There are dozens of ways to say "very" in Norwegian — veldig, svært, temmelig, helt, sterkt, dypt, høyst, kraftig, sykt, dritt, kjempe- — and the catch is that they are not interchangeable. You strongly recommend (sterkt anbefale) but you are deeply grateful (dypt takknemlig); you cannot swap them and stay natural. Some intensifiers are locked to one partner so tightly that the pair is a fossil (splitter ny "brand new"). And the intensifier you pick does a second job on top of grading: it signals register. Sykt bra and dypt rystet both mean roughly "very [adjective]", but one is teenage slang and the other belongs in a news report. This page covers which intensifier each adjective demands, and what each intensifier reveals about who you are and how seriously you mean it. (For the augmentative prefixes like kjempe- and super- attached directly to the word, see Diminutives and Intensifying Prefixes; for the grading adverbs as a system, see Degree Adverbs.)
The neutral all-purpose intensifiers
Four intensifiers are register-neutral and combine with almost anything: veldig (very), svært (very — a touch more formal/written), temmelig (fairly/rather) and ganske (quite/fairly). These are your safe defaults when no special collocation applies. Helt ("completely") is also extremely common but means "fully/totally", so it pairs with adjectives that have a logical endpoint (helt sikker "completely sure", helt enig "completely agree", helt ferdig "completely finished") rather than gradable ones.
| Intensifier | Force | Register | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| veldig | very | neutral | veldig glad, veldig sliten |
| svært | very | neutral–written | svært viktig, svært sjelden |
| ganske / temmelig | fairly, rather | neutral | ganske bra, temmelig sikker |
| helt | completely, totally | neutral | helt enig, helt sikker, helt ny |
Jeg er veldig glad for at du kom.
I'm very glad you came. — veldig, the neutral default with feelings.
Det er svært viktig at alle leverer i tide.
It's very important that everyone submits on time. — svært, slightly more formal/written than veldig.
Jeg er helt enig med deg.
I completely agree with you. — helt enig: agreement takes helt ('completely'), NOT veldig.
The last example is a classic trap. English says I completely agree, and the natural-but-wrong Norwegian is veldig enig. Agreement is binary-ish — you either agree or you don't — so it takes helt ("completely"), not veldig ("very").
The fixed adverb + adjective/verb pairs
Beyond the neutral defaults, a set of intensifiers is collocationally locked to particular partners. These carry a precise, often emphatic shade, and swapping them sounds wrong even though the grammar is fine.
| Collocation | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| sterkt anbefale | strongly recommend | not 'veldig anbefale' |
| dypt takknemlig / rørt | deeply grateful / moved | dypt = formal, heartfelt |
| høyst sannsynlig | highly likely | høyst = 'highly', formal |
| inderlig håpe | sincerely hope | literary/emphatic |
| grundig undersøke | thoroughly investigate | grundig = 'thorough(ly)' |
| kraftig økning / fall | sharp increase / drop | kraftig with quantities |
| bittert skuffet | bitterly disappointed | bittert with letdowns |
| pinlig nøyaktig | painstakingly precise | pinlig 'embarrassingly' → 'meticulously' |
Jeg vil sterkt anbefale at dere booker billettene nå.
I'd strongly recommend you book the tickets now. — sterkt anbefale; 'veldig anbefale' is wrong. (formal)
Vi er dypt takknemlige for all hjelpen vi har fått.
We're deeply grateful for all the help we've received. — dypt takknemlig, heartfelt/formal.
Det er høyst sannsynlig at møtet blir utsatt.
It's highly likely the meeting will be postponed. — høyst sannsynlig. (formal)
Prisene har hatt en kraftig økning det siste året.
Prices have seen a sharp increase over the past year. — kraftig with quantities/changes. (newspaper register)
Notice that several of these are register-marked toward the formal/written end: dypt, høyst, inderlig, bittert. You will meet them in newspapers, speeches and elevated prose, and using them in casual chat sounds theatrical — which is sometimes exactly the effect you want.
Fossilised intensifiers: splitter ny and friends
A few intensifiers survive only inside one fixed expression. They are no longer productive — you cannot use them anywhere else — so you must learn the whole phrase as a single lexical item. The clearest case is splitter ny ("brand new"): splitter means nothing on its own in modern Norwegian; it exists only to intensify ny. The same goes for ravende gal ("raving mad"), where ravende survives essentially only before gal, and for pottesur ("thoroughly sulky") and døddrukken ("dead drunk"), where the first element (potte-, død-) is a bound intensifier you cannot detach and reuse.
| Fossil | English | Status |
|---|---|---|
| splitter ny | brand new | splitter only here |
| døddrukken | dead drunk | informal; død- as intensifier |
| knall(rød), knallhard | bright red, rock-hard | knall- colloquial intensifier |
| steike(ndes) god | amazingly good | regional/colloquial |
Han kjøpte en splitter ny sykkel og syklet den i grøfta samme dag.
He bought a brand-new bike and rode it into the ditch the same day. — splitter ny, a frozen unit.
Suppa var steike god, du må gi meg oppskriften.
The soup was amazingly good, you have to give me the recipe. — steike(ndes) god, colloquial/regional.
