Norwegian, like English, freely recycles its participles as adjectives. A running man, boiling water, a fried fish, broken glass — all of these are participles standing in for ordinary adjectives. But Norwegian splits its participle-adjectives into two families that behave in exactly opposite ways, and the contrast is one of the cleaner pieces of advanced Norwegian grammar — once you see it, you never get it wrong again. The present participle in -ende is doubly frozen: it never agrees with its noun and it never takes the -ere/-est comparison endings. The past participle, by contrast, behaves like a perfectly normal adjective: it agrees in gender, number and definiteness, and compares with mest. This page treats both as adjectives; for their life as verb forms (in the perfect and the passive) see Participles as Adjectives and The Present Participle.
The present participle in -ende: invariant
The present participle is formed by adding -ende to the verb stem: løpe → løpende ("running"), koke → kokende ("boiling"), spenne → spennende ("exciting"), skrike → skrikende ("screaming/shrieking"). Used attributively, it describes something actively doing the action — an ongoing, in-progress quality. This is the active meaning, and it is the mirror image of the past participle's passive meaning, which we come to below.
The crucial fact for English speakers: the -ende form never inflects. It takes no -t after a neuter noun, no -e in the plural or in the definite. It is one of the very few truly invariable adjective types in Norwegian.
En løpende mann dyttet meg nesten over ende på fortauet.
A running man almost knocked me over on the pavement. — note V2: the sentence adverb 'nesten' follows the finite verb.
Pass på — vannet i kjelen er kokende varmt.
Watch out — the water in the pot is boiling hot.
Det var et utrolig spennende show, men billettene var dyre.
It was an incredibly exciting show, but the tickets were expensive. — note 'et spennende show', NOT 'spennendet'.
Look hard at that last example. The noun show is neuter (et show), which normally forces a -t on the adjective (et stort show "a big show"). But spennende stays bare: et spennende show, never ❌et spennendet show. The same holds in the plural and the definite:
De skrikende barna i nabobordet ødela hele middagen.
The screaming children at the next table ruined the whole dinner. — definite plural, yet 'skrikende' takes no -e.
Vi leste flere spennende bøker i sommer.
We read several exciting books this summer. — plural, yet still 'spennende', not 'spennendee' or 'spennende-anything'.
Why it doesn't inflect
There's a real explanation, not just a brute rule. The -ende ending already is a fixed derivational suffix that does nothing but mark "ongoing action". It was never part of the adjective inflection system to begin with — it behaves like a sealed unit. Norwegian simply has no slot to add an agreement ending onto an -ende word, the way English has no way to inflect running in the running men. So the invariability is not an exception you have to memorise against the grain; it falls out of the fact that -ende is a frozen suffix, not an adjective stem waiting for an ending.
Comparing the -ende participle: only mer / mest
Because the -ende form refuses all endings, it also refuses the -ere/-est comparison. You cannot say ❌spennendere or ❌spennendest. Instead you compare it the periphrastic way, with mer ("more") and mest ("most") — the same strategy Norwegian uses for long and borrowed adjectives (see Periphrastic Comparison).
Den andre boka var mer spennende enn den første.
The second book was more exciting than the first. — 'mer spennende', never 'spennendere'.
Dette er den mest skremmende filmen jeg har sett på årevis.
This is the most frightening film I've seen in years. — 'mest skremmende'; note the noun phrase is fully definite but 'skremmende' still doesn't take -e.
So the present participle is doubly frozen: frozen against agreement and frozen against ending-comparison. Both endings are off the table; mer/mest is the only tool.
The past participle as adjective: it agrees
Now the opposite family. The past participle — the form you also use after ha in the perfect and in the bli-passive — can stand as an attributive adjective meaning something the action was done to. Steke ("to fry") → stekt ("fried"); knuse ("to shatter") → knust ("shattered/broken"); male ("to paint") → malt ("painted"). This is the passive sense: the fish didn't fry itself, it was fried.
Unlike -ende, the past participle agrees like a normal adjective — and that means it takes the full -/-t/-e pattern. The base form often already ends in -t (because that's how many participles are built), which can disguise the agreement, so watch the gender and number carefully.
Jeg tar en stekt fisk og et stekt egg, takk.
I'll have a fried fish and a fried egg, please. — masculine 'en stekt fisk', neuter 'et stekt egg'; here both happen to look the same.
Vi spiste stekte egg og bacon til frokost.
We had fried eggs and bacon for breakfast. — plural forces the -e: 'stekte egg', not 'stekt egg'.
Et knust glass lå midt på kjøkkengulvet.
A broken glass lay in the middle of the kitchen floor. — neuter past participle, here 'knust'.
De nymalte veggene luktet fortsatt av maling.
The freshly painted walls still smelled of paint. — definite plural: 'malte' takes -e, and combines with the compound 'nymalte'.
Compare the plural minimal pair directly: et stekt egg (one fried egg) but stekte egg (fried eggs). That -e is exactly the agreement the -ende participle would have refused. This is the heart of the contrast: same job (participle-as-adjective), opposite inflection.
Comparing the past participle: mest
Past participles compare periphrastically too, but with a twist worth noting: because they often denote a result that's either true or not (a glass is broken or it isn't), the comparative is less common than the superlative. When you do compare them, use mer/mest — -ere/-est would sound wrong on a participle even though it agrees.
