The basic relative clause is one of the first things a Norwegian learner meets: mannen *som bor her ("the man who lives here"). One word, *som, covers English who, which and that, with no gender, number or case to worry about. That simplicity is real — but it hides four advanced choices that separate a B1 speaker from a C1 one, and every one of them is governed by register rather than by a hard grammatical rule. Where do you put a preposition that belongs inside the relative clause? When can you drop som and when can you not? What do you use for whose and for where? And how do you relativise a whole preceding clause ("…, which annoyed everyone")? This page works through stranding vs pied-piping, the genitive hvis, the relative adverbs der/dit, the sentential noe som / det som, and the restrictive/non-restrictive comma. For the basic som clause, see relative clauses.
Preposition placement: stranding is normal, pied-piping is stiff
When a preposition logically belongs inside the relative clause — "the man I talked to", "the house I live in" — Norwegian, like English, must decide where the preposition goes. The everyday, default, unmarked Norwegian answer is stranding: leave the preposition at the end of the clause, in the slot where the verb left it.
Mannen som jeg snakket med, er naboen min.
The man (that) I talked to is my neighbour. (stranded — the natural, default form)
Huset som vi bor i, ble bygget i 1890.
The house we live in was built in 1890. (stranded)
Den filmen du tenker på, heter «Sult».
The film you're thinking of is called 'Sult'. (stranded; som dropped — see below)
English speakers are sometimes told that ending a clause with a preposition is "wrong", and they hypercorrect into pied-piping — dragging the preposition to the front with a relative pronoun: med hvem ("with whom"), i hvilket ("in which"). In Norwegian this is even stiffer than in English. Med hvem is grammatical but belongs to very formal, almost archaic written style; in speech it sounds absurdly stilted, like saying "the man with whom I conversed" in a casual chat.
Mannen med hvem jeg snakket …
The man with whom I talked … (grammatical but very formal/archaic — avoid in speech)
Et spørsmål om hvilket det er stor uenighet …
A question about which there is great disagreement … (formal written register only)
som-deletion: the subject/object asymmetry
You may have noticed som quietly disappearing in some examples above. Norwegian lets you drop the relative som when it is the object of the relative clause — but never when it is the subject. This asymmetry is the single most reliable advanced relative rule, and it mirrors English exactly ("the book I read" vs "the man lives here" needs "who").
Object relative — som is optional:
Boka som jeg leste, var fantastisk.
The book (that) I read was fantastic. (som present)
Boka jeg leste, var fantastisk.
The book I read was fantastic. (som dropped — equally natural)
Subject relative — som is obligatory:
Mannen som bor her, er lege.
The man who lives here is a doctor. (som required)
Mannen bor her, er lege.
❌ Ungrammatical — without som this reads as two clauses, not a relative.
Why the asymmetry? Because the relative clause needs a subject. When som is the object, the clause already has its own subject (jeg in jeg leste), so som can vanish without leaving the clause subjectless. When som is the subject, deleting it would leave the clause with no subject at all — and Norwegian, unlike a pro-drop language, cannot tolerate that. So the rule is mechanical: drop som only when something else is already filling the subject slot.
Den jenta du møtte i går, ringte nettopp.
That girl you met yesterday just called. (object — som droppable)
Den jenta som ringte nettopp, vil møte deg.
The girl who just called wants to meet you. (subject — som obligatory)
hvis — the formal genitive relative ("whose")
Basic som has no genitive: you cannot say "mannen som bil" for "the man whose car". For whose, formal Norwegian has hvis, placed directly before the possessed noun, which then appears in its bare (indefinite, no-article) form:
En forfatter hvis bøker selger i hele verden.
An author whose books sell all over the world. (formal/written)
Mannen hvis bil ble stjålet, meldte det til politiet.
The man whose car was stolen reported it to the police. (formal/written)
Two things to lock in. First, hvis here ("whose") is spelled identically to hvis ("if") — same letters, completely different word; only context disambiguates. Second, hvis is markedly formal and bookish. In speech, Norwegians overwhelmingly avoid it and rephrase, typically with som … sin/sitt/sine or with a der-construction:
Forfatteren som har bøker som selger over hele verden …
The author who has books that sell all over the world … (everyday paraphrase)
Mannen som fikk bilen sin stjålet, meldte det.
The man who had his car stolen reported it. (natural spoken paraphrase using sin)
der / dit — relative adverbs of place
For relatives of place, Norwegian offers a neat alternative to som + preposition: the relative adverb der ("where", static) and dit ("(to) where", motion). These are extremely common and fully natural in speech — often the preferred form for places.
Byen der jeg vokste opp, har forandret seg helt.
The town where I grew up has changed completely. (der = static location)
Huset dit vi flyttet, lå langt fra alt.
The house we moved to lay far from everything. (dit = motion toward)
Det er noe galt med stedet der vi parkerte.
There's something wrong with the spot where we parked.
