Wishes and Optatives: skulle ønske, bare, måtte, gid

English has a small toolkit for wishes and blessings — I wish I could, if only I had known, may you succeed, long live the king, so be it — that draws on the battered remains of the English subjunctive. Norwegian has almost exactly the same toolkit, built from its own subjunctive remnants. The good news for an English speaker is that the logic transfers: a present wish takes a past-tense verb, a past regret takes a pluperfect, just as in I wish I were / I wish I had been. The only genuinely new pieces are the fixed openers — skulle ønske, bare, måtte, gid — and a few frozen blessings. This page walks through each.

skulle ønske — "I wish"

The everyday workhorse for "I wish" is skulle ønske (literally "should wish"). It is followed by a clause whose verb is backshifted into the preterite (simple past) for a present wish, or the pluskvamperfektum (pluperfect) for a past regret. (Spelling: ønske uses ø — oenske and onske are both wrong.)

For a present counterfactual wish — something you want to be true now but isn't — use the preterite:

For a past regret — something you wish had gone differently — use the pluskvamperfektum (hadde + past participle):

This is the exact tense logic of English. I wish I could uses a past-form could for a present wish; I wish I had known uses a pluperfect for a past regret. Norwegian does the same: present wish → preterite (kunne, hadde, var), past regret → pluperfect (hadde visst, hadde sagt). So the structure ports over cleanly — the only thing to internalise is the fixed phrase skulle ønske itself, and that you do not follow it with a present tense.

The little word at ("that") introducing the wish-clause is optional, just as English drops "that": Jeg skulle ønske (at) jeg var der = "I wish (that) I were there." Both with and without at are fully correct; omitting it is more common in speech.

bare / om bare / gid — the optative "if only"

For a more emotional, exclamatory wish — English "if only!" — Norwegian fronts the wish with bare ("only/just"), om bare ("if only"), or the slightly more literary gid ("would that / if only"). The clause again takes the counterfactual tense: preterite for a present wish, pluperfect for a past one.

A few notes. bare literally means "only/just," and you will already know it from its everyday senses (Jeg vil bare ha vann = "I only want water"); in the optative use it carries the whole "if only" emotion by itself. om bare spells the conditional out — om is "if" — and is interchangeable with bare jeg for the wish reading. gid is a frozen optative particle (historically "God grant that"), now firmly (literary) or elevated; you will meet it in fiction, song lyrics, and heightened speech far more than in casual conversation, where bare dominates.

måtte + subject + infinitive — "may you …"

To pronounce a blessing or hope for someone — English "may you …" — Norwegian uses the modal måtte in a special optative construction: måtte + subject + bare infinitive, often fronted to the start of the sentence. This måtte is not the obligation "must"; it is the wish "may."

Notice the word order: måtte comes first, then the subject (du, det, han), then the infinitive (lykkes, gå, hvile). This fronted, subject-after-verb shape is what signals the optative — it is not a yes/no question, even though it looks inverted, but a wish. The register is (formal) to (literary/solemn): toasts, well-wishes, blessings, eulogies. In casual speech you would more often say Jeg håper du lykkes ("I hope you succeed"); Måtte du lykkes is the elevated, heartfelt register.

This matches English "may you succeed" precisely — same inverted, fronted shape (may + subject + verb), same solemn register. The new piece is only the choice of måtte as the optative modal.

Leve kongen! / Lenge leve … — the frozen hortative

The toast and acclamation "long live …!" is a frozen optative in Norwegian, surviving only in a couple of fixed shapes:

Here leve is the bare infinitive/old subjunctive of å leve ("to live"), placed first, before its subject (kongen, brudeparet). This verb-initial order is the last living trace of a true optative subjunctive in Norwegian; you cannot generate it productively, you simply use the set phrases. Leve kongen! is the classic monarchic cheer; Lenge leve … ("long live …") extends it to anything you want to toast. It maps one-to-one onto English "long live the king," which is itself a frozen subjunctive ("live" not "lives"). Both languages preserve the optative only in this ceremonial slot.

Tenk om … — "imagine if / what if"

To muse on a hypothetical — wistful, hopeful, or anxious — Norwegian uses Tenk om … (literally "think if"), English "imagine if / what if / just think if." It takes the counterfactual tense, like the other wishes:

Tenk is the imperative of å tenke ("to think"); om is "if." Together they invite the listener into a daydream or a worried what-if. The tense rule is identical to the wishes: preterite for a present-tense fantasy (Tenk om vi vant — "imagine if we won/were to win"), pluperfect for a past one (Tenk om han hadde sagt ja). English "imagine if we won" / "imagine if he had said yes" behaves the same way.

Det får så være — "so be it"

A useful frozen optative of resignation is Det får så være — English "so be it / fair enough / then that's how it'll have to be." You say it to accept an outcome you cannot or will not fight:

Literally it is "it gets-to so be" — får ("gets to / may") + så ("so") + være ("be"). It is a fixed idiom; do not try to vary the words. The register is neutral, common in everyday speech, and it conveys a calm, slightly stoic acceptance — the Norwegian shrug of what can you do.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• skulle ønske (with ø) is the idiomatic "I wish." Follow it with the preterite for a present wish (skulle ønske jeg kunne) and the pluperfect for a past regret (skulle ønske jeg hadde visst) — exactly the English logic. The linking at is optional.
• bare / om bare / gid
  • counterfactual tense = "if only" (Bare jeg hadde visst!). gid is (literary); bare rules everyday speech.
• måtte + subject + infinitive = "may you …" — a blessing (Måtte du lykkes!), formal/solemn, verb-first; not the obligation "must."
• Leve kongen! / Lenge leve … is the frozen "long live …" optative — a ceremonial-only relic, used as set phrases.
• Tenk om … = "imagine if / what if," again with the counterfactual tense. Det får så være = "so be it," a fixed idiom of calm resignation.