Participial and Reduced Clauses

A reduced clause is a subordinate clause stripped of its subject and its finite verb, leaving only a participle to carry the meaning. English does this constantly — "Walking home, I saw an old friend", "Beaten in the final, she still smiled", "All things considered, we did well." Norwegian has the same machinery: the present participle in -ende, the past participle, and a small set of frozen absolute phrases. But here is the single most important fact on this page, and it is a fact about register rather than form: Norwegian uses these constructions far less than English does, and almost never in speech. The English -ing adjunct that feels neutral and everyday maps, in natural spoken Norwegian, onto a full finite subordinate clause — Da jeg gikk hjem …, Mens jeg gikk …. The participial version is bookish, literary, and faintly old-fashioned; produced carelessly, it dangles. So for the advanced learner the goal is split: recognise these clauses fluently when reading, and know the safer finite alternative when speaking or writing plainly. (For participles used as plain adjectives — en smilende mann, kokt fisk — see participles as adjectives.)

What a reduced clause compresses

Take the finite clause Da hun smilte, tok hun imot prisen ("As she smiled, she accepted the prize"). A reduced clause throws away the conjunction da, throws away the subject hun, and throws away the finite verb smilte, leaving the present participle smilende to stand for the whole adverbial idea:

The participle is invariant: present participles in Norwegian always end in -ende and never agree with anything — not number, not gender, not case. Smilende is smilende whether the hidden subject is han, hun, de or vi. This is one mercy: there is no agreement to get wrong on the -ende form. (The past participle in absolutes does agree — see below.)

The compression carries a cost in clarity: because the subject is deleted, the reader must infer it, and the convention — in Norwegian as in careful English — is that the deleted subject equals the subject of the main clause. In Smilende tok hun imot prisen, the smiler is hun, the main-clause subject. Break that convention and you get a dangling participle (covered below).

Present-participle adverbials (the -ende adjunct)

The -ende adverbial sets a circumstance — manner, accompanying action, or cause — around the main event. It answers "in what manner / while doing what?" It belongs to written and literary register; in speech you almost always reach for mens ("while") or idet ("just as") instead.

Notice the last example behaves differently. When the participle follows its subject closely and reads as a manner adverb on the verb (forlot … gråtende = "left … cryingly"), it is far more natural than a fronted Gråtende forlot hun …. The fronted, comma-set version is the markedly literary one. A useful instinct: a trailing -ende manner word is acceptable in ordinary prose; a fronted -ende clause is bookish.

Past-participle absolutes (and their agreement)

The past participle reduces a passive or completed clause: Etter at han var skadet … → Skadet i ulykken … ("Injured in the accident, …"). These describe a state the main-clause subject is in, usually a state someone else brought about.

Here agreement does matter, because the past participle behaves like a predicative adjective and inflects for the number (and, in the singular, the gender) of the understood subject. With a plural understood subject the participle takes -e:

The practical detail: strong/irregular participles and short adjectival ones show a clear plural -e (våt → våte, trett → trette, skadet → skadde in the plural for some speakers), while the very common -et participles (skuffet, overrasket) often look the same in singular and plural. When in doubt, treat it exactly as you would the same word used predicatively after være: spilleren var skuffet, spillerne var skuffet — same form — so skuffet stays skuffet in the absolute too.

The free adjunct: frozen absolute phrases

A small, high-frequency set of past-participle absolutes has frozen into idioms. These are genuinely common — you will meet them in newspapers, essays and formal speech — and they are worth producing, unlike the open-ended literary patterns above. The understood subject here is often a whole situation rather than a person, so the dangling worry mostly evaporates.

Note gitt ("given") functioning almost as a preposition — gitt situasjonen, gitt at … — exactly parallel to English "given (that)". This one has fully grammaticalised and is safe in any register above the most casual.

The safer alternative: just use a finite clause

Because the literary patterns dangle so easily and sound stiff in speech, the reliable move — and the one that makes you sound like a native rather than a translator — is to unreduce the clause: restore the conjunction, the subject and the finite verb. Compare the literary participial with its everyday finite twin:

These finite versions are not "worse Norwegian" — they are the default. A learner who reaches for Da/Mens/Etter at + clause will almost never sound wrong, whereas a learner who reaches for a fronted participle is gambling on register and on getting the subject to match. Recognise the participial clauses; produce the finite ones.

Common Mistakes

The deleted subject of a participle must equal the main-clause subject. Here the main subject is sjefen ("the boss"), so the participle says the boss was walking — a dangler. English speakers transfer "Walking to work, the boss called me" without noticing the same flaw exists in English; in Norwegian the safe fix is a finite mens-clause.

English happily strings -ing forms in casual speech ("sitting on the bus listening to music"). Norwegian does not. Use finite verbs, normally coordinated with og.

A fronted reduced clause occupies the first position, so V2 forces the finite verb ahead of the subject: ble han, not han ble. English keeps subject-first here, and learners carry that over.

I betraktning is a fixed prepositional phrase in the indefinite. Adding the definite article (betraktningen) breaks the idiom.

The understood subject is plural (barna), so the participle/adjective agrees: trette. And the fronted adjunct triggers inversion: sov barna.

Key Takeaways

• Reduced/participial clauses exist in Norwegian but are formal, written and often literary — recognise them, prefer finite clauses in speech.
• The present participle -ende is invariant; a trailing manner -ende (forlot rommet gråtende) is fine in neutral prose, a fronted -ende clause is bookish.
• The past participle in an absolute agrees with its understood subject, exactly like a predicative adjective after være (trette, but skuffet).
• Frozen free adjuncts — alt tatt i betraktning, været tatt i betraktning, gitt situasjonen — are common and safe in formal register.
• A fronted reduced clause fills slot 1, so the main clause inverts (verb before subject).
• The deleted subject must equal the main-clause subject; otherwise the participle dangles. The safe fix is always a full da/mens/etter at
  • finite clause.