Breakdown of Okkur finnst gott að hafa stöðuga vinnu, þó að starfið sé stundum erfitt.
Questions & Answers about Okkur finnst gott að hafa stöðuga vinnu, þó að starfið sé stundum erfitt.
In Icelandic, the verb finnast works impersonally and takes a dative experiencer.
- við = “we” in the nominative case
- okkur = “us” in the dative case
With finnast, the person who “feels / thinks / finds” something is put in the dative:
- Mér finnst… = I think / I feel…
- Þér finnst… = You think / you feel… (singular)
- Okkur finnst… = We think / we feel…
So okkur is required here because the verb demands the dative case.
Although okkur refers to “we”, it is not the grammatical subject; it is a dative experiencer.
The construction with finnast is grammatically like:
- (It) seems good to us to have a steady job.
So the logical pattern is:
- (Það) finnst okkur gott…
- (it) seems to us good…
Because the hidden subject is this dummy það (“it”), the verb stays in 3rd person singular: finnst, not finnum.