Ég sá hana áðan í búðinni.

Yes. Sá is the past tense form of sjá (to see).

Icelandic verbs often change their stem in the past tense, and sjá is irregular:

• sjá = to see
• ég sé = I see
• ég sá = I saw

So Ég sá hana... means I saw her...

A useful thing to notice: in the singular past tense, ég sá and hann/hún sá have the same verb form.

Because hana is the accusative form, and hún is the nominative form.

In this sentence:

• Ég = subject, so it is nominative
• hana = direct object, so it is accusative

The forms are:

• hún = she
• hana = her
• henni = to/for her
• hennar = her, of her

So:

• Ég sá hún would be wrong
• Ég sá hana is correct

Áðan means earlier, a little while ago, or just before.

It usually refers to a fairly recent time, often something that happened not long ago. It is less precise than giving an exact time.

So:

• Ég sá hana áðan. = I saw her earlier.
• Ég sá hana áðan í búðinni. = I saw her earlier in the store.

It often feels more immediate than a very general earlier in English.

Because the preposition í can take different cases depending on the meaning:

• dative for location: in
• accusative for movement into something: into

Here, the sentence describes where the seeing happened, so it uses location:

• í búðinni = in the store

If you were talking about movement into the store, you would use the accusative instead:

• Ég fór í búðina. = I went into the store.

This location-vs-motion difference is very important in Icelandic.

In Icelandic, the definite article is usually attached to the noun instead of being a separate word.

With búð:

• búð = a store / shop
• búðin = the store
• í búðinni = in the store

So English uses a separate word:

• the store

But Icelandic usually builds that idea into the noun ending:

• búðinni

In this sentence, the ending reflects both definiteness and the dative case.

Yes, often you can.

These all sound natural:

• Ég sá hana áðan í búðinni.
• Ég sá hana í búðinni áðan.
• Áðan sá ég hana í búðinni.

The exact rhythm or emphasis may shift a little, but the basic meaning stays the same.

A key rule to remember is that Icelandic main clauses usually follow a verb-second pattern. That means if you move something like áðan to the front, the finite verb still comes second:

• Áðan sá ég hana... ✅
• Áðan ég sá hana... ❌

Not always.

It can refer to:

• a female person, or
• a feminine noun, because Icelandic pronouns also follow grammatical gender

So hana may sometimes be translated as it in English if it refers back to a feminine noun.

In this sentence, though, the meaning shown to the learner is her, so it refers to a female person.

A rough learner-friendly pronunciation is:

yeg sow HAH-na ow-than ee BOO-thin-nih

A few helpful notes:

• Ég starts with a y sound: yeg
• á sounds roughly like ow in cow
• ð sounds like th in this
• í is a long ee
• stress is usually on the first syllable of each word

So the sentence flows roughly like:

Ég sá hana áðan í búðinni
yeg sow HAH-na OW-than ee BOO-thin-nih

It is the same spelling, but not the same meaning here.

Sá can be:

• the past tense of sjá = saw
• a demonstrative pronoun/adjective meaning that

For example:

• Ég sá hana. = I saw her.
• sá maður = that man

In your sentence, sá must be the verb, because it comes right after Ég and fits the structure subject + verb + object.

Yes:

• Ég = I

  • personal pronoun
  • 1st person singular
  • nominative

• sá = saw

  • verb
  • past tense of sjá

• hana = her

  • personal pronoun
  • accusative singular

• áðan = earlier / a little while ago

  • adverb

• í = in

  • preposition

• búðinni = the store

  • from búð = store/shop
  • dative singular
  • definite form

So the structure is:

• Ég = subject
• sá = verb
• hana = direct object
• áðan = time adverb
• í búðinni = place phrase