Breakdown of Við vöðum út í mýrina og sökkvum niður í drulluna.
og
and
við
we
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
út
out (motion outwards)
niður
down
vaða
to wade
mýrin
the bog
sökkva
to sink
drullan
the mud (muck, dirt)
Questions & Answers about Við vöðum út í mýrina og sökkvum niður í drulluna.
Why do we use the accusative forms mýrina and drulluna after út í and niður í instead of the dative?
This shows how compound directional prepositions work. When you combine a place adverb like út (out) or niður (down) with a preposition like í (in/into), the case of the noun tells us if there is movement toward a destination. Because we are moving into the bog and sinking into the mud, we use the accusative. If we were already situated in the bog and just splashing around without a destination, we would use the dative (mýrinni).
What do the adverbs út and niður add to the sentence? Could we just say í mýrina and í drulluna?
You could just use í, but Icelandic relies heavily on directional adverbs to paint a precise picture of movement. út í gives the sense of venturing outwards into the open expanse of the bog, while niður í emphasizes the downward motion of sinking. Adding these adverbs makes the sentence much more descriptive and natural to an Icelandic speaker.
The verb is vöðum. What is the infinitive, and why does the vowel change here?
The infinitive is vaða (to wade). The vowel changes from a to ö because of the U-shift rule. Whenever a word has an a in the root and takes an ending containing u (like the first-person plural ending -um), the a shifts to ö. So, vaða becomes við vöðum.
I remember the verb sökkva can mean both to sink and to make something sink. Which is it here?
Sökkva can be both an action you do to yourself (intransitive) or an action you do to something else (transitive). Because there is no object that we are pushing underwater in this sentence, it means we ourselves are sinking. If we were sinking a ship, for example, the ship would be the object and would take the dative case.
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