Ordinal Numbers

Ordinal numbers tell you position in a sequence — first, second, third, twentieth — rather than how many. Norwegian ordinals matter far beyond ranking races: they are how you say dates (den 17. mai), floors of a building (andre etasje), and "for the third time" (for tredje gang). The good news is that the system mirrors English closely: the low ones are irregular oddities you simply memorise (første, like "first"), and from there on a tidy suffix takes over. This page covers the forms, the all-important definite-form behaviour, and the little period that turns a figure into an ordinal.

The low ordinals are suppletive

Just as English does not build "first" from "one" or "second" from "two," Norwegian replaces its lowest ordinals with stand-alone words. These three are pure vocabulary — there is no formula that produces them from the cardinals én, to, tre.

Andre is the everyday word for "second." You will also meet annen (and its neuter annet, plural andre), an older inflected form that survives in fixed expressions — for det annet "secondly," annenhver dag "every other day," annen verdenskrig "the Second World War." Treat andre as your default and recognise annen when it appears (slightly formal/literary).

From "fifth" up: the regular pattern

Once past the suppletive low ones, ordinals are formed with a predictable suffix — -ende or -te depending on the number. The pattern echoes the cardinal stem the way English -th does.

A few forms deserve a flag. Sjette (6th) and sjuende (7th) both begin with the sj-cluster — do not write them with a plain s. For "seventh" you may also see syvende, the traditional form matching the older cardinal syv; sjuende and syvende are both correct, just as sju and syv are. And note that the teens take -ende (trettende, fjortende, femtende, sekstende, syttende, attende, nittende), each built on the cardinal teen.

Building the tens and beyond

For round tens, the ordinal is the cardinal plus -ende: tjuende (20th), trettiende (30th), førtiende (40th), femtiende (50th), and so on through nittiende (90th). For compounds like 21st or 35th, only the final element becomes an ordinal — the tens stays cardinal — exactly as in English "twenty-first."

Notice that in tjueførste the irregular første resurfaces as the final element — the suppletion is not just for the bare ordinal but for any compound ending in "one." The same goes for tjueandre and trettiandre. "Hundredth" has its own slightly irregular shape, hundrede, and "thousandth" is tusende.

Ordinals take the definite adjective form

Here is the point textbooks rush past. A Norwegian ordinal behaves like an adjective, and adjectives in a definite noun phrase take the definite (weak) -e form together with a preceding article. So "the first" is not bare første floating alone — it pairs with den / det / de:

• den første dagen (the first day — masculine/feminine)
• det første huset (the first house — neuter)
• de første dagene (the first days — plural)

The ordinal itself already ends in -e in most forms, so you rarely see a visible change, but the article is obligatory when the phrase is definite. This is where English speakers stumble: English says "first time" with no article in some idioms, and learners drop the Norwegian den by analogy.

There is one common article-less idiom worth isolating: for første gang, for andre gang, for tredje gang ("for the first/second/third time"). Here the fixed prepositional phrase drops the article. So Norwegian keeps both den første gangen (the first time, as a definite noun) and for første gang (for the first time, idiomatic) — learn the pair together.

Ordinals in figures: the period

In writing, Norwegian marks an ordinal in digits with a period after the numeral — a convention shared with German and the other Scandinavian languages, and unlike English's st/nd/rd/th superscripts.

• 1. = første
• 3. = tredje
• 17. = syttende
• 21. = tjueførste

So 17. mai is read syttende mai and means "the 17th of May." A finishing position is written 3. plass ("3rd place"). This period is genuinely part of the orthography — leaving it off (writing "17 mai") changes a date into a bare cardinal and reads as an error.

Common Mistakes

Regularising the low ordinals. English does not say "oneth," and Norwegian does not say énte — the lowest ordinals are suppletive words.

Dropping the definite article in a definite phrase. English allows "the first day," but learners forget the Norwegian den.

Forgetting the period in figures. A date or rank written in digits takes a period, not the English -th.

Writing sjette / sjuende with a plain s. The sj-cluster is part of the spelling.

Key Takeaways

• Første, andre, tredje, fjerde are suppletive — memorise them like English first/second/third/fourth.
• From "fifth" up, ordinals are regular: -te or -ende on the cardinal stem (femte, sjuende, tiende, trettende, tjuende).
• In compounds, only the last element becomes ordinal: tjueførste, trettifemte.
• A definite ordinal phrase needs den / det / de plus a definite noun: den første gangen — but the idiom for første gang drops the article.
• In figures, an ordinal takes a period: 1. = første, 17. = syttende, 3. plass.