Rejse sig is the reflexive verb for standing up — the change of position from sitting (or lying, or kneeling) to upright. The reflexive pronoun is not optional decoration: without it, rejse means something completely different ("to travel"). Get the sig right and you have one of the three everyday posture-change verbs Danes use constantly: sætte sig (sit down), rejse sig (stand up), lægge sig (lie down). All three follow the same logic — you do the action to yourself, so the verb takes a reflexive object that agrees with the subject.
Principal parts
| Form | Danish | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitive | (at) rejse sig | to stand up / rise |
| Present | rejser sig | stand(s) up |
| Past | rejste sig | stood up |
| Past participle | rejst sig | stood up / risen |
| Imperative | rejs dig! | stand up! / get up! |
The pronoun agreement is the only moving part, and it is worth a table of its own:
| Subject | Reflexive | Present |
|---|---|---|
| jeg | mig | jeg rejser mig |
| du | dig | du rejser dig |
| han / hun | sig | han rejser sig |
| vi | os | vi rejser os |
| I | jer | I rejser jer |
| de | sig | de rejser sig |
Notice that only the third person — han, hun, de — uses the dedicated reflexive sig. Everywhere else the reflexive looks exactly like the ordinary object pronoun (mig, dig, os, jer). The full story is on the reflexive sig page.
Present: rejser sig
Hun rejser sig og går hen til vinduet.
She stands up and walks over to the window.
Når dommeren kommer ind, rejser alle sig.
When the judge comes in, everyone stands up.
In the second example the subject alle ("everyone") is third person, so the reflexive is sig — alle rejser sig.
Past: rejste sig
Jeg rejste mig for at give den ældre dame min plads.
I stood up to give the elderly lady my seat.
Publikum rejste sig og klappede længe.
The audience rose and applauded for a long time.
Present perfect: har rejst sig
The perfect uses har plus the participle rejst — and the reflexive pronoun stays, agreeing with the subject. Even though standing up is a change of your own position, rejse sig takes har, because the reflexive object makes it behave like a transitive verb. (The auxiliary er is reserved for a small set of intransitive motion/change verbs without an object.)
Han har lige rejst sig — du gik glip af det.
He just stood up — you missed it.
Da vi kom, havde de allerede rejst sig fra bordet.
When we arrived, they had already gotten up from the table.
The imperative: rejs dig!
The imperative keeps the reflexive, and it must match the person addressed — usually dig for one person, jer for several.
Rejs dig op, så jeg kan se, hvor høj du er blevet!
Stand up so I can see how tall you've gotten!
The little particle op ("up") is often added — rejse sig op — to stress the upward motion, though rejse sig alone already means "stand up."
The posture-change trio
This is the insight to carry away. Danish has a tidy set of three reflexive verbs for changing your own position, and they pattern identically — same reflexive sig, same kind of forms:
| From / to | Verb | Past | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| → seated | sætte sig | satte sig | to sit down |
| → upright | rejse sig | rejste sig | to stand up |
| → lying | lægge sig | lagde sig | to lie down |
Each describes the action of changing position. Their non-reflexive partners describe the resulting state: sidde (be seated), stå (be standing), ligge (be lying). English collapses some of these — "sit" is both the action and the state — but Danish keeps action and state apart, and the reflexive sig is the marker of the action.
Han satte sig, sad lidt, og rejste sig så igen.
He sat down, sat for a while, and then stood up again.
That single sentence shows the contrast: satte sig and rejste sig are the actions (with sig), while sad is the state in between (no sig). The lie-down partner has its own page at Lægge sig.
Don't confuse it with: rejse (travel) and stå op (get out of bed)
Two neighbours trip up English speakers:
- rejse (no sig) means to travel, not to stand up. Drop the reflexive and you change the meaning entirely.
- stå op means to get out of bed / get up in the morning — a daily-routine verb, not the act of rising from a chair.
Jeg rejser til Norge i næste uge.
I'm travelling to Norway next week. (rejse, no sig — travel)
Jeg rejser mig og går.
I stand up and leave. (rejse sig — stand up)
Jeg står op klokken seks hver morgen.
I get up at six every morning. (stå op — get out of bed)
Common collocations
- rejse sig (op) — to stand up, to rise
- rejse sig fra bordet — to get up from the table
- rejse sig fra stolen — to get up out of the chair
- rejse sig for nogen — to stand up for someone (to give up one's seat / show respect)
- rejse sig igen (figurative) — to get back on one's feet (after a setback)
Efter konkursen kæmpede de for at rejse sig igen.
After the bankruptcy they fought to get back on their feet again.
A natural exchange
— Rejs dig lige, jeg skal støvsuge under sofaen. — Okay, okay, jeg rejser mig. Men da jeg satte mig, sagde du, jeg skulle slappe af! — Det var før, du så støvet.
— Get up for a sec, I need to vacuum under the couch. — Okay, okay, I'm getting up. But when I sat down, you said I should relax! — That was before you saw the dust.
There you have the trio in action: the imperative rejs dig, the present jeg rejser mig, and the past of its partner satte mig. For the broader pattern behind all of these, see Reflexive verbs.
Common mistakes
❌ Jeg rejser, da læreren kommer ind.
Incorrect — without sig, rejse means 'travel.' To stand up you need the reflexive.
✅ Jeg rejser mig, da læreren kommer ind.
I stand up when the teacher comes in.
❌ Hun rejser mig fra stolen.
Wrong pronoun — the subject is hun (third person), so the reflexive must be sig.
✅ Hun rejser sig fra stolen.
She gets up out of the chair.
❌ Vi rejser sig og går.
Wrong pronoun — vi takes os, not sig: vi rejser os.
✅ Vi rejser os og går.
We stand up and leave.
❌ Han har rejst fra bordet.
Missing reflexive — this reads as 'he has travelled from the table'; add sig.
✅ Han har rejst sig fra bordet.
He has gotten up from the table.
❌ Rejs op, så jeg kan se dig!
Missing reflexive in the imperative — it must be rejs dig (op).
✅ Rejs dig op, så jeg kan se dig!
Stand up so I can see you!
Now practice Danish
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Lægge sigA2 — Full reference for the reflexive lægge sig ('to lie down') — principal parts, all core tenses in natural sentences, the silent-d past lagde, the change-of-posture trio with sætte sig and rejse sig, and the strict split from intransitive ligge ('be lying') and transitive lægge ('lay an object').
- Reflexive VerbsA2 — Inherently reflexive Danish verbs that always need sig/mig/dig — glæde sig, skynde sig, sætte sig, føle sig, gifte sig, more sig, lægge sig — and how they differ from reciprocals.
- The Reflexive Pronoun SigA2 — Danish sig is the 3rd-person reflexive (singular and plural) used when the object refers back to the subject; learn the full mig/dig/sig/os/jer set, sig selv vs hinanden, and the inherently reflexive verbs.
- BesøgeA2 — Full reference for besøge ('to visit') — principal parts, all core tenses in natural sentences, the transitive besøge nogen, the everyday alternative komme på besøg, the noun et besøg, and how besøge differs from the formal gæste.