Rejse | Danish Grammar

Rejse does two jobs that English keeps apart. On its own it means "to travel" — jeg rejser til Spanien ("I'm travelling to Spain"). Used reflexively, rejse sig means "to stand up / rise" — hun rejste sig fra stolen ("she stood up from the chair"). They share one paradigm, so once you can conjugate the travel verb you also have the rising one. The two things to watch are the auxiliary (the travel sense takes være, not have, in the perfect) and the reflexive pronoun (the rising sense needs sig / mig / dig).

Principal parts

Form	Danish	English
Infinitive	(at) rejse	to travel / to rise
Present	rejser	travel(s) / rise(s)
Past	rejste	travelled / rose
Past participle	rejst	travelled / risen
Imperative	rejs!	travel! / get up!

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Rejse is a regular weak verb of the -te / -t type: add -te for the past (rejste) and -t for the participle (rejst). It belongs with the other -te verbs covered under weak past with -te. No vowel change, no irregularity — the difficulty is entirely in the auxiliary and the reflexive, not the endings.

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No agreement: rejser is the whole present for every subject, and rejste the whole past. Don't let the English "she travels / she rises" tempt you into an -s.

Present: rejser

Subject	Form	Example
jeg	rejser	jeg rejser i morgen
du	rejser	du rejser meget
han / hun	rejser	hun rejser hjem
vi	rejser	vi rejser sammen
de	rejser	de rejser væk i juli

Vi rejser til Italien hver sommer.

We travel to Italy every summer.

Hun rejser allerede i morgen tidlig.

She's leaving (travelling off) early tomorrow morning.

Past: rejste

De rejste jorden rundt, da de var unge.

They travelled around the world when they were young.

Jeg rejste hjem to dage før de andre.

I went home two days before the others.

Present perfect: er rejst (the auxiliary point)

Here is the heart of the page. With rejse in the travel sense, Danish forms the perfect with være, not have — because travelling is movement to a destination, a change of location. So it is jeg er rejst, not *jeg har rejst.

Jeg er rejst til Spanien for at arbejde.

I've gone (off) to Spain to work.

Halvdelen af klassen er allerede rejst hjem.

Half the class has already gone home.

This is the single most common English-speaker error here: English uses "have" for every perfect (I have travelled, I have gone), so learners reach for *har rejst. Danish reserves være for verbs of motion-to-a-destination and change of state. For the full decision, see choosing have or være in the perfect.

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There is a subtle nuance native speakers feel: er rejst foregrounds the result — you are now gone, away, no longer here. har rejst can appear when you describe travelling as an activity over time (jeg har rejst meget i mit liv — "I've travelled a lot in my life"), where the point is the experience, not a displacement to one place. As a beginner, use er rejst for "have gone off to X" and you will be right almost every time.

Jeg har rejst meget, men aldrig til Asien.

I've travelled a lot, but never to Asia. (travelling as a life experience)

Past perfect: var rejst

Because the perfect uses være, the past perfect uses its past form var: var rejst.

Da vi nåede frem, var de andre allerede rejst videre.

By the time we arrived, the others had already moved on.

Rejse sig — the reflexive 'stand up / rise'

Add the reflexive pronoun and rejse flips to the physical sense of getting up or rising. The pronoun agrees with the subject: mig, dig, sig, os, jer, sig.

Subject	Reflexive form
jeg	rejser mig
du	rejser dig
han / hun	rejser sig
vi	rejser os
de	rejser sig

Da dommeren kom ind, rejste alle sig.

When the judge came in, everyone stood up.

Han rejste sig op og holdt en tale.

He stood up and gave a speech.

The reflexive sense takes the default auxiliary har in the perfect — har rejst sig — because here nothing is travelling anywhere; the body is simply changing posture, and the reflexive pronoun keeps it in the have group.

Publikum har rejst sig og klapper.

The audience has risen to its feet and is applauding.

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The reflexive pronoun is obligatory in this sense. Rejse alone never means "stand up." If you drop sig, a Dane will hear "travel," so *hun rejste fra stolen sounds like she set off on a journey from the chair. You must say hun rejste sig fra stolen.

Common collocations and fixed expressions

rejse væk — to go away, travel off
rejse hjem — to travel home, head home
rejse sig (op) — to stand up, get to one's feet
rejse rundt — to travel around
rejse ud — to go abroad / set off

Vi rejser væk i en uge, så katten skal passes.

We're going away for a week, so the cat needs looking after.

A natural exchange

— Hvornår rejser I? — Vi er faktisk allerede rejst i tankerne! Vi rejser tidligt fredag morgen. — Skøn tur — rejs jer nu op og kom i seng, så I kan stå tidligt op.

— When are you off? — In our heads we've practically left already! We leave early Friday morning. — Lovely trip — now get up and go to bed so you can get up early.

Common mistakes

❌ Jeg har rejst til Norge i sidste uge.

Incorrect for going off to a place — a motion-to-destination verb takes være: jeg er rejst.

✅ Jeg er rejst til Norge i sidste uge.

I went off to Norway last week.

❌ Hun rejste fra stolen.

Wrong without the reflexive — this reads as 'she travelled away from the chair'.

✅ Hun rejste sig fra stolen.

She stood up from the chair.

❌ Jeg rejsede til Berlin.

Incorrect — rejse is a -te verb; the past is rejste, not a -ede form.

✅ Jeg rejste til Berlin.

I travelled to Berlin.

❌ Vi har rejst os op fra sofaen, og nu er vi rejst på ferie.

Mixed auxiliaries muddle the two senses — har rejst os (rise) is right, but the travel sense needs er: er rejst på ferie.

✅ Vi har rejst os op fra sofaen, og nu er vi rejst på ferie.

We've got up from the sofa, and now we've gone off on holiday.

❌ Rejse dig op!

Wrong command form — the imperative drops the -e: rejs.

✅ Rejs dig op!

Stand up!

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