flytte ("to move") is the verb you reach for whenever something changes location — a piece of furniture, a meeting on the calendar, or a whole household relocating to a new town. It is a regular weak Class 1 verb, so once you know its endings you know the whole paradigm, but it earns its place on a grammar page because of what surrounds it: a reflexive use (flytte seg "move out of the way"), a cluster of particle phrases (flytte inn, flytte ut, flytte sammen), and a near-synonym, bevege, that English speakers constantly confuse with it.
Conjugation
Class: weak, Class 1 (-et / -et). Auxiliary: ha.
| Tense / mood | Norwegian | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitiv | å flytte | to move |
| Presens | flytter | move(s), am/is/are moving |
| Preteritum | flyttet | moved |
| Perfektum | har flyttet | have/has moved |
| Pluskvamperfektum | hadde flyttet | had moved |
| Futurum | skal/vil flytte | will move |
| Imperativ | flytt! | move! |
| Presens partisipp | flyttende | moving (adjective) |
The Class 1 pattern
Norwegian sorts its regular (weak) verbs by what they add to the stem. flytte belongs to Class 1, the class that adds -et in the preterite and -et in the supine. Because those two endings are the same, you only ever have one past form to remember.
Vi flytter til Bergen til sommeren.
We're moving to Bergen this summer.
De flyttet sofaen ut på balkongen i går.
They moved the sofa out onto the balcony yesterday.
Jeg har flyttet tre ganger på fem år.
I've moved three times in five years.
Note the first sentence: when flytte means "relocate, move house," the destination is introduced with til ("to"). flytte til Bergen = "move to Bergen." This til is fixed; you cannot drop it, and you should not replace it with i or på.
flytte vs bevege — the big English-speaker trap
English has one verb, move, for two quite different ideas, and Norwegian splits them:
- flytte = move something from one place to another — change its location. Flytt bilen! = "Move the car (somewhere else)."
- bevege = move in the sense of make a motion, stir, budge — change position or wiggle, without necessarily relocating. Beveg armen! = "Move your arm."
So a chess piece you flytter (relocate to a new square), but a muscle you beveger (set in motion). If you can answer "moved to where?", you want flytte; if the point is just movement or motion itself, you want bevege.
Hesten flyttet seg ikke da bilen kjørte forbi.
The horse didn't move (out of the way) when the car drove past.
Hun lå helt stille og beveget seg ikke.
She lay completely still and didn't move (a muscle).
flytte seg — the reflexive
When a person gets out of the way, Norwegian uses the reflexive flytte seg ("move oneself"). English just says "move" with no object — Can you move? — but Norwegian almost always wants the reflexive pronoun here, agreeing with the subject: flytte deg, flytte dere, flytte oss.
Kan du flytte deg litt? Jeg ser ikke skjermen.
Can you move over a bit? I can't see the screen.
Alle flyttet seg da brannbilen kom.
Everyone moved aside when the fire engine came.
A close relative is flytte på seg ("budge, shift position"), often used in the negative to mean "won't budge": Han nekter å flytte på seg — "He refuses to budge." And flytte på + an object means "shift, rearrange" something a little: flytte på møblene = "move the furniture around."
flytte with particles: inn, ut, sammen
A whole family of everyday expressions pairs flytte with a direction particle. These are written as two words — the particle is not glued to the verb — and the particle carries the stress:
- flytte inn — move in (to a home)
- flytte ut — move out
- flytte sammen — move in together (as a couple)
- flytte hjem — move back home / move home
Vi flyttet inn i den nye leiligheten forrige uke.
We moved into the new flat last week.
Sønnen deres har flyttet ut og bor for seg selv nå.
Their son has moved out and lives on his own now.
Skal dere flytte sammen, eller? Det var jo nytt!
Are you two moving in together? Well, that's news!
Common Mistakes
❌ Vi flyttte til Oslo i fjor.
Incorrect — flytte has one double-t cluster; the preterite is flyttet, not flyttte
✅ Vi flyttet til Oslo i fjor.
We moved to Oslo last year.
❌ Kan du flytte litt?
Incorrect — when a person moves aside, use the reflexive flytte seg
✅ Kan du flytte deg litt?
Can you move over a bit?
❌ Beveg bilen, den står foran porten.
Incorrect — relocating a thing is flytte, not bevege
✅ Flytt bilen, den står foran porten.
Move the car, it's in front of the gate.
❌ De har flytte inn i huset.
Incorrect — after har you need the supine flyttet, not the infinitive
✅ De har flyttet inn i huset.
They've moved into the house.
Key Takeaways
- flytte / flytter / flyttet / har flyttet / flytt! — regular weak Class 1; preterite and supine are identical (flyttet).
- flytte = change an object's location ("move to where?"); bevege = make a motion or stir. Don't blur them as English does.
- A person who steps aside uses the reflexive flytte seg (flytte deg / dere / oss).
- Relocate to a place with flytte til; learn the particle phrases flytte inn / ut / sammen / hjem as two-word units.
Now practice Norwegian
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Weak Class 1: -et / -a (kaste)A2 — The largest weak verb class — preterite and supine both in -et (kaste → kastet → har kastet) — and the fully correct colloquial -a variant (kasta, snakka).
- Reflexive Verbs and segA2 — How Norwegian reflexive verbs work — the meg/deg/seg paradigm, true reflexives like vaske seg, and the many inherently reflexive verbs (glede seg, føle seg) English has no equivalent for.
- Verb Reference: How to Use These TablesA2 — How to read the Norwegian verb-reference pages — the five principal parts, weak vs strong classes, and the supine (the har-form).
- Prefixed Verbs: be-, for-, an-, unn-B2 — The inseparable, unstressed verb prefixes (mostly Low German) — be- (betale), for- (forstå), an- (anbefale), unn- (unngå), gjen-, mis-, sam- — that fuse to the front of a verb, never separate, and shift its meaning into a more abstract, formal register.