Av alle rettene på menyen er den røkte laksen den mest kjente.
Of all the dishes on the menu, the smoked salmon is the best known. — 'mest kjent', agreeing 'kjente' in the definite phrase.
The lexicalised emotion participles and their prepositions
A special, high-frequency group of past participles describes emotional states: begeistret ("delighted/enthusiastic"), skuffet ("disappointed"), interessert ("interested"), skremt ("scared"), overrasket ("surprised"), fornøyd ("satisfied"). They've drifted away from their verbs and feel like plain adjectives now — but they still agree (en skuffet kunde, skuffede kunder), and, crucially, each one governs a fixed preposition that you simply have to learn. The English preposition is almost never the literal translation, so this is a classic transfer trap (see Adjectives with Fixed Prepositions).
The three to nail first:
| Participle | Preposition | English | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| interessert | i | interested in | interessert i historie |
| skuffet | over | disappointed with/in/by | skuffet over resultatet |
| begeistret | for | enthusiastic about | begeistret for ideen |
| fornøyd | med | satisfied with | fornøyd med jobben |
| redd / skremt | for | afraid of | redd for hunder |
Jeg er veldig interessert i norsk historie, men litt skuffet over kurset.
I'm very interested in Norwegian history, but a bit disappointed with the course. — interessert I, skuffet OVER; neither matches the English preposition.
Hele klassen var begeistret for forslaget, og læreren var fornøyd med oss.
The whole class was enthusiastic about the proposal, and the teacher was satisfied with us. — begeistret FOR, fornøyd MED.
Note that these still agree when they sit before a noun: en interessert elev, interesserte elever — the agreement rule from the past-participle family applies in full.
Common Mistakes
1. Trying to inflect the -ende participle. This is the single most common error, because English speakers expect every adjective to agree. The -ende form never does.
❌ Det var et spennendet show.
Incorrect — -ende participles take no -t, even before a neuter noun.
✅ Det var et spennende show.
It was an exciting show.
2. Adding -ere/-est to an -ende participle. Because spennende feels like a normal adjective, learners reach for spennendere. It doesn't exist.
❌ Den andre boka var spennendere.
Incorrect — -ende participles never take comparative -ere.
✅ Den andre boka var mer spennende.
The second book was more exciting.
3. Failing to inflect the past participle. The opposite slip: leaving the past participle bare in the plural or definite, where it must take -e.
❌ Vi spiste stekt egg til frokost.
Incorrect — plural needs agreement on the past participle.
✅ Vi spiste stekte egg til frokost.
We had fried eggs for breakfast.
4. Using the English preposition with an emotion participle. "Interested in" tempts you toward a Norwegian i-equivalent only by luck; "disappointed with" leads English speakers to med, but Norwegian wants over.
❌ Jeg er skuffet med karakteren min.
Incorrect — skuffet takes 'over', not 'med'.
✅ Jeg er skuffet over karakteren min.
I'm disappointed with my grade.
5. Confusing the active and passive senses. Et skremmende barn is a child that frightens others (active, -ende); et skremt barn is a child that was frightened (passive, past participle). Picking the wrong family inverts the meaning.
❌ Det skremmende barnet gråt og ville hjem.
Incorrect if you mean the child was scared — 'skremmende' means the child frightens others.
✅ Det skremte barnet gråt og ville hjem.
The frightened child cried and wanted to go home.
Key Takeaways
- -ende present participles are doubly frozen: no agreement (et spennende show) and no -ere/-est — compare only with mer/mest.
- Past participles agree fully (en stekt fisk, stekte egg, et knust glass, malte vegger) and also compare with mest.
- The two families mean opposite things: -ende = active/ongoing (skremmende, frightening), past participle = passive/done-to (skremt, frightened).
- The emotion participles (interessert, skuffet, begeistret, fornøyd) agree like normal past participles but each governs a fixed preposition that rarely matches English.
- The two recurring English-speaker traps are inflecting -ende and choosing the wrong preposition.
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Participles as AdjectivesB1 — How Norwegian past participles inflect like adjectives when they describe a noun (en stekt fisk, stekte poteter, den malte veggen) — and how invariant present participles in -ende (kokende vann, et smilende barn) differ — distinguished from the unchanging supine in har stekt.
- mer and mest: Periphrastic ComparisonB1 — When Norwegian uses mer/mest ('more/most') instead of the -ere/-est endings — long and borrowed adjectives, all participles used as adjectives (mer elsket, mest spennende), and -isk/-sk/-et derivatives — a long-vs-short split that maps almost perfectly onto English.
- The Present Participle (-ende)B2 — The -ende form as adjective (et skinnende lys), adverb of manner (han kom løpende), and in the productive bli/komme + -ende pattern — and why it is NOT the English progressive.
- Comparison: -ere, -estA2 — Regular Norwegian adjectives compare with -ere (finere, billigere) and the superlative -est (finest, billigst); the comparative never agrees, the definite superlative adds -e (den fineste), and a stress-pattern syncope shortens words like enkel → enklere.
- Adjectives with Fixed PrepositionsB1 — The fixed adjective + preposition pairings Norwegian forces you to memorise as units — glad i, redd for, flink til, stolt av, interessert i — where the Norwegian preposition almost never matches the English one.