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Skjalið sem hann skannar og afritar er mikilvægt.

Skjalið sem hann skannar og afritar er mikilvægt.
The document that he scans and copies is important.
From Lesson 184:Simultaneous actions (á meðan)·Icelandic

Questions & Answers about Skjalið sem hann skannar og afritar er mikilvægt.

Why do we use sem here for 'that' instead of að?
In Icelandic, sem is used as a relative pronoun, meaning 'that', 'which', or 'who' when describing a noun (here, the document). You use að when 'that' connects a statement, like 'He said that...' (Hann sagði að...).
Why does the adjective mikilvægt end in a '-t'?
Adjectives must agree in gender, number, and case with the noun they describe. The base word here is skjal (document), which is a neuter noun. Because it is neuter, singular, and in the nominative case here, the adjective mikilvægur (important) drops its masculine ending and takes the neuter -t ending.
Both skannar and afritar end in '-ar'. What verb group do these belong to?
They belong to the most common group of Icelandic verbs, the '-a' group. The infinitive forms are skanna (to scan) and afrita (to copy), and they both take the regular -ar ending for the 'he/she/it' present tense. Notice how Icelandic adopts an English loanword like 'scan' and conjugates it completely normally!
Since this lesson is about á meðan (while), how would we use it to say 'He scans the document while he copies it'?
You would say Hann skannar skjalið á meðan hann afritar það. In our original sentence, the verbs are linked by og (and) inside a sem clause to describe the document itself, rather than using á meðan to emphasize that the actions happen simultaneously.

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