Learn Hardcore Icelandic: Brandarinn er svo fyndinn að stelpan gleymir að hún var leið. - The joke is so funny that the girl forgets that she was sad.

Brandarinn er svo fyndinn að stelpan gleymir að hún var leið.

The joke is so funny that the girl forgets that she was sad.

Breakdown of Brandarinn er svo fyndinn að stelpan gleymir að hún var leið.

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Questions & Answers about Brandarinn er svo fyndinn að stelpan gleymir að hún var leið.

Why does brandarinn end in -inn? What’s the difference between brandari and brandarinn?

Brandari means a joke, while brandarinn means the joke.

In Icelandic, the definite article (the) is usually attached to the end of the noun as a suffix instead of being a separate word:

brandari – a joke (indefinite, nominative singular, masculine)
brandarinn – the joke (definite, nominative singular, masculine)

So in the sentence Brandarinn er svo fyndinn …, we are talking about one specific joke: The joke is so funny …

Why is the adjective fyndinn and not something like fyndin or fyndið?

Adjectives in Icelandic agree with the noun in:

gender (masculine / feminine / neuter)
number (singular / plural)
case (nominative / accusative / dative / genitive)

Here we have:

brandarinn – masculine, singular, nominative
Predicate adjective after vera (er) describing brandarinn

So the adjective must also be masculine singular nominative, which is:

fyndinn – masculine
fyndin – feminine
fyndið – neuter

Therefore:

Brandarinn er fyndinn. – The joke is funny.
Stelpan er fyndin. – The girl is funny.
Bréfið er fyndið. – The letter is funny.

What does the svo … að construction mean in er svo fyndinn að …?

The pattern svo + adjective + að means so + adjective + that in English.

In this sentence:

er svo fyndinn að = is so funny that

So:

Brandarinn er svo fyndinn að stelpan gleymir …
The joke is so funny that the girl forgets …

Other examples of the same pattern:

Hann er svo þreyttur að hann sofnaði í sófanum.
He is so tired that he fell asleep on the couch.
Veðrið er svo vont að enginn vill fara út.
The weather is so bad that nobody wants to go out.

Why is the adjective after the verb: Brandarinn er fyndinn, not fyndni brandarinn er?

In Icelandic, as in English, when an adjective describes the subject through the verb vera (to be), it normally comes after the verb:

Brandarinn er fyndinn. – The joke is funny.
Stelpan er leið. – The girl is sad.
Húsið er stórt. – The house is big.

When the adjective is directly in front of the noun as an attributive adjective, it comes before the noun:

fyndinn brandari – a funny joke
leið stelpa – a sad girl
stórt hús – a big house

So the word order here is perfectly normal: Subject – verb – adjective.

Why is the verb gleymir used here, and how does gleyma normally work?

The verb is að gleyma – to forget.
Here we have stelpan gleymir … – the girl forgets …

There are two common patterns:

Forget a thing (noun phrase)
Then the forgotten thing is in the dative case:
- Hún gleymir brandaranum. – She forgets the joke.
- Ég gleymi alltaf lykklunum mínum. – I always forget my keys.
Forget that something is the case (clause)
Very often you see:
- gleymir því að + clause – literally: forgets it that …
- Hún gleymir því að hún var leið. – She forgets that she was sad.

In your sentence you have:

stelpan gleymir að hún var leið.

This is understood as “the girl forgets that she was sad” because að is followed by a full clause (hún var leið), not an infinitive. Many speakers would prefer gleymir því að hún var leið, but the meaning is the same.

What is the difference between gleymir að and gleymir því að?

Functionally:

gleymir því að … is the clearest way to say “forgets that …” (introducing a that-clause).
gleymir að + infinitive usually means “forgets to do something.”

Compare:

Hún gleymir að læra.
– She forgets to study.
(að læra = infinitive, “to study”)
Hún gleymir því að hún var leið.
– She forgets that she was sad.
(því að hún var leið = that-clause)

Your example:

stelpan gleymir að hún var leið is grammatically understandable as “forgets that she was sad” because að is followed by hún var, not by an infinitive.
Many teachers and grammars, however, would recommend gleymir því að hún var leið for extra clarity.

