Age

You know how people say you shouldn't ask a woman her age or a man his salary? Neither of those are a thing in Icelandic culture. People discuss their age and salary quite freely here, so if you’re a woman and you feel hesitant about divulging your age but everybody keeps asking, don’t worry about it. Or lie. Nobody will know.

Learners sometimes feel intimidated about talking about age because the numbers 1-4 are different from the counting numbers (einn, tveir, þrír, fjórir), but don't worry: it's really just the numbers 1-4 that change. You can handle four things, right? I believe in you!

In a Nutshell

To talk about your age in Icelandic, you just say the decade + og + the singles digit + ára (tuttugu og fimm ára, 25). If the digit is 1, 2, 3, or 4, put it in the genitive (þrjátíu og tveggja ára, 32). If it’s 1, make sure to use árs instead of ára (fjörutíu og eins árs, 41).

The word old changes with gender.

• Hvað ertu gamall? = How old are you (man)?
• Hvað ertu gömul? = How old are you (woman)?

Use the genitive for the numbers 1-4; just use regular counting numbers above that.

Remember to use the singular form árs for any number that ends in eins, even if they are mathematically larger than 1. Shockingly, language isn’t maths.

Remember to connect the smaller numbers with og.

How old are you?

First things first: how do you even ask "How old are you?" In Icelandic?

• Hvað ertu gamall? = How old are you (man)?
• Hvað ertu gömul? = How old are you (woman)?

Notice that the word for ‘old’ changes depending on the gender of the person you’re speaking to.

1-4

 Alright, let’s eat the frog (start with the supposedly scary bit). Here are the numbers 1-4, and how you use them to talk about someone’s age. 

Let’s get some examples to help us understand.

• Barnið mitt er eins árs gamalt = My child is one year old.
• Sonur minn er tveggja ára gamall = My son is two years old.
• Dóttir mín er þriggja ára gömul = My daughter is three years old.
• Ég er með graftarbólu á bakinu sem er fjögurra ára gömul = I have a pimple on my back that’s four years old.

Genitive

You may have noticed that we’re not using the base form of ár (year). Instead we’re using árs (year, singular) and ára (years, plural). Those are the genitive forms of ár.

That’s because we’re really saying something like “so and so many years of age”, and “of something” is the English equivalent to the genitive.

Short version

In the real world, everything besides the number is optional in most contexts. So if somebody asks you how old your daughter is, all of the following are equally valid, grammatically.

• Hún er fjögurra ára gömul = She is four years old.
• Hún er fjögurra ára = She is four years (in English you’d have to say old here, but it’s optional in Icelandic).
• Hún er fjögurra = She is four.
• Fjögurra = Four.

When you’re first practicing talking about age, I’d recommend always doing the full version, just to get used to it. 

5-19

These are easy: they’re exactly the same as the regular counting numbers. You’ve already learned to count, right? Well, if you haven't, you’re about to.

No genitive trickery here: just plain old counting numbers.

• Emily í Emily in Paris svaf hjá sautján ára gömlum strák. Það er ekki í lagi = Emily in Emily in Paris slept with a seventeen year old boy. That’s not okay.
• Flestir fermast þegar þeir eru fjórtán ára = Most people are confirmed when they’re fourteen.
• Er kötturinn þinn níu ára? Vá, gamall köttur = Is your cat nine years old? Wow, old cat.
• Húsið mitt er bara fimm ára gamalt, og það er strax reimt = My house is only five years old and it’s already haunted.

20-99

Let’s get to some adult numbers.

There are two things to keep in mind with the big numbers.

1. You always connect the smaller number with og (and).
2. You use árs if the number ends in eins (yes, even though it’s mathematically larger than 1).

Let’s take a look at some examples.

• Í Bandaríkjunum má ekki drekka fyrr en maður er tuttugu og eins árs = In the USA you can’t drink until you’re twenty-one.
• Það má bjóða sig fram til embættis forseta Íslands þegar maður er þrjátíu og fimm ára = You can run for president of Iceland when you’re thirty-five.
• Afi settist í helgan stein þegar hann var sextíu og sjö ára = Grandpa retired (literally: sat in a holy stone) when he was sixty-seven.

Babies

If you’re not around babies much, just skip this. It’ll never come up.

We’ve learned to talk about how many years we are, but if you’re ever in the unfortunate position of having to talk about somebody’s baby’s age, you need to know the days, weeks, and months, too. 

Dagur (day) and mánuður (month) are masculine words, so they use the masculine form eins (one), while vika (week) is feminine, so it uses the feminine form einnar (one). The numbers two and up don’t change with gender in the genitive, so they’re going to be the exact same as with the years.

• Barnið er eins dags gamalt = The baby is one day old.
• Hún brosti þegar hún var bara tveggja daga gömul = She smiled when she was just two days old.
• Þegar barn er sirka einnar viku gamalt dettur afgangurinn af naflastrengnum af = When a child is about a week old the rest of the umbilical cord falls off.
• Barnið er þriggja vikna. Ég er vansvefta = The baby is three weeks old. I haven’t been sleeping.
• Eins mánaðar gömul börn geta ekki gert neitt skemmtilegt = One month old babies can’t do anything fun.
• Þegar þau eru sex mánaða geta þau að minnsta kosti setið sjálf = When they’re six months old they can at least sit up by themselves.

Alternative Ways of Talking about Age

You already know all the most important things about how to talk about age, but there are a couple of alternative ways of talking about age that can be useful to know.

The Decades

Icelandic has some nifty adjectives that you can use instead of numbers if you’re some multiple of 10 years old. Have a handy-dandy reference table.

That table sure is both handy and dandy, but let’s get some examples to help make sense of this.

• Afi minn er sjötugur = My grandpa is seventy.
• Amma mín er áttræð = my grandma is eighty.
• Þegar ég verð níræður ætla ég bara að spila tölvuleiki allan daginn = When I turn ninety I’m just going to play video games all day.

From our table and examples, we notice three things

1. 20-70 end in -tugur, and then 80 and 90 end in -ræður.
2. These aren’t actually numbers, they’re adjectives. As such, they agree with the noun in gender.
3. You don’t use ára with these words (it’s already baked into the word).

Módel

People sometimes say that Icelanders “never say their age”, just the year they were born, like with car models. That absolutely is possible, though it’s a huge stretch to say it’s the only way we talk about age.

• Hvaða módel ertu? = What model are you?
• Ég er níutíu og tvö módel = I’m a ninety-two model (born in 1992).
• Frænka mín er núll fjögur módel = My niece is an oh-four model (born in 2004).
• Barnið mitt er tvö þúsund tuttugu og tvö módel = My baby is a twenty twenty-two model (born in 2022).

Notice that the gender of the words here is neuter, just like when we’re talking about years. Phew, nothing new to memorise here!

A quick caveat: I’m a ninety two model (33 at the time of writing), and to me it feels a little bit weird to talk this way about anyone born in the 21st century. Ask a youth^tm if they talk like this about people their age.