svara ("to answer, to reply") is the natural counterpart to spyrja "to ask," and it is a textbook weak Class-1 verb — its past tense ends in the fully regular -aði (svaraði). What makes svara worth a dedicated page is its case government: in Icelandic you answer to something, so the thing you answer — a question, a person, an email — stands in the dative, not the accusative. Svara spurningunni, not svara spurninguna. This page lays out the full paradigm (with the obligatory u-umlaut) and drills the dative.
Conjugation
Class: weak, Class 1 (the -aði preterite), exactly like tala. Auxiliary: hafa — ég hef svarað "I have answered." The stem vowel is a short a, so this verb does undergo u-umlaut: wherever an ending begins with -u-, the stem a becomes ö (svörum, svöruðum, svöruðu).
| Principal parts | |
|---|---|
| Infinitive | að svara |
| 3sg present | svarar |
| 3sg past | svaraði |
| Supine | svarað |
| Person | Present (nútíð) | Past (þátíð) |
|---|---|---|
| ég | svara | svaraði |
| þú | svarar | svaraðir |
| hann / hún / það | svarar | svaraði |
| við | svörum | svöruðum |
| þið | svarið | svöruðuð |
| þeir / þær / þau | svara | svöruðu |
| Person | Present subjunctive | Past subjunctive |
|---|---|---|
| ég | svari | svaraði |
| þú | svarir | svaraðir |
| hann / hún / það | svari | svaraði |
| við | svörum | svöruðum |
| þið | svarið | svöruðuð |
| þeir / þær / þau | svari | svöruðu |
| Non-finite & imperative | |
|---|---|
| Imperative (þú) | svaraðu |
| Imperative (þið) | svarið! |
| Supine | svarað |
| Past participle (m/f/n) | svaraður / svöruð / svarað |
| Middle voice (miðmynd) | svarast á — "to exchange replies / correspond" |
The big one: svara takes the dative
Here is the fact that separates a fluent learner from a beginner. The thing you answer goes in the dative case:
- svara spurningunni — answer the question (dative spurningunni, not accusative spurninguna)
- svara mér — answer me (dative mér)
- svara símanum — answer the phone
- svara tölvupóstinum — answer the email
Why dative? Think of it as answering to something — directing a response at a target. Icelandic encodes that "directed-to" relationship with the dative, the same case it uses elsewhere for recipients and goals. English flattens all of this into a bare object ("answer the question"), which is exactly why English speakers reach for the accusative and get it wrong.
Hann svaraði ekki spurningunni minni.
He didn't answer my question.
Af hverju svararðu mér ekki?
Why won't you answer me?
Ég svara símanum aldrei ef ég þekki ekki númerið.
I never answer the phone if I don't recognise the number.
What kind of "answer" goes in the dative?
It helps to see how wide the dative net is cast. Almost anything you can respond to becomes a dative object of svara: a question (spurningu), a person (mér, honum), a letter or email (bréfi, tölvupósti), a message (skilaboðum), the phone or the door (símanum, dyrunum), and even an argument or a demand (kröfu). The common thread is that svara never creates a new object the way tala or segja might — it always reacts to a target that already exists in the conversation, and Icelandic marks that pre-existing target with the dative. Once you internalise "respond to X → X is dative," you can predict the case for a verb you have never met, which is exactly the kind of generalisation that makes the dative feel less arbitrary.
There is one productive exception worth knowing: when the content of the reply is itself stated, that content can stand in the accusative as a second object — svara engu "answer nothing," svara því einu til að… "reply only that…." Here engu/því is the actual words spoken back, while the person addressed (if mentioned) stays dative. In everyday speech, though, you will overwhelmingly meet the single dative object.
svara fyrir — answer for / account for
The phrasal svara fyrir (+ accusative after fyrir) means "answer for / be accountable for" something — to take responsibility and explain yourself. It is common in news and workplace contexts.
Ráðherrann þarf að svara fyrir ákvörðunina á þingi.
The minister has to answer for the decision in parliament.
Ég ætla ekki að svara fyrir það sem aðrir gera.
I'm not going to answer for what other people do.
Everyday uses across tenses
Svaraðu mér í hreinskilni.
Answer me honestly.
Við svöruðum öllum tölvupóstunum fyrir hádegi.
We answered all the emails before noon.
Hún hefur ekki enn svarað skilaboðunum.
She still hasn't replied to the message.
Common Mistakes
❌ Hann svaraði spurninguna.
Incorrect — svara takes the dative (spurningunni), not the accusative
✅ Hann svaraði spurningunni.
He answered the question.
❌ Við svarum á morgun.
Incorrect — the -um ending triggers u-umlaut, so the stem a becomes ö: svörum
✅ Við svörum á morgun.
We'll answer tomorrow.
❌ Þau svaruðu mér aldrei.
Incorrect — the past plural has u-umlaut: svöruðu, not 'svaruðu'
✅ Þau svöruðu mér aldrei.
They never answered me.
❌ Geturðu svarað mig?
Incorrect — you answer someone in the dative (mér), not the accusative (mig)
✅ Geturðu svarað mér?
Can you answer me?
Key Takeaways
- svara / svarar / svaraði / svarað — a regular weak Class-1 verb (the -aði past), the answering counterpart to spyrja.
- u-umlaut: short-a stem → a becomes ö before -u- endings — við svörum, past plural sv*öruðum / svö*ruðu.
- svara governs the DATIVE: svara spurningunni, svara mér, svara símanum — never the accusative.
- Contrast with spyrja, which takes the accusative person — mirror verbs, opposite cases.
- svara fyrir = "answer for / be accountable for" (+ acc after fyrir).
- Auxiliary is hafa: ég hef svarað.
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Start learning Icelandic→Related Topics
- The Weak Preterite: -aði, -di, -ði, -tiA2 — How to choose and form the weak past tense — Class-1 -a verbs take -aði (tala → talaði, plural töluðum), Class-2 verbs take the short dental -di/-ði/-ti picked by the preceding sound (reyndi, dæmdi, keypti) — with the full tala paradigm and the 'when in doubt, -aði' default for unknown verbs.
- spyrja (to ask)A2 — Full conjugation of the irregular weak j-verb spyrja (spyr / spurði / spurðu / spurt) — with the y→u vowel shift between present and past — its accusative object (spyrja einhvern), the idioms spyrja um / spyrja að, the indirect-question complement spyrja hvort, and the noun spurning.