Reflexive Pronouns: meg, deg, seg | Norwegian Grammar

A reflexive pronoun points the action back at the subject: I wash myself, she enjoys herself. English builds these with -self/-selves added to the object pronoun. Norwegian does something cleaner in the first and second person — it just reuses the ordinary object pronoun — but in the third person it brings in a special word, seg, that has no direct English label. The payoff is precision: han vasker seg and han vasker ham mean genuinely different things, and Norwegian tells them apart with a single pronoun where English needs -self or context. This page covers the reflexive paradigm, the seg vs ham/henne/dem contrast, the emphatic seg selv, and the reciprocal hverandre ("each other").

The paradigm: object forms, then seg

Here is the whole system side by side with the plain object pronouns. Notice that the only place the reflexive differs from the object form is the third person — singular and plural alike.

Person	Object pronoun	Reflexive
I → myself	meg	meg
you (sg.) → yourself	deg	deg
he → himself	ham / han	seg
she → herself	henne	seg
it → itself	den / det	seg
we → ourselves	oss	oss
you (pl.) → yourselves	dere	dere
they → themselves	dem	seg

So meg, deg, oss, dere do double duty — they are both object pronouns and reflexives, and you never have to think about which is which. The work is entirely in the third person: wherever English would say himself, herself, itself, themselves, Norwegian says seg.

Jeg vasker meg hver morgen før jobb.

I wash (myself) every morning before work. (1st person → 'meg')

Du må skynde deg, bussen går snart!

You'd better hurry (up), the bus is leaving soon! (2nd person → 'deg')

Barna kledde på seg og løp ut.

The children got dressed and ran outside. (3rd plural → 'seg', not 'dem')

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The reflexive equals the object pronoun in 1st and 2nd person (meg, deg, oss, dere). Only the 3rd person breaks away to seg — and it does so for he, she, it, and they alike. One word covers all of them.

The contrast that matters: seg vs ham / henne / dem

This is the reason seg exists and the single most useful thing on this page. Compare:

Han ser seg i speilet.

He sees himself in the mirror. (the same man — reflexive 'seg')

Han ser ham i speilet.

He sees him in the mirror — a DIFFERENT man. (non-reflexive 'ham')

In han ser seg, the subject and the object are the same person: he sees his own reflection. In han ser ham, the object ham is someone else: a second man is visible in the mirror. The pronoun alone tells you which. English "he sees him in the mirror" can only mean another man — to express the reflexive reading, English must switch to "himself." Norwegian keeps the verb identical and swaps just the pronoun.

This makes seg a precision tool. Watch how it disambiguates a violent verb, where the difference really matters:

Han skadet seg under treningen.

He hurt himself during training. (he is the one harmed — 'seg')

Han skadet ham under treningen.

He hurt him during training — he injured another person. (different referent — 'ham')

Soldatene forsvarte seg til siste mann.

The soldiers defended themselves to the last man. (subject = object → 'seg')

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If the subject and the object are the same person in the 3rd person, use seg; if they are different people, use ham / henne / den / det / dem. This single choice does the job English does with the -self ending.

Emphatic seg selv (and meg selv, deg selv)

Adding selv ("self") after the reflexive intensifies it — "his very self," "no one but himself." You reach for seg selv when you want to stress that the action really did fall on the subject and not on anyone else, often in a contrast.

Hun tenker bare på seg selv.

She only thinks about herself. (emphatic — nobody but her)

Du må være ærlig med deg selv.

You have to be honest with yourself. ('deg selv', 2nd person emphatic)

Han klarte det helt selv — han stolte på seg selv.

He managed it completely on his own — he trusted himself. (contrastive 'seg selv')

Plain seg and emphatic seg selv are not always interchangeable. Many verbs are simply reflexive by nature — vaske seg (wash up), skynde seg (hurry), glede seg (look forward) — and there the bare seg is normal; adding selv would sound odd or change the emphasis. Reserve seg selv for when the "self, not another" contrast is genuinely the point. Those lexically reflexive verbs are catalogued on the reflexive verbs page.

Vi gleder oss til ferien.

We're looking forward to the holiday. (fixed reflexive verb 'glede seg' — bare 'oss', no 'selv')

Reciprocal: hverandre (each other)

There is one more pronoun in this family. When two or more people do something to one another, Norwegian uses hverandre ("each other / one another") — not seg. The difference is direction: seg turns the action back on the same subject, while hverandre sends it across the members of a plural subject.

De møttes og klemte hverandre lenge.

They met and hugged each other for a long time. (mutual → 'hverandre')

Vi hjelper hverandre med leksene.

We help each other with the homework. (reciprocal — me to you, you to me)

Compare the two readings of a plural subject directly:

Lagkameratene vasket seg etter kampen.

The teammates washed (themselves) after the match. (each washed his own body → 'seg')

Lagkameratene dyttet hverandre på spøk.

The teammates pushed each other as a joke. (action goes between them → 'hverandre')

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Seg = back on the same person(s); hverandre = across to one another. "They looked at themselves" (each in a mirror) is seg; "they looked at each other" is hverandre.

Common Mistakes

Using ham / henne / dem for the 3rd-person reflexive. The biggest error — English has no dedicated reflexive object, so learners reuse the plain object pronoun and accidentally say "himself" means "another man."

❌ Han skadet ham da han falt.

Incorrect (or means he hurt another man) — reflexive needs 'seg': 'Han skadet seg'.

✅ Han skadet seg da han falt.

He hurt himself when he fell.

Using seg in the 1st or 2nd person. Seg is 3rd-person only; "I/you/we" take the object forms.

❌ Jeg må skynde seg.

Incorrect — 1st person takes 'meg': 'Jeg må skynde meg'.

✅ Jeg må skynde meg.

I have to hurry.

Confusing seg with hverandre. Using the reflexive where the meaning is "each other," or vice versa.

❌ De kysset seg på togstasjonen.

Wrong meaning — 'each other' needs 'hverandre': 'De kysset hverandre'.

✅ De kysset hverandre på togstasjonen.

They kissed each other at the train station.

Spelling seg as 'sei' or 'seig'. It is seg, with -eg (the g is silent, but it is written).

❌ Hun satte sei ned.

Misspelling — it's 'seg': 'Hun satte seg ned'.

✅ Hun satte seg ned.

She sat down.

Adding selv where the verb is already reflexive. Fixed reflexive verbs take bare seg/meg/oss; tacking on selv sounds wrong.

❌ Vi gleder oss selv til sommeren.

Unnatural — the verb 'glede seg' takes bare reflexive: 'Vi gleder oss til sommeren'.

✅ Vi gleder oss til sommeren.

We're looking forward to the summer.

Key Takeaways

Reflexives = object pronouns in 1st/2nd person (meg, deg, oss, dere); the 3rd person — he, she, it, they — all use seg.
seg vs ham/henne/dem disambiguates reference: han vasker seg (himself) vs han vasker ham (another man) — Norwegian's pronoun does what English's -self does.
seg selv is the emphatic "self, no one else"; bare seg suits the many fixed reflexive verbs (skynde seg, glede seg).
hverandre = "each other," sending the action across a plural subject, the opposite direction from seg.
Write it seg — -eg, silent g.

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