hittast ("to meet each other, to meet up") is the reciprocal middle-voice (miðmynd) form of hitta ("to meet someone"). The -st here does something specific and beautiful: it builds the meaning "each other" directly into the verb. Where English needs two words — "meet" plus "each other" / "up" — Icelandic folds the reciprocity into the -st, so a single verb says it all. Because meeting each other requires at least two people, hittast is inherently plural: its subject is always við ("we"), þið ("you all"), þeir/þær/þau ("they"), or two coordinated people (Anna og Jón). You will use it constantly to arrange to meet up. This page gives the -st paradigm and drills the two errors English speakers make: reaching for the active hitta where the reciprocal is idiomatic, and tacking on a redundant hvort annað.
Conjugation
Base verb: hitta (weak, -tti preterite). Voice: middle (miðmynd), reciprocal. Auxiliary: hafa — við höfum hist "we have met." Because the meaning is reciprocal, the singular persons are rare or impossible in practice — you cannot meet each other alone — so the paradigm below shows the full forms but marks the singular as effectively unused.
| Principal parts | |
|---|---|
| Infinitive | að hittast |
| 1pl present | hittumst |
| 1pl past | hittumst |
| 3pl past | hittust |
| Supine | hist |
| Person | Present (nútíð) | Past (þátíð) |
|---|---|---|
| ég (rare/unused) | hittist | hittist |
| þú (rare/unused) | hittist | hittist |
| hann / hún / það (rare/unused) | hittist | hittist |
| við | hittumst | hittumst |
| þið | hittist | hittust |
| þeir / þær / þau | hittast | hittust |
| Person | Present subjunctive | Past subjunctive |
|---|---|---|
| við | hittumst | hittumst |
| þið | hittist | hittust |
| þeir / þær / þau | hittist | hittust |
| Non-finite & imperative | |
|---|---|
| Imperative (þið) | hittist! (rare; usually paraphrased with "eigum við að…") |
| Supine | hist |
| Past participle (n) | hist |
The reciprocal meaning: 'each other' is built in
The whole point of hittast is that the -st encodes mutual action — the people meet one another. This is the reciprocal use of the middle voice, the same mechanism behind sjást ("see each other"), kyssast ("kiss each other"), and talast við ("talk to each other"). With hittast, no separate "each other" phrase is needed — or wanted.
Eigum við að hittast á morgun?
Shall we meet up tomorrow? (the most natural way to propose meeting)
Við hittumst fyrir utan bíóið klukkan átta.
Let's meet outside the cinema at eight. / We're meeting outside the cinema at eight.
Þau hittust fyrst í háskólanum fyrir tíu árum.
They first met at university ten years ago.
Höfum við hist áður? Þú kemur mér svo kunnuglega fyrir sjónir.
Have we met before? You look so familiar to me. (supine: hist)
hittast vs hitta — reciprocal vs one-directional
Keep the pair apart. hitta (active) is one-directional and transitive: someone meets someone else, who appears as an accusative object — ég hitti hann ("I met him"). hittast (middle) is reciprocal and intransitive: the parties meet each other, and there is no object, just a plural subject. When two friends arrange to get together, the idiomatic verb is hittast, not hitta.
Ég hitti Önnu í búðinni í morgun.
I ran into Anna at the shop this morning. (active hitta + accusative object — one-directional)
Anna og ég hittumst í búðinni í morgun.
Anna and I met (each other) at the shop this morning. (reciprocal hittast — plural subject, no object)
Both can describe the same event, but the framing differs: hitta foregrounds one person doing the meeting; hittast presents it as a mutual encounter. For "let's get together," only hittast works — eigum við að hitta? is ungrammatical because hitta demands an object.
hvort annað is redundant with hittast
Because the -st already means "each other," adding the explicit reciprocal pronoun hvort annað / hvert annað ("each other") is redundant — and native speakers don't do it. English speakers, translating "meet each other," are strongly tempted to append it. Resist: við hittumst already says "we meet each other." (The explicit hvort annað belongs with active verbs that aren't middle, e.g. þau elska hvort annað "they love each other," where there is no -st to do the job.)
Þau hittast oft og fá sér kaffi saman.
They often meet up and have coffee together. (no 'each other' needed — the -st carries it)
Common Mistakes
❌ Eigum við að hitta á morgun?
Incorrect — hitta is transitive and needs an object; for 'meet up' use the reciprocal hittast.
✅ Eigum við að hittast á morgun?
Shall we meet up tomorrow?
❌ Við hittumst hvort annað í gær.
Incorrect — the -st already means 'each other', so hvort annað is redundant.
✅ Við hittumst í gær.
We met (each other) yesterday.
❌ Þau hittistu í háskólanum.
Incorrect — the past PLURAL is hittust, not *hittistu.
✅ Þau hittust í háskólanum.
They met at university.
❌ Höfum við hittast áður?
Incorrect — the supine (after höfum) is hist, not the infinitive hittast.
✅ Höfum við hist áður?
Have we met before?
Key Takeaways
- hittumst / hittust / hittust / hist — the reciprocal middle voice of hitta, meaning "meet each other / meet up."
- It is inherently plural: the subject is við, þið, þeir/þær/þau or two coordinated people; the singular is effectively unused.
- The -st already means "each other," so adding hvort annað is redundant: við hittumst, not við hittumst hvort annað.
- Contrast with active hitta, which is transitive and one-directional (ég hitti hann). For "let's get together," only hittast works.
- Present and past við hittumst are identical — context disambiguates. Supine is hist; auxiliary is hafa: við höfum hist.
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Start learning Icelandic→Related Topics
- The Middle Voice (-st): OverviewB1 — An orientation to the Icelandic middle voice — the verb form built by suffixing -st — covering its four meaning-types (reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative/passive-like, and lexicalised) and the crucial fact that the meaning of an -st verb is not predictable from its base, so many are their own dictionary entries.
- Reciprocal and Anticausative -stB2 — The two most productive jobs of the -st middle voice: the reciprocal ('each other' — hittast, sjást, kyssast, berjast) and the anticausative ('happen by itself' — opnast, lokast, breytast). How the reciprocal folds in English 'each other' and the anticausative detransitivises a verb, plus why the anticausative is Icelandic's natural alternative to a passive for events with no agent.
- Conjugating Middle-Voice VerbsB1 — How to build the forms of -st (middle-voice) verbs across the whole paradigm: the present in which 2sg and 3sg merge because -st swallows the personal -r, the often-bare 1sg, the preterite that stacks a dental + -st (settist, klæddist, komst), and the supine in -st — drilled on the weak verb setjast and the strong verb komast.
- Reciprocals: hvor annan and -st VerbsB2 — The two ways Icelandic says 'each other': the phrasal hvor annan (two parties) / hver annan (more), where BOTH halves decline for the case the verb assigns — hvort öðru in the dative — and the middle-voice -st verbs that lexicalise reciprocity (þau hittust 'they met', þau kysstust 'they kissed'), the idiomatic choice for high-frequency verbs like meet, see, talk, and kiss.
- mætaB1 — Full conjugation of the weak Class-2 verb mæta (mæti / mætti / mættu / mætt), 'to meet, encounter, show up', whose object is in the DATIVE (mæta einhverjum), the construction mæta í 'show up at', the contrast with hitta (accusative, 'meet by arrangement') and reciprocal hittast, and the homograph mætti (also mega's past subjunctive and the polite mætti ég).