The weather is the safest small talk in Denmark — a country where the sky changes its mind four times before lunch, so there is always something to say about it. This page gives you the dozen-or-so phrases Danes actually use, grouped by what they describe, and uses them to show off one tidy grammar point: Danish weather verbs almost always need the little dummy subject det ("it"). Get that habit early and your weather talk will sound instantly native.
The grammar behind it: obligatory det
In English we say it's raining — and that it doesn't refer to anything. It's a placeholder, a grammatical seat-filler, because an English sentence needs a subject. Danish works exactly the same way, and weather verbs are the cleanest place to see it. You cannot drop the det.
Det regner.
It's raining.
Det sner i hele Jylland i dag.
It's snowing all over Jutland today.
There is no "thing" doing the raining — but Danish, like English, refuses to leave the subject slot empty. Linguists call this an expletive or dummy subject. The reason Danish needs it even more strictly than some languages is its word-order rule: a Danish main clause must have exactly one element before the finite verb, and for weather there is no real subject to put there, so det steps in.
This is the same det you meet as the neuter "it" pronoun elsewhere, but here it points to nothing at all. (See Den, det and "it" for the full story of Danish's two words for "it".)
Asking about the weather
The all-purpose opener is Hvordan er vejret? — literally "How is the weather?". Note that vejret is the definite form (vejr + -et): Danes talk about the weather, not just weather.
Hvordan er vejret i dag?
What's the weather like today?
Hvad siger vejrudsigten til weekenden?
What's the forecast saying for the weekend?
The second one (literally "What does the forecast say to the weekend?") is a very common, casual way to ask. Vejrudsigt ("weather forecast") is worth knowing as one word — like most Danish compounds, it is written solid.
Rain, snow, wind, frost — the weather verbs
These are the impersonal verbs, all riding on det. Learn them as fixed two-word units.
| Danish | Literal | Idiomatic |
|---|---|---|
| Det regner | It rains | It's raining |
| Det sner | It snows | It's snowing |
| Det blæser | It blows | It's windy |
| Det fryser | It freezes | It's freezing / below zero |
| Det tordner | It thunders | There's thunder |
| Det lyner | It lightnings | There's lightning |
| Det støvregner | It dust-rains | It's drizzling |
| Det hagler | It hails | It's hailing |
Det blæser så meget, at min paraply gik i stykker.
It's so windy that my umbrella broke.
Tag en jakke på — det fryser udenfor.
Put a jacket on — it's freezing outside.
Notice Danish has a single verb at støvregne for "to drizzle" (literally "dust-rain"), where English needs a separate word. Danish loves to build a precise weather verb out of a noun plus -regne.
The sun, the sky, and "it is..." weather
When you describe a state of the weather rather than an action, you switch to det er ("it is") plus an adjective or noun — again with the placeholder det.
Solen skinner, og det er helt vindstille.
The sun is shining, and it's completely still.
Det er koldt i dag — kun fem grader.
It's cold today — only five degrees.
Det er gråvejr og lidt trist udenfor.
It's grey and a bit gloomy outside.
Here solen ("the sun") is a real subject, so that clause needs no dummy — but the second half (det er vindstille) falls back on det. Useful state words: koldt (cold), varmt (warm/hot), skyet (cloudy), gråvejr (grey weather), solskin (sunshine), tåget (foggy), klart (clear).
| Danish | Idiomatic |
|---|---|
| Det er varmt | It's warm / hot |
| Det er skyet | It's cloudy |
| Det er tåget | It's foggy |
| Det er solskin | It's sunny |
| Det er glat | It's slippery (icy roads) |
Talking about whole days
To name a kind of day, Danish builds a compound noun ending in -dag or -vejr, written as one solid word.
Det er sådan en typisk regnvejrsdag.
It's one of those typical rainy days.
Vi fik en dejlig solskinsdag til turen.
We got a lovely sunny day for the trip.
So en regnvejrsdag (a rainy day) and en solskinsdag (a sunny day) each pack rain/sun + weather/day into a single word, joined by a linking -s-. Trying to write these as separate words is a real spelling mistake in Danish (see Compound Spelling).
A short dialogue
Here are the phrases working together the way Danes really chain them:
— Hej! Hvordan er vejret hos jer?
— Hi! What's the weather like where you are?
— Det regner og blæser, en rigtig grim efterårsdag. Hos jer?
— It's raining and windy, a really nasty autumn day. And where you are?
— Her skinner solen faktisk, men det er koldt.
— Here the sun's actually shining, but it's cold.
Notice in the last line her ("here") comes first, so the verb skinner comes second and the real subject solen follows it — the famous Danish V2 word order. When there is no real subject (the rain line), det would hold that slot instead.
Common Mistakes
1. Dropping the dummy det. English speakers sometimes carry over Spanish/Italian-style subject-dropping, or simply forget the placeholder. Danish never allows it with weather.
❌ Regner i dag, så tag en paraply med.
Incorrect — the weather verb has no subject.
✅ Det regner i dag, så tag en paraply med.
It's raining today, so take an umbrella.
2. Using den instead of det. The dummy weather subject is always the neuter det, never the common-gender den, even though vejr ("weather") is itself a neuter noun.
❌ Den regner hele dagen.
Incorrect — wrong dummy pronoun.
✅ Det regner hele dagen.
It rains all day.
3. Forgetting that vejret is definite. When you ask about the weather, you use the definite vejret, not bare vejr.
❌ Hvordan er vejr i dag?
Incorrect — needs the definite form.
✅ Hvordan er vejret i dag?
What's the weather like today?
4. Splitting weather compounds. Regnvejrsdag and solskinsdag are single words; writing them apart changes or breaks the meaning.
❌ Det er en regn vejrs dag.
Incorrect — a compound wrongly split into pieces.
✅ Det er en regnvejrsdag.
It's a rainy day.
Key Takeaways
- Weather verbs (regner, sner, blæser, fryser) and weather states (det er koldt) both require the dummy subject det — it is never optional.
- The dummy is always det, never den.
- Ask with Hvordan er vejret? using the definite vejret.
- Day-and-weather nouns like regnvejrsdag are single solid compounds.
Now practice Danish
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Den vs Det: Saying 'It'A1 — Danish has two words for 'it' — den for common-gender nouns, det for neuter — plus a fixed expletive det for weather, time, and impersonal sentences that never agrees with anything.
- Saying 'There Is/Are': Der-sentencesA2 — How to announce that something exists in Danish with der er, der kommer, and der står — no number agreement, plus question and negative variants and a substitution table to build your own.
- Greetings and FarewellsA1 — How Danes say hello and goodbye — hej, goddag, farvel, vi ses — with register notes and the quirk that 'hej' works both ways.
- Inversion After a Fronted ElementA1 — Whenever a non-subject opens a Danish main clause — an adverb, object, prepositional phrase, or subordinate clause — the verb stays second and the subject moves behind it.