there is no shortcut: you simply learn fer alongside fara.
Ég fer í vinnuna klukkan átta á hverjum morgni.
I go to work at eight o'clock every morning.
Við fórum til Akureyrar um helgina.
We went to Akureyri over the weekend.
Ferðu oft í sund?
Do you go swimming often?
Syntax: where you are going, and in which case
fara is a motion verb, so it almost always travels with a direction. Two patterns dominate, and the case after the preposition is the thing English speakers get wrong:
- fara heim / út / niður — bare directional adverbs, no preposition: fara heim "go home," fara út "go out."
- fara í + accusative — "go into / go to" a place you enter: fara í skólann "go to school," fara í bíó "go to the cinema." The accusative is doing real work here: it signals motion into, as opposed to í + dative which would mean being located in.
The accusative-of-motion rule is the single most useful thing on this page. Ég fer í bæinn (acc.) is "I'm going into town"; Ég er í bænum (dat.) is "I'm in town." Same preposition, two cases, two meanings.
Ég ætla að fara heim snemma í kvöld.
I'm going to go home early tonight.
Hún fer í skólann með strætó.
She goes to school by bus.
fara að + infinitive — "to start to"
Add að plus another verb and fara stops meaning "go" and starts meaning "begin to / get to." This inceptive fara að is one of the most common verb chains in spoken Icelandic.
Það er farið að rigna.
It has started to rain.
Nú förum við að borða.
Now we're going to start eating / let's eat now.
The vera-perfect: ég er farinn
Because fara describes a change of location, its perfect is normally built with vera ("to be"), and the participle agrees with the subject in gender and number: ég er farinn (a man), ég er farin (a woman), þau eru farin (a mixed group). This is exactly like French je suis allé or German ich bin gegangen — the Germanic and Romance languages that use a "be"-perfect for motion verbs.
Strætóinn er farinn — við misstum af honum.
The bus has left — we missed it.
Ertu farin að sofa?
Have you gone to sleep yet?
farast — the middle voice trap
Tack -st onto fara and you do not get "go oneself" — you get farast, "to perish, to be lost / killed (in an accident)." It is a fixed, slightly formal word you will meet in the news.
Tveir fórust í slysinu á þjóðveginum.
Two people died in the accident on the highway.
Common Mistakes
❌ Við farum til Íslands í sumar.
Incorrect — the ending starts with -u-, so the stem must take u-umlaut
✅ Við förum til Íslands í sumar.
We're going to Iceland this summer.
❌ Ég fara í vinnuna.
Incorrect — fara is the infinitive/plural; the 1sg present is fer
✅ Ég fer í vinnuna.
I go to work.
❌ Ég hef farið heim.
Incorrect — with a motion verb the perfect normally uses vera + agreeing participle
✅ Ég er farinn heim.
I've gone home. (said by a man)
❌ Ég fer í bænum.
Incorrect — fara takes í + accusative for motion into a place, not dative
✅ Ég fer í bæinn.
I'm going into town.
Key Takeaways
- fara / fer / fór / farið — strong class 6; the present singular fronts the vowel to fer.
- u-umlaut: a → ö before -u- endings — við förum.
- Perfect of motion uses vera with an agreeing participle: ég er farinn / farin.
- fara í + accusative = motion into; fara að + infinitive = "start to."
- farast (middle) means "to perish," not "to go oneself."
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