Breakdown of Það er dansað lengi á sveitaballinu í veislusalnum.
vera
to be
það
it / there (existential) / the one (n)
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
á
onto / on / in (static location) / on (a day of the week)
dansa
to dance
lengi
for a long time
veislusalurinn
the banquet hall
sveitaballið
the country dance
Questions & Answers about Það er dansað lengi á sveitaballinu í veislusalnum.
Why does it say Það er dansað ('It is danced') when the English translation says 'People dance'?
This is the impersonal passive. In Icelandic, you can take an intransitive verb (a verb that doesn't take a direct object, like dancing) and make it passive by using Það er plus the neuter singular past participle (dansað). It is a very common way to describe a general activity, translating best to 'People dance' or 'There is dancing' because it focuses entirely on the action itself rather than who is doing it.
Why are both sveitaballinu and veislusalnum in the dative case here?
Both nouns are governed by prepositions of location describing where an action takes place without any movement toward a new destination. The prepositions á ('at' the dance) and í ('in' the hall) both trigger the dative case when they express a stationary location.
How is the word veislusalnum built?
It is a compound word made of veisla (party or feast) and salur (hall), giving us a banquet hall. Here it has the masculine dative definite article attached at the end (-num), because it is following the preposition í.
If I wanted to emphasize the location and start the sentence with Í veislusalnum, what happens to Það?
The dummy word það disappears entirely! Icelandic has a strict 'verb-second' rule. If you move a phrase like Í veislusalnum to the front, the main verb er must come immediately after it. Because the first position is already filled, the placeholder það is no longer needed. The sentence simply becomes: Í veislusalnum er dansað lengi á sveitaballinu.
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