Icelandic Journal Entry Examples: How to Write (and Start) One

The fastest way to work out what an Icelandic journal entry should look like is to read a few real ones, mistakes and all. There are six below, running from A1 up to B2 — drafts rather than finished pieces, with the marks left on.

Strikethrough is the error, bold is the fix, and the line beneath explains it. The why carries most of the weight here. Being told an ending should have been -a is worth nothing on its own; being told the adjective switched to its weak form because the noun went definite fixes every sentence of that shape from now on.

New to journaling in Icelandic? Start with how to keep a journal in Icelandic for the routine, then come back and watch it happen.

How to start your first entry

Three rules for starting when nothing comes:

1. Date it; two sentences is enough. Start with Í dag… or Í gær… and stop there.
2. Reach for one ending per entry. A definite form, a weak adjective, a dative subject. One is plenty — you only need something for the correction to bite on.
3. Write it wrong on purpose if you have to. Everything corrected below started as somebody’s best guess.

Drawing a blank? Take one of the 50 Icelandic journal prompts and answer that.

Example 1 — A1 (beginner)

Prompt: Hvernig hefurðu það í dag?

Í dag ég er er ég þreyttur. Ég drekk kaffi og fer í vinna í vinnuna.

What changed and why:

• ég er → er ég — the verb takes second position. Í dag is already in the first slot, so the subject moves behind the verb.
• í vinna → í vinnuna — two things at once. Í takes the accusative when there’s movement towards somewhere, and the noun carries its definite suffix, which declines along with it. “To work” comes out as a single word: vinnuna.
• Nicely done: þreyttur is correctly in the strong masculine nominative after vera. A woman writing this entry would put þreytt.

Example 2 — A1 → A2

Prompt: Lýstu morgninum þínum.

Á morgnana vakna ég klukkan sjö. Ég borða eitt eina brauðsneið og drekk te. Svo tek ég strætó strætóinn í bæinn.

What changed and why:

• eitt → eina brauðsneið — brauðsneið is feminine, and it’s the object of borða, so it needs the feminine accusative. Icelandic makes you choose gender and case at the same moment, and on the numeral as well as the noun.
• strætó → strætóinn — definite. You mean the bus, not a bus, and Icelandic marks that with a suffix rather than a separate word.
• Nicely done: vakna ég has the inversion right after Á morgnana, and í bæinn correctly uses the accusative for movement towards town.

Example 3 — A2

Prompt: Hvað gerðir þú í gær?

Í gær ég keypti keypti ég brauð. Svo ég fór fór ég í bíó. Myndin var góð.

What changed and why:

• ég keypti → keypti ég and ég fór → fór ég — the same inversion as Example 1, twice in a row. Watching your own error repeat inside a single entry is more instructive than any rule statement.
• Nicely done: two things worth noticing. Myndin takes the feminine definite suffix correctly, and góð is the feminine form of góður, agreeing with it. Getting the noun right and then failing to carry the gender across to the adjective is the usual outcome at this stage, and it didn’t happen here.

Example 4 — B1 (intermediate)

Prompt: Af hverju lærir þú íslensku?

Ég læri íslensku vegna vinnunnar minnar. Ég finnst Mér finnst málfræðin erfið, en mér líkar hún vel. Ég skrifa hvern dag á hverjum degi.

What changed and why:

• Ég finnst → Mér finnst — the marquee Icelandic error. A group of very common verbs put the person in the dative rather than the nominative: mér finnst (“it seems to me”), mér líður vel (“I feel well”), mig langar (“I want”, accusative this time). English says “I think”, so English speakers reach for ég and keep reaching for it. Learn the group as a short list early.
• hvern dag → á hverjum degi — “every day” is standardly á hverjum degi, with á taking the dative for a time expression.
• Nicely done: vegna vinnunnar minnar is genuinely well built. Vegna governs the genitive, and both the noun and the possessive follow it into the genitive together.

Example 5 — B1 → B2

Prompt: Hvernig hefurðu breyst?

Þegar ég var lítill ég dreymdi dreymdi mig um að ferðast. Nú veit ég að það er ekki svo einfalt. Ég hef komið í gamall bærinn gamla bæinn nokkrum sinnum.

What changed and why:

• ég dreymdi → dreymdi mig — two corrections in one. Dreyma takes an accusative subject: mig dreymdi, literally “it dreamed me”. And because Þegar ég var lítill fills the first slot, the verb comes before the subject in the main clause. The oblique-subject verbs are the same family as mér finnst in Example 4, with a different case.
• gamall bærinn → gamla bæinn — the strong/weak split, which is the thing Icelandic is famous for. With no article the adjective takes its strong form: gamall bær. Once the noun becomes definite the adjective switches to the weak declension — gamli bærinn — and in the accusative, which is what í wants here for movement, that’s gamla bæinn.
• Nicely done: lítill is correctly strong masculine nominative after var, which is the same pattern as þreyttur back in Example 1 — evidence the earlier correction stuck.

Example 6 — B2 (upper-intermediate)

Prompt: Færir tæknin okkur nær hvert öðru?

Netið hefur breytt því hvernig við tölum saman. Annars vegar getum við haft samband við fólk um allan heim. Hins vegar ég held held ég ekki að samfélagsmiðlar geri okkur hamingjusamari. Stundum finnst ég mér að við ættum að eyða minni tíma í símanum.

What changed and why:

• ég held → held ég — inversion after Hins vegar. Exactly the same rule as Example 1, now several words deeper into a much longer sentence. It is completely normal for the A1 error to reappear at B2 the moment your attention moves to the argument.
• finnst ég → finnst mér — the dative subject again, from Example 4. Same story: it returns whenever you stop watching for it. Two of the six corrections in this whole set are the same two rules resurfacing, which is what makes a repeat-error list worth keeping.
• Nicely done: Annars vegar… Hins vegar is the right connector pair, and geri is correctly in the subjunctive after a negated halda að.

What you probably noticed

The corrections don’t get more exotic as the level rises. They get further from the start of the sentence. At A1 you’re putting the verb second after a two-word opener; at B2 you’re doing it after a longer phrase, inside a longer argument, while also tracking an adjective declension and a subjunctive. Same rules, more load — which is exactly why tables don’t transfer and daily writing does.

It’s also why the two errors that reappear in Example 6 matter more than the ones that appeared once. Those are the ones worth putting on a list and deliberately over-practising.

One more pass before you leave a corrected entry: copy the clean version out by hand. It’s slower than retyping — that’s the point — and the ending tends to stick once you’ve physically written it.

Fluency Write marks up entries exactly like these — inline, with the reason, the moment you write the sentence. Answer one prompt and you’ll have your own Example 1. (Icelandic plus eight other languages, if you keep more than one.)

Keep going

• Back to basics: How to keep a journal in Icelandic — the routine, the frames, and the corrections that repeat.
• Need something to write about: 50 Icelandic journal prompts by level.
• The wider practice system: How to get better at writing in Icelandic.