Why is it að stelpan gleymir … and not something like stelpan að gleymir …? How does word order work in that clause?

In the clause að stelpan gleymir að hún var leið, the first að is a subordinating conjunction meaning that, introducing a subordinate clause.

The word order in that clause is:

að (that) + stelpan (subject) + gleymir (verb) + …

So the clause is:

stelpan gleymir að hún var leið – the girl forgets that she was sad.

You do not put að between the subject and the verb:

❌ stelpan að gleymir … – incorrect
✅ að stelpan gleymir … – correct

Within an að-clause, a normal statement order is Subject – Verb – Object/Other, the same as in a simple main clause: Stelpan gleymir þessu. → að stelpan gleymir þessu.

Why does the sentence use var (past) in að hún var leið, while the main part has er and gleymir in the present?

The sentence mixes tenses deliberately:

Brandarinn er svo fyndinn … – The joke is so funny (present)
stelpan gleymir … – the girl forgets (present)
að hún var leið. – that she was sad (past)

This suggests:

The girl used to be sad (before hearing the joke).
Because the joke is so funny, she now forgets that she was sad.

You could also say:

… gleymir að hún er leið.

That would be more like: forgets that she is (currently) sad, a bit closer to English-style sequence of tenses, but the original version with var highlights that her sadness belongs to an earlier moment.

What exactly does leið mean here? Does it mean “sad” or “bored”?

The adjective leið is commonly translated as:

sad
upset
sometimes also feeling bad / down

In some contexts it can be close to “bored”, but for bored Icelandic more often uses leiðist or leiðinlegur (boring).

Here, with a person as subject:

Hún er leið. – She is sad / upset.
Ég er mjög leiður (m.) / Ég er mjög leið (f.) – I am very sad.

So in your sentence að hún var leið is best understood as:

that she was sad / upset.

Why is leið not inflected here? Does it agree with hún in any way?

leið is an adjective and it does agree with hún, but for feminine nominative singular, the form is also leið (no extra ending):

Masculine: leiður – Ég er leiður. (a man speaking: I am sad.)
Feminine: leið – Ég er leið. (a woman speaking.)
Neuter: leiðt (rare in practice, used with neuter nouns).

In hún var leið:

hún – subject, feminine singular, nominative
leið – feminine singular nominative form of the adjective

So the adjective actually is agreeing with the pronoun; it just happens that the feminine form has no extra ending.

Why is the pronoun hún used, and how do we know it refers to stelpan?

Hún is the third-person singular feminine pronoun: she.

In the sentence:

stelpan – the girl (feminine)
Later we get að hún var leið – that she was sad

By default, the pronoun hún refers to the most recent compatible feminine singular noun that makes sense in context – here, clearly stelpan.

So the structure is:

… stelpan gleymir að hún var leið.
→ … the girl forgets that she was sad.
(hún = the girl)

What is the role of the two að’s in the sentence? They look the same but do they function the same way?

The sentence has two occurrences of að, but they play slightly different roles:

svo fyndinn að stelpan gleymir …
- Here, að belongs to the construction svo + adjective + að
- It introduces the result: so funny *that the girl forgets …*
stelpan gleymir að hún var leið.
- Here, að introduces a content clause: forgets *that she was sad.*

So both can be translated as that in English, but:

The first að is tied to the degree/result construction svo fyndinn að …
The second að is a more normal complementizer introducing a clause after gleymir.

Could the sentence also be Brandarinn var svo fyndinn að stelpan gleymdi að hún var leið? Would that change the meaning?

Yes, that is a perfectly natural variant, just in the past tense:

Brandarinn var svo fyndinn – The joke was so funny
að stelpan gleymdi – that the girl forgot
að hún var leið – that she was sad.

Meaning:

The joke was so funny that the girl forgot that she was sad.

Difference from the original:

Original: er / gleymir – general, present-time description; could be like a timeless observation or talking about something happening now.
Variant: var / gleymdi – clearly a past event, something that already happened.