The slang intensifiers: sykt, dritt, kjempe-
At the casual end, Norwegian has a productive set of youth-slang intensifiers. sykt ("sickly" → "insanely") and dritt- ("crap-" → "extremely") are strong markers of informal, often teenage speech. kjempe- ("giant-") is colloquial but much milder and broadly acceptable in everyday adult speech. These attach to positive and negative adjectives and carry no literal meaning — sykt bra is purely "really good", with no illness implied.
| Intensifier | Force | Register | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| kjempe- | really, super | colloquial, broad | kjempefin, kjempeglad |
| sykt | insanely | youth slang | sykt kult, sykt dyrt |
| dritt- / drit- | extremely (vulgar-tinged) | youth slang, coarse | dritkald, dritgøy |
| helt sykt / helt rått | totally insane/awesome | youth slang | Det var helt rått! |
Den nye telefonen er sykt dyr, men sykt bra.
The new phone is insanely expensive, but insanely good. — sykt, youth slang for 'very'. (informal/slang)
Det var kjempegøy å se deg igjen!
It was really fun to see you again! — kjempe-, colloquial but broadly acceptable. (informal)
Det er dritkaldt ute, ta på deg lue.
It's freezing cold out, put a hat on. — dritt- intensifier, coarse/youth. (informal/coarse)
Why the pairing is not free
Why can't you just put veldig in front of everything? You almost can — and that is the safe fallback when you don't know the collocation. But native speakers reach for the specific intensifier, and three things are lost when you default to veldig. First, precision: kraftig økning says "sharp, steep increase" in a way veldig stor økning does not. Second, register: the chosen intensifier signals formality, so dypt takknemlig reads as sincere and serious where veldig takknemlig reads as ordinary. Third, idiomaticity: some pairs are simply expected, and the wrong one (even a neutral one) sounds foreign — veldig enig is the giveaway of a non-native speaker where every Norwegian says helt enig. The collocation therefore carries grammatical, semantic and social information at once, which is why it is worth learning the pairs rather than relying on a single all-purpose "very".
Common Mistakes
Using veldig where the adjective demands helt — the most common single error:
❌ Jeg er veldig enig med deg.
Wrong — agreement takes helt ('completely'), not veldig ('very').
✅ Jeg er helt enig med deg.
I completely agree with you. — helt enig. Likewise helt sikker, helt ferdig.
Translating "strongly/highly" with veldig instead of the locked partner:
❌ Jeg vil veldig anbefale denne boka.
Wrong — 'strongly recommend' is sterkt anbefale, not 'veldig anbefale'.
✅ Jeg vil sterkt anbefale denne boka.
I'd strongly recommend this book. — sterkt anbefale.
Swapping a register-marked intensifier into the wrong setting:
❌ Vi er sykt takknemlige for bidraget deres. (in a formal thank-you letter)
Register clash — sykt is youth slang and jars in a formal context.
✅ Vi er dypt takknemlige for bidraget deres.
We are deeply grateful for your contribution. — dypt, formal/heartfelt. (formal)
Trying to reuse a fossilised intensifier productively:
❌ Det var en splitter god middag.
Wrong — splitter only intensifies ny ('splitter ny'); it can't modify other adjectives.
✅ Det var en kjempegod middag.
It was a really good dinner. — use a productive intensifier like kjempe-.
Calquing English "very much" as veldig mye with a verb where Norwegian wants a single adverb:
❌ Jeg liker det veldig mye.
Clumsy — sounds like a literal 'very much'. Norwegian prefers veldig godt or kjempegodt with like.
✅ Jeg liker det veldig godt.
I like it very much. — like + godt; 'veldig mye' with liker is non-idiomatic.
Key Takeaways
- Intensifiers are not interchangeable: agreement takes helt (helt enig), recommending takes sterkt (sterkt anbefale), gratitude takes dypt (dypt takknemlig).
- veldig / svært / ganske / temmelig are the neutral all-purpose defaults; reach for them only when no specific collocation applies.
- The intensifier signals register: dypt / høyst / inderlig (formal), kjempe- (colloquial-broad), sykt / dritt- (youth slang).
- Some intensifiers are fossils locked to one partner — splitter ny — and cannot be reused elsewhere.
- Default to veldig when unsure, but learn the specific pair to gain precision, idiomaticity and the right social signal.
Now practice Norwegian
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Collocations: OverviewB1 — Why you should learn Norwegian in chunks, not single words — collocations are the fixed partnerships native speakers actually use (ta en avgjørelse 'make a decision', gjøre lekser 'do homework', ha rett 'be right', få vite 'get to know'), and the 'right' light verb is very often not the English one: where English MAKES a decision, Norwegian TAKES it (ta en avgjørelse), so these pairings must be memorised as units.
- Light-Verb Collocations: ta, gjøre, ha, få, giB2 — The high-frequency light-verb collocations of Norwegian, drilled verb by verb — ta en avgjørelse (make a decision), gjøre et forsøk (make an attempt), ha rett (be right), få vite (find out), gi beskjed (let know) — with the English mismatches that make the wrong verb sound natural-but-wrong.
- Diminutives and Intensifying PrefixesB2 — Norwegian has no productive diminutive suffix — it sizes things down with små-/lille compounds and the affectionate -is and -en, and sizes them UP with intensifier prefixes kjempe-, super-, mega-, kanon-, dritt- and adverbs like skikkelig and sinnssykt.
- Degree Adverbs: veldig, ganske, altfor, littA2 — The Norwegian intensity scale — veldig, ganske, litt, så, helt, nesten — and the crucial for/altfor 'too much' words, plus why mye is the wrong choice for 'very'.
- Slang and Youth LanguageB2 — Colloquial and youth Norwegian — intensifiers like sykt and dritt-, the -is suffix, English-heavy speech, and the urban multiethnolect (kebabnorsk) with its own grammar and the wallah/baa markers.