æfi

æfi is a noun in Icelandic meaning life or existence, often used in literary or historical contexts. In Old Norse, the term bore the sense of a person's life, lifetime, or the course of living, and it survived into Icelandic with a similar emphasis on duration and experience. It is etymologically tied to the broader North Germanic family of words for life, and is cognate with related forms found in medieval texts.

In modern Icelandic, æfi is less common in everyday speech, where líf is preferred for general talk of life. Æfi appears mainly in poetry, sagas, or in academic or biographical contexts, where the language aims for a more archaic or formal tone. The word also appears in compounds and phrases such as ævisaga, meaning a biography or life story, and is sometimes used to refer to cultural or civilizational life in a historical sense.

See also: líf, ævi, ævisaga.