Hann lokar öðru auganu þegar sólin skín beint í það.

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Breakdown of Hann lokar öðru auganu þegar sólin skín beint í það.

• hann: he
• þegar: when
• loka: to close

Questions & Answers about Hann lokar öðru auganu þegar sólin skín beint í það.

Why is there no word for “his” in „Hann lokar öðru auganu“?

In Icelandic, you usually omit possessive pronouns (his/her/my) with body parts when it is clear who they belong to from the subject.

So „Hann lokar öðru auganu“ literally is “He closes the other eye”, but it naturally means “He closes his other eye”.
You only add „hans“ (his) if you need to avoid ambiguity, e.g. if it could be someone else’s eye.

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Why is it „öðru“ and not „annað“ or „eitt“ before „auganu“?

• „annar“ means “other, second, the other (of two)”, not just “another” in the loose English sense.
• Its neuter forms are:
  • Nominative: annað
  • Accusative: annað
  • Dative: öðru
  • Genitive: annars

Here we have dative (because of the verb „loka“, see another question), so we must use „öðru“, the dative neuter singular form.

So the phrase „öðru auganu“ is literally “the other eye (dative)”, i.e. “(in) the other eye / (to) the other eye”.

You could in principle use „eitt augað“ (“one of the eyes”), but that would sound different in nuance and is not what the original sentence uses.

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What case is , and why that case?