Flyve ('to fly') is a strong verb whose past and participle take the ø → øj twist: flyve → fløj → fløjet. It is the direct cognate of English 'fly', and English still carries the same ablaut family in fly / flew / flown — recognising that the irregularity is shared makes the Danish forms far easier to hold. Flyve covers birds, planes, and people travelling by plane, and it anchors the everyday idiom tiden flyver ('time flies').
Principal parts
| Form | Danish | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitive | (at) flyve | to fly |
| Present | flyver | fl(y/ies) |
| Past | fløj | flew |
| Past participle | fløjet | flown |
| Imperative | flyv! | fly! |
Flyve is strong: the past fløj changes the stem vowel to ø and adds -j, and the participle fløjet keeps the strong -et. Note the spelling carefully — fløj, not flyv — and keep the ø exact. See Strong verbs: ablaut patterns.
Present: flyver
The literal sense is moving through the air — birds, insects, aircraft.
Fuglene flyver sydpå allerede i september.
The birds fly south as early as September.
Vi flyver til Barcelona på fredag.
We're flying to Barcelona on Friday.
For a destination, use flyve til ('fly to'):
Hvor ofte flyver du til København?
How often do you fly to Copenhagen?
Past: fløj
Flyet fløj afsted præcis til tiden.
The plane took off right on time.
En måge fløj lige forbi vinduet.
A seagull flew right past the window.
The phrasal flyve afsted ('fly off / take off') appears in that first example — useful for departures, literal and figurative.
Present perfect: har/er fløjet
As with other motion verbs, the perfect splits. Use have for flying as an activity, and være for a completed journey to a place.
Jeg har fløjet mange gange, men jeg er stadig nervøs.
I've flown many times, but I'm still nervous.
Hun er fløjet til London for at se sin søster.
She has flown to London to see her sister.
See Wrong perfect auxiliary for motion and Verbs of motion and direction for the full have/være rule.
The idiom: tiden flyver
A near-perfect match for English "time flies." Extremely common in everyday speech.
Hold da op, tiden flyver, når man har det sjovt.
Wow, time flies when you're having fun.
Det er allerede juni — tiden er fløjet af sted i år.
It's already June — the year has flown by.
For talking about time more broadly, see Dates, time and money.
The nouns: en flyver and et fly
Two related nouns sit beside the verb. Et fly ('a plane', neuter) is the ordinary modern word for an aircraft. En flyver ('a flyer', common gender) can mean a pilot/aviator or, more colloquially, also a plane. Learners should default to et fly for the aircraft itself.
| Word | Gender | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| et fly | neuter (et-word) | a plane (the standard word) |
| en flyver | common (en-word) | a pilot / aviator; colloquially also a plane |
Vores fly er forsinket to timer.
Our plane is delayed by two hours.
Flyve vs flyve med vs rejse
When you yourself travel by plane, plain flyve already means 'go by plane' — the means of transport is built into the verb. Flyve med highlights the carrier or aircraft you travel on ('fly with SAS', 'fly on that little plane'). And rejse is the general 'travel', regardless of how.
Vi flyver med SAS, fordi det er billigst lige nu.
We're flying with SAS because it's cheapest right now.
Jeg rejser til Norge, men jeg ved ikke, om jeg flyver eller tager toget.
I'm travelling to Norway, but I don't know whether I'll fly or take the train.
Common mistakes
❌ Vi flyvede til Rom sidste sommer.
Incorrect — flyve is strong; the past is fløj, never flyvede.
✅ Vi fløj til Rom sidste sommer.
We flew to Rome last summer.
❌ Jeg har flyvet til Aalborg en gang.
Incorrect — two errors: the participle is fløjet (not flyvet), and a journey to a place takes er, not har.
✅ Jeg er fløjet til Aalborg en gang.
I've flown to Aalborg once.
❌ Vi flyver med fly til Spanien.
Redundant — flyve already means going by plane.
✅ Vi flyver til Spanien.
We're flying to Spain.
❌ Fuglen flyvede væk.
Incorrect — strong past again; use fløj.
✅ Fuglen fløj væk.
The bird flew away.
Key takeaways
- Flyve is strong: flyver / fløj / fløjet — never flyvede or flyvet. Keep the ø in fløj / fløjet.
- It mirrors English fly / flew / flown, which makes the forms easy to anchor.
- The perfect splits har fløjet (activity) vs er fløjet (journey to a place).
- Plain flyve already means 'travel by plane'; add med only to name the carrier; use et fly for the aircraft itself.
Now practice Danish
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Strong Verbs: Ablaut PatternsA2 — Danish strong verbs form their past by changing the stem vowel — learn the major ablaut series as families to turn memorisation into pattern recognition.
- Verbs of Motion and DirectionB1 — Danish lexicalises the means of motion — gå, køre, tage, rejse, flytte, løbe, flyve, komme — each with være-perfect for completed displacement and directional particles like ind, ud, op, ned, hjem.
- RejseA1 — Full reference for rejse — 'to travel' (perfect with være: jeg er rejst) and, reflexively, 'to stand up / rise' (rejse sig). Principal parts, all core tenses, the auxiliary split, and everyday collocations like rejse væk and rejse sig op.
- Dates, Time and MoneyA2 — Telling the time in Danish (including the half-hour trap where halv ti means 9:30), reading dates with ordinals, saying years, and handling kroner and øre.
- Wrong Perfect Auxiliary for MotionB1 — Why Danish uses er (not har) in the perfect for arrival, departure, and change of state — and why the same verb can take both.