Prepositions

Icelandic has a great deal of prepositions that already look like English words.

Ég keypti brauðið fyrir þig.
I bought the bread for you.

The meaning of these cognate prepositions also usually overlaps in a general way with the meaning in English. Nevertheless, each preposition must be learned individually without much cheating from English.

Each preposition takes a grammatical case: either the accusative, dative, or genitive. Some prepositions are called "two-way" prepositions because they sometimes take accusative and sometimes dative. However, the pattern is mostly regular and quickly learned. There are no nominative prepositions.

First, let's look at some accusative prepositions:

Gegnum	through	Gegnum skóginn (through the forest)
Fyrir	for	Fyrir þig (for you)
Við	beside, at, near	Við tjörnina (by the lake)
Um	around/about	Um þetta tölum við (We talk about that)
Kringum	Around	Allt í kringum mig (all around me)

Next we examples of dative prepositions.

Frá	out, from	frá borginn (from the city)
Næst	Next to	Næst borginni (next to the city)
frá	from	Frá mér (from me)
Gegn	against	Gegn óvininum (against the enemy)
andspænis	facing	Andspænis mér (facing me)

Next we have some genetive prepositions.

Til	To	Bréf til mín (A letter to me)
Milli	Between	Þetta er milli ykkar (It's between you (two))
Án	without	Án stólsins míns (without my chair)
Utan	outside	Utan vegjanna (outside the walls)

Lastly, we have the two-way prepositions. When they describe motion towards something, they take the accusative case. When they describe a fixed position, they take the dative case.

á	at, on, upon
í	in, into
yfir	above, over
undir	under
fyrir	in front

Here are some examples of contrasting cases:

Það bolti í húsinu. (dative)
There is a ball in the house. (no motion)

Ég henti bolta í húsið. (accusative)
I threw a ball into the house. (the ball was moving)

Við hlupum inn í safnið. (accusative)
We ran into the museum. (we were outside before)

Við hlupum inni í safninu. (dative)
We ran [around] inside the museum. (we did not change location relative to the museum)

Hann stendur yfir mér. (dative)
He stands over/above me. (he is standing still above the person)

Hann hoppaði yfir mig. (accusative)
He jumped over me. (he changed position relative to myself)

The preposition með (with) is similar. If you go with someone, as equals, it takes dative, but if you bring someone somewhere (meaning you are in control of taking them somewhere) it takes accusative. If you bring things with you, it's also going to take accusative, since you are in control of the object.

Ég fór með konunni minni í sumarfrí - dative (þgf)

I went on vacation with my wife

Ég fór með konuna mína á spítalann, því hún var meðvitundarlaus – accusative (þf)

Direct translation: I went with my wife to the hospital because she was unconcious

Proper tanslation: I took my wife to the hospital because she was unconcious

Ég fór með bílinn minn í viðgerð – accusative (þf)

Direct translation: I went with my car to the repairs

Proper translation: I took my car for repairs

Many Icelandic preposition are combined from more than one preposition

Fyrir utan (þf) = except

Bak við (þf) = behind

Fyrir aftan (þf) = behind

Fyrir framan (þf) = in front of

Fyrir neðan (þf) = under (you can also use undir, but then it's þf for movement and þgf for what's stationary)

To say beside you can say næst (þgf), but that is more like older Icelandic. We usually use við hliðina á (þgf).

Ég sit næst honum.

Ég sit við hliðina á honum.

I am sitting beside him