Tage stilling is a fixed expression you will meet constantly in Danish news, meetings, and debate: it means "to take a stance," "to form a view," or "to decide where you stand" on some matter. It is built from the strong verb tage ("take") plus the bare noun stilling — and that nakedness is the whole point. Add an article and you change the meaning completely. This page locks in the principal parts, the article-less form, the til that follows, and the line between tage stilling, beslutte and mene.
Principal parts
The carrier verb is strong tage, with the irregular past tog and participle taget (note the silent -g-). In the fixed expression, stilling stays unchanged.
| Infinitive | Present | Past | Past participle | Imperative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| at tage stilling | tager stilling | tog stilling | taget stilling | tag stilling! |
The perfect is formed with har: har taget stilling. This is a transitive, activity expression (you take a stance — a mental act done to a matter), so it never takes være.
The bare noun stilling — no article, ever
In this expression stilling is article-less and uninflected. You do not say en stilling, stillingen, or stillinger. It behaves like the object half of a fixed light-verb construction — much as English "take part," "take place," or "take note" use a bare noun with no "a" or "the." Tage del, finde sted, tage stilling: the noun has fused to the verb and lost its article.
This is not a stylistic choice you can override. Inserting an article does not just sound odd — it switches you to a different, real meaning. Tage en stilling means "take a job / accept a position" (employment sense of stilling). So the article is the dividing line between "form a view" and "accept a job."
Vi må tage stilling til forslaget inden fredag.
We have to take a position on the proposal before Friday.
Hun nægtede at tage stilling i sagen.
She refused to take a stance on the matter.
Jeg har endnu ikke taget stilling.
I haven't made up my mind yet.
The frame: tage stilling til + the matter
To name what you are forming a view on, use the preposition til ("to"). Tage stilling til X = "take a position on X / decide about X."
Bestyrelsen skal tage stilling til budgettet på næste møde.
The board is to decide on the budget at the next meeting.
Politikerne tog stilling til klimaplanen i går.
The politicians took a position on the climate plan yesterday.
Det er svært at tage stilling til, før vi kender alle fakta.
It's hard to form a view on it before we know all the facts.
The related noun is en stillingtagen ("a stance, a position taken") — a more formal, (academic) nominalisation you will see in editorials: en klar stillingtagen til problemet ("a clear stance on the problem").
Tage stilling vs beslutte and mene
These three sit close together but answer different questions.
| Verb / expression | Core meaning | Register |
|---|---|---|
| tage stilling (til) | form a considered view on a matter; decide where you stand | neutral–formal |
| beslutte | decide, resolve (make a definite decision) | neutral |
| mene | think, be of the opinion (hold a view) | neutral, everyday |
The nuance: tage stilling is the process of weighing a matter and arriving at a position — it can even be the act of deciding to have an opinion at all (jeg har ikke taget stilling = "I have no view yet"). Beslutte is the outcome — a concrete decision, usually about an action: Vi besluttede at udskyde mødet ("We decided to postpone the meeting"). And mene is simply holding an opinion you already have: Jeg mener, at han har ret ("I think he's right"). You tager stilling til a question, then beslutter what to do, and afterwards you mener something.
Først tager vi stilling til problemet, så beslutter vi, hvad vi gør.
First we form a view on the problem, then we decide what to do.
Jeg mener, at vi bør vente.
I think we should wait.
English contrast: a light verb with no clean English match
Tage stilling belongs to the family of Danish light-verb constructions — a semantically thin verb (tage, "take") plus a fixed noun that carries the real meaning. English has parallels like "take a stand" or "take a position," but none maps cleanly across all uses, which is why learners reach for whichever English phrasal feels closest and get the preposition or the article wrong. The safest approach is to treat tage stilling til as a single indivisible unit you store whole, exactly as you store "take part in" rather than rebuilding it from "take" + "part" + "in" each time.
One more nuance worth internalising: tage stilling can be negative as a statement of neutrality. Jeg vil ikke tage stilling does not mean "I refuse to decide" so much as "I'm staying neutral / I won't take sides." This deliberate non-commitment sense has no tidy single-word English equivalent.
Avisen ønsker ikke at tage stilling i den politiske strid.
The newspaper does not wish to take sides in the political dispute.
See beslutte for the decision verb in detail, and tage collocations for the wider family of fixed tage expressions.
Common Mistakes
❌ Vi må tage en stilling til forslaget.
Incorrect — adding en changes the meaning to 'take a job'; the expression is article-less.
✅ Vi må tage stilling til forslaget.
We have to take a position on the proposal.
❌ Bestyrelsen tog stilling på budgettet.
Wrong preposition — tage stilling takes til, not på.
✅ Bestyrelsen tog stilling til budgettet.
The board took a position on the budget.
❌ Jeg har taget stilling at sælge huset.
Incorrect — for deciding on an action, use beslutte, not tage stilling at.
✅ Jeg har besluttet at sælge huset.
I've decided to sell the house.
❌ Vi er taget stilling til sagen.
Incorrect auxiliary — the perfect is har taget stilling, not er.
✅ Vi har taget stilling til sagen.
We have formed a view on the matter.
❌ Han tog stillinger til alle spørgsmålene.
Incorrect — stilling is frozen and never pluralised in this expression.
✅ Han tog stilling til alle spørgsmålene.
He took a position on all the questions.
Key Takeaways
- Principal parts: tage stilling – tager stilling – tog stilling – taget stilling; perfect always with har.
- stilling is article-less and uninflected; adding en yields tage en stilling = "take a job."
- Attach the matter with til: tage stilling til X.
- Tage stilling = form a view; beslutte = decide an action; mene = hold an opinion.
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Collocations with TageB2 — The fixed expressions built on tage ('take') — tage en beslutning, tage fejl, tage sig af, tage stilling til — and where Danish 'tage' parts ways with English 'take'.
- TageA2 — Full reference for the strong verb tage ('to take'), the silent -g, and its central role in talking about transport.
- BeslutteB2 — Full reference for beslutte ('to decide') — the regular forms beslutter / besluttede / besluttet, the reflexive beslutte sig for, the noun beslutning, and how it differs from bestemme.