Impersonal and Weather Verbs

Some Icelandic sentences have no doer at all. It just rains; it's cold out; you feel cold but you aren't doing anything. English papers over this with a meaningless "it" — "it rains," "it's cold" — and makes "I" the subject of feeling cold ("I am cold"). Icelandic handles both differently, and getting them right is a clear B1 milestone. Weather verbs sit in the bare 3rd person with at most a dummy það: það rignir "it rains." Impersonal sensations — cold, heat, nausea — use a completely different frame: a dative experiencer plus vera plus a neuter adjective: mér er kalt "I'm cold." The single biggest trap is that ég er kaldur and mér er kalt are not the same sentence — one describes your nature, the other your sensation. (The general syntax of dummy það is covered on the dummy-það page; the wider family of dative-subject verbs is on the dative-subject page. Here we focus on weather and bodily-state impersonals.)

Weather verbs: 3rd person, dummy það

Weather is the purest impersonal: nothing performs the raining, so there is no real subject. The verb sits in the 3rd-person singular, and a dummy það ("it / there") fills the subject slot — but only when nothing else is fronted. Það here is an empty placeholder, carrying no meaning, exactly like English weather-"it."

The dummy það drops when something else comes first

This is the key syntactic point, and where weather "it" differs sharply from English. Icelandic is a V2 language: the finite verb must be the second element, and exactly one thing precedes it. Það is only there to fill the first slot when nothing else does. The moment another element — a time phrase, a place phrase — is fronted, it takes the first slot and the dummy það disappears. English keeps "it" no matter what ("Yesterday it rained"); Icelandic does not.

"It is cold/sunny out": það er + neuter adjective

For weather states (as opposed to weather events), Icelandic uses það er + a neuter adjective: það er kalt "it's cold," það er sólskin "it's sunny," það er hvasst "it's windy." The adjective is neuter because there is no real subject for it to agree with — neuter is the default, impersonal gender.

Bodily sensations: mér er kalt (dative experiencer + neuter adjective)

Now the genuinely different construction — and the one that separates learners from natives. To say you feel cold, hot, or sick, Icelandic does not make "I" the subject. It puts the experiencer in the dative (mér, þér, honum, henni...) and pairs it with vera + a neuter adjective. There is no nominative subject at all:

The dative experiencer set is the same one used across all the dative-subject verbs: mér, þér, honum, henni, okkur, ykkur, þeim. The adjective stays neuter singular (kalt, heitt, illt, flökurt) precisely because there is no nominative for it to agree with — it falls back to the impersonal neuter.

The trap: ég er kaldur ≠ mér er kalt

This is the heart of the page. English collapses everything into "I am cold," so learners reflexively build \ég er kaldur* for the sensation. But Icelandic keeps two completely separate meanings apart:

• ég er kaldur — nominative ég
  • an adjective that agrees (kaldur m. / köld f. / kalt n.). This describes what you ARE: a cold-natured, emotionally cold, aloof person — or, said of a body, literally cold to the touch (e.g. a corpse). It is a property of you.
• mér er kalt — dative mér
  • a neuter adjective. This describes what you FEEL: the sensation of cold is happening to you. It says nothing about your personality.

So ég er kaldur and mér er kalt are as different as English "I am cold-hearted" versus "I feel cold." If you tell an Icelander ég er kaldur meaning you'd like the window shut, you've just announced that you are an unfeeling person. The dative-experiencer pattern is therefore obligatory for the sensation — it is not an optional stylistic variant.

Why English speakers get this wrong

Two transfer errors dominate, and both come straight from English structure. First, English has no impersonal experiencer construction — it makes "I" the subject of every sensation ("I'm cold, I'm hot, I feel sick") — so learners nominativise: \ég er kaldur, *ég er heitur for the feeling. Icelandic flatly refuses; the experiencer is dative and the adjective neuter. Second, English keeps weather-"it" in every position ("Yesterday *it rained"), so learners cling to það even after fronting something else (\í gær það rigndi), violating V2. The fixes are mechanical once internalised: for sensations, *start the sentence with the dative (mér, þér, honum...) and keep the adjective neuter; for weather, drop það the instant another element takes the first slot.

Common Mistakes

The sensation uses a dative experiencer and a neuter adjective. The nominative version describes your character, not your feeling.

Same pattern as cold: mér er heitt, dative + neuter, never nominative ég er heitur for the sensation.

Because there is no nominative subject, the adjective defaults to neuter kalt — even when the experiencer (mér) refers to a woman.

Það only fills the sentence-initial slot. Front a time/place phrase and það disappears.

Weather verbs are strictly 3rd-person impersonal. Don't assign them a personal subject.

Key Takeaways

• Weather verbs are impersonal: 3rd-person singular with a dummy það that fills the first slot — það rignir, það snjóaði, það er kalt.
• The dummy það drops when another element is fronted (V2): það rignir but í gær rigndi (no það).
• Feeling cold/hot/sick uses a dative experiencer + vera + NEUTER adjective: mér er kalt, mér er heitt, henni var illt.
• The adjective is neuter (kalt, heitt, illt) because there's no nominative subject; the experiencer is dative (mér, þér, honum...).
• Keep the two senses of "I'm cold" apart: ég er kaldur = a cold/aloof person (nominative, agreeing adjective); mér er kalt = the sensation (dative, neuter). The dative pattern is obligatory for the feeling.