Breakdown of Við komum þaðan seint í gærkvöldi.
Questions & Answers about Við komum þaðan seint í gærkvöldi.
Can you break the sentence down word by word?
Yes:
- Við = we
- komum = came here, from the verb koma = to come
- þaðan = from there
- seint = late
- í gærkvöldi = last night / yesterday evening
A very literal order would be:
We came from there late yesterday evening.
How do I know that komum means came here, not come?
Because komum can be either present or past depending on context.
- við komum can mean we come
- við komum can also mean we came
In this sentence, í gærkvöldi means last night / yesterday evening, so the time expression makes it clearly past.
So:
- Við komum á hverjum degi = We come every day
- Við komum í gærkvöldi = We came last night
What is the infinitive of komum?
The infinitive is koma, meaning to come.
This verb is very common, and its forms are not all built in a perfectly predictable way, so it is worth learning as a full verb:
- að koma = to come
- ég kem = I come
- við komum = we come
- ég kom = I came
- við komum = we came
So komum is the 1st person plural form: we come / we came.
What does þaðan mean, and how is it different from þar?
Þaðan means from there.
By contrast:
- þar = there
- þangað = to there / there, toward that place
- þaðan = from there
This is a very useful Icelandic pattern: place words often distinguish:
- location
- motion toward
- motion away from
So in this sentence, þaðan specifically shows movement away from a place.
Why is there no separate word for from before þaðan?
Because þaðan already includes the idea of from.
English uses two words:
- from there
Icelandic often uses just one:
- þaðan
So Við komum þaðan already means We came from there. You do not need frá here.
Why is it seint and not some form that matches við?
Because seint is an adverb, not an adjective.
It describes how/when the action happened:
- We came late
It does not describe we, so it does not agree with the subject.
A useful thing to notice is that many Icelandic adverbs look like the neuter singular form of an adjective. Here:
- adjective: seinn = late
- adverb: seint = late
So:
- seinn maður = a late man or a man who is late
- við komum seint = we came late
What does í gærkvöldi mean exactly?
It means last night or yesterday evening, depending on context.
More literally:
- í = in
- gærkvöldi = yesterday evening in a declined form
As a whole, í gærkvöldi is a normal Icelandic time expression meaning something like:
- yesterday evening
- last night
In everyday English, last night is often the most natural translation.
Why does gærkvöldi end in -i?
Because it is in the dative after the preposition í in this time expression.
The preposition í can take different cases depending on meaning. With time expressions like this, it commonly takes the dative.
So the noun appears in a dative form:
- basic form: gærkvöld
- here: gærkvöldi
You do not need to overthink it at first; it is very helpful simply to learn í gærkvöldi as a fixed expression meaning last night / yesterday evening.
Is the word order fixed, or could the sentence be arranged differently?
The given word order is natural, but Icelandic word order is fairly flexible.
This sentence is:
- Við = subject
- komum = finite verb
- þaðan = place/direction
- seint í gærkvöldi = time
You can move parts of the sentence for emphasis, but Icelandic usually keeps the finite verb in second position in main clauses.
For example:
- Í gærkvöldi komum við þaðan seint.
That is still grammatical, but once Í gærkvöldi is placed first, komum must come next, before við.
So the original sentence is a straightforward, neutral way to say it.
Does í gærkvöldi mean exactly the same as í gær?
Not quite.
- í gær = yesterday
- í gærkvöldi = yesterday evening / last night
So í gærkvöldi is more specific. It tells you the action happened in the evening or night, not just sometime yesterday.
Could this sentence also be translated as We arrived from there late last night?
Not usually as the main translation.
The verb koma basically means come, and with þaðan it means come from there.
So the most direct sense is:
- We came from there late last night
In some contexts, English may use arrived more naturally, but that depends on what the speaker is focusing on. Grammatically, the Icelandic sentence is built around coming from a place, not specifically arriving at a destination.
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