þeirrar

þeirrar is a historical form found in Old Norse and Early Icelandic texts. It is a case form of the third-person plural pronoun associated with the stem meaning “they” or “those” and is most often interpreted as a genitive or possibly dative form used with certain nouns or prepositional phrases. The exact interpretation varies by manuscript and period. In modern Icelandic, the standard genitive plural pronoun is þeirra, used to indicate possession by they as in bíll þeirra “their car.” The form þerrar is not part of contemporary grammar; it appears in older texts and is described by scholars as archaic or dialectal. Because Icelandic historically showed considerable inflectional variation, þeirra can appear in different syntactic environments depending on author and era. The study of forms such as þeirrar helps illustrate the evolution of pronoun inflection from Old Norse to modern Icelandic. See also: Icelandic grammar, Old Norse language, pronouns, demonstratives.