The der/dit split mirrors her/hit, der/dit, hvor/hvorhen across Norwegian: static location vs motion-toward. Use der for "where (something is)" and dit for "where (something goes/moves to)". You can always fall back on som … i / som … til (byen som jeg vokste opp i), but the der/dit relatives are tidier and very idiomatic. There is also a temporal relative adverb da ("when", of past time) — den dagen da vi møttes ("the day when we met") — which patterns the same way.
det som / noe som — the sentential (continuative) relative
English "…, which annoyed everyone" relativises not a noun but the whole preceding clause. Norwegian cannot use bare som for this — it needs a placeholder pronoun for som to attach to. The workhorses are noe som ("a thing which") and det som ("that which"):
Han kom for sent, noe som irriterte alle.
He arrived late, which annoyed everyone. (noe som = sentential 'which')
Hun fikk jobben, noe ingen hadde trodd.
She got the job, which no one had expected. (noe + dropped object som)
De ville utsette møtet, det som passet meg utmerket.
They wanted to postpone the meeting, which suited me perfectly. (det som — slightly more formal)
The free-standing relatives den som and det som ("the one who", "that which") work the same way as headless relatives — a built-in antecedent plus som:
Den som ler sist, ler best.
He who laughs last laughs best. (proverb; den som = 'the one who')
Ta det du trenger, og legg resten tilbake.
Take what you need and put the rest back. (det (som) — object, so som droppable)
The rule of thumb for English "which" referring back to a whole clause: never bare som; always noe som (or det som). Bare som must attach to a noun.
Restrictive vs non-restrictive: the comma matters
Norwegian, like English, distinguishes restrictive relatives (they narrow down which noun you mean — no comma) from non-restrictive ones (they add a parenthetical remark about an already-identified noun — comma).
Studentene som hadde lest pensum, besto eksamen.
The students who had read the syllabus passed the exam. (restrictive — only that subset passed; no comma before som)
Studentene, som hadde lest pensum, besto eksamen.
The students, who had read the syllabus, passed the exam. (non-restrictive — all of them, and by the way they'd read it)
The difference is exactly as meaningful as in English: in the first, only the syllabus-readers passed; in the second, all the students passed and the clause is an aside. Modern Norwegian punctuation is, however, looser than English about the closing comma in restrictive clauses — you will often see a comma after a long relative clause regardless — but the opening comma (or its absence) before som still carries the restrictive/non-restrictive meaning in careful writing.
Common Mistakes
❌ Mannen med hvem jeg snakket, er naboen min.
Over-formal — pied-piping med hvem sounds archaic in ordinary speech.
✅ Mannen som jeg snakket med, er naboen min.
The man I talked to is my neighbour. (stranded — the natural form)
Strand the preposition at the end. Med hvem is a formal-register relic; English speakers reach for it by hypercorrection.
❌ Mannen bor her er lege.
Missing subject som — you cannot delete som when it is the subject of the relative clause.
✅ Mannen som bor her, er lege.
The man who lives here is a doctor.
Drop som only when the clause already has another subject (object relatives). Subject som is obligatory.
❌ Mannen som sin bil ble stjålet …
Wrong construction for 'whose' — som + sin doesn't work as a genitive relative this way.
✅ Mannen hvis bil ble stjålet … (formal) / Mannen som fikk bilen sin stjålet … (spoken)
The man whose car was stolen …
For whose, use formal hvis + bare noun, or paraphrase in speech with som … sin.
❌ Han kom for sent, som irriterte alle.
Bare som can't refer to a whole clause — it needs a noun antecedent.
✅ Han kom for sent, noe som irriterte alle.
He came late, which annoyed everyone.
For "which" referring to the whole preceding clause, use noe som (or det som), never bare som.
❌ Byen som jeg vokste opp, har forandret seg.
A place relative with som needs its preposition (i); cleaner to use der.
✅ Byen der jeg vokste opp, har forandret seg.
The town where I grew up has changed. (or: byen som jeg vokste opp i)
For places, the relative adverb der (static) / dit (motion) is idiomatic and avoids a stranded preposition.
Key Takeaways
- Stranding is the default for relative-clause prepositions (som jeg snakket med); pied-piped med hvem is formal/archaic.
- Drop object som freely (boka jeg leste); subject som is obligatory (mannen som bor her).
- hvis = formal "whose" + bare noun; identical in spelling to hvis "if"; paraphrase with som … sin in speech.
- der (static) / dit (motion) = relative adverbs of place; da = relative adverb of past time.
- For "which" referring to a whole clause, use noe som / det som, never bare som.
- The comma before som marks non-restrictive (parenthetical) vs restrictive (defining) — the same distinction as English.
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Relative ClausesB1 — How to build relative clauses with som — when it is mandatory, when you can drop it, why ikke moves in front of the verb, and how preposition stranding works.
- Relatives with Prepositions: StrandingB2 — When a relative clause involves a preposition, Norwegian leaves it stranded at the end of the clause — huset (som) jeg bor i, mannen jeg snakket med — never fronting it as in formal English 'with whom'.
- Relative Pronouns: som and derA2 — Norwegian collapses English's who/whom/which/that into a single relative word, som — invariant for people and things alike, droppable as an object but never as a subject (boka jeg leste vs mannen som kom).