vite ("to know") is one of the very first verbs you need in Norwegian, and one of the few genuinely irregular ones, so it pays to learn it carefully from the start. Its present tense breaks the single most reliable rule in the language — that the present ends in -er — and instead is the bare, ending-less vet. On top of that, English "know" does the work of three different Norwegian verbs, and vite is only one of them: it covers knowing facts, not knowing people or knowing how.
Conjugation
Class: irregular. Auxiliary: ha (as for every Norwegian verb).
| Tense / mood | Norwegian | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitiv | å vite | to know |
| Presens | vet | know(s) |
| Preteritum | visste | knew |
| Perfektum | har visst | have/has known |
| Pluskvamperfektum | hadde visst | had known |
| Futurum | skal/vil vite | will know |
| Imperativ | vit! | know! (rare) |
| Presens partisipp | vitende | knowing (adjective) |
The irregular present: vet
Almost every Norwegian verb forms the present by adding -er (or just -r) to the stem: spise → spiser, bo → bor. vite refuses. Its present is vet — no ending at all. There is no logical reason for this; it is simply one of a tiny handful of irregular presents you memorise individually (alongside the modals kan, vil, skal and a few others). The good news is that there is just one present form for all persons: jeg vet, du vet, han vet, vi vet, de vet — Norwegian verbs never change for person or number, so once you have vet, you have the whole present tense.
Jeg vet ikke — du får spørre læreren.
I don't know — you'll have to ask the teacher.
Vet du hvor han bor? Jeg har glemt adressen.
Do you know where he lives? I've forgotten the address.
Hun vet alltid hva hun skal si.
She always knows what to say.
The past: visste and visst
The preterite is visste and the supine (the form after har/hadde) is visst. The difference between them is a single letter — the preterite has an extra -e — and that one-letter contrast is exactly the kind of thing that trips up learners. Use visste for a completed past ("I knew," "did you know?") and har/hadde visst for the perfect ("I have known," "I had known").
Visste du at de skal flytte til Bergen?
Did you know they're going to move to Bergen?
Jeg har alltid visst at han kom til å lykkes.
I've always known he would succeed.
Hadde jeg bare visst det, ville jeg aldri ha sagt ja.
Had I only known that, I would never have said yes.
vite vs kjenne vs kunne — the three-way split of English "know"
This is the single most important thing on the page. English "know" maps onto three Norwegian verbs, and choosing the wrong one is the most common mistake English speakers make:
| Verb | Use it for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| vite | facts, information, that-clauses | Jeg vet svaret. (I know the answer.) |
| kjenne | people and places — being acquainted | Jeg kjenner henne godt. (I know her well.) |
| kunne | skills, languages — knowing how | Jeg kan norsk. (I know Norwegian.) |
The rule of thumb: vite takes a fact or a clause (vite at..., vite hvor..., vite hvorfor...); kjenne takes a person or place as a direct object; kunne takes a skill or a language. You would never say *jeg vet ham for "I know him" — that has to be jeg kjenner ham. And you would never say *jeg vet norsk for "I know Norwegian" — that is jeg kan norsk. A useful test: if you can rephrase the English as "know that / know where / know why," it is vite; if it is "be acquainted with," it is kjenne; if it is "know how to / be able to," it is kunne.
Jeg vet hvem hun er, men jeg kjenner henne ikke.
I know who she is, but I don't know her (personally).
Han kan tre språk, men han vet ikke hvordan han skal komme seg hjem.
He knows three languages, but he doesn't know how to get home.
Senses and collocations
vite on its own simply means to hold a fact as true. A couple of fixed combinations are worth learning as units:
- vite om — to know about / be aware of something: Jeg visste ikke om møtet. ("I didn't know about the meeting.")
- vite av — to be aware of; the negative ikke vite av seg means to be unconscious. The idiom ikke det jeg vet av means "not that I'm aware of."
- så vidt jeg vet — "as far as I know" (formal: etter det jeg vet), a hedge you'll use constantly.
Så vidt jeg vet, er butikken åpen til klokka ti.
As far as I know, the shop is open until ten.
Visste du om dette? Ingen sa noe til meg.
Did you know about this? Nobody told me anything.
The imperative vit! ("know!", "be aware!") exists but is (formal)/(literary) — you meet it in older or rhetorical prose (Vit at du er elsket — "Know that you are loved"), almost never in everyday speech, where people just say Du skal vite at... instead.
Everyday idioms with vite
vite anchors a handful of high-frequency expressions you'll hear daily, so it's worth meeting them as set phrases rather than decoding them word by word:
- Hvem vet? — "Who knows?", a shrug of uncertainty exactly as in English.
- Du vet — "you know," a discourse filler dropped into casual speech, just like the English tag.
- Det vil si — literally "that wants to say," i.e. "that is to say / in other words" — a fixed connective in writing (formal).
- vite bedre — "know better": Du burde vite bedre. ("You should know better.")
- få vite — "find out / get to know," the inchoative twin of vite: where vite is the state of knowing, få vite is the event of coming to know it. Når fikk du vite det? ("When did you find out?")
That last pair is a real insight: Norwegian neatly separates the state (vite — to know) from the becoming (få vite — to come to know, find out). English blurs both into "know" or reaches for "find out"; Norwegian keeps the contrast tidy with få.
Hvem vet — kanskje det blir sol i morgen likevel.
Who knows — maybe it'll be sunny tomorrow after all.
Jeg fikk vite det først i går, ellers hadde jeg ringt deg.
I only found out yesterday, otherwise I'd have called you.
Han burde vite bedre enn å kjøre så fort i tåka.
He should know better than to drive so fast in the fog.
A note on word order with vet
Because vet never changes form, the only thing you adjust around it is word order. In a yes/no question the verb comes first — Vet du...? ("Do you know...?") — with no auxiliary "do," because Norwegian has no equivalent of English do-support. In a statement with a fronted element, the verb stays in second position: Det vet jeg ikke ("That I don't know"). And after the negation, ikke normally follows the verb in a main clause (Jeg vet ikke) but precedes it in a subordinate clause (...fordi jeg ikke vet det).
Det vet jeg faktisk ikke — jeg må sjekke.
That I actually don't know — I'll have to check.
Hun spurte fordi hun ikke visste hvem jeg var.
She asked because she didn't know who I was.
Common Mistakes
❌ Jeg viter ikke svaret.
Incorrect — vite has no -er present; the present is the bare vet
✅ Jeg vet ikke svaret.
I don't know the answer.
❌ Jeg vet ham godt.
Incorrect — knowing a person uses kjenne, not vite
✅ Jeg kjenner ham godt.
I know him well.
❌ Viste du at hun var syk?
Incorrect — that spelling means 'showed' (vise); the preterite of vite is visste, double s + double t
✅ Visste du at hun var syk?
Did you know she was ill?
❌ Jeg har vist det hele tiden.
Incorrect — supine of vite is visst (double s); 'vist' is the supine of vise (show)
✅ Jeg har visst det hele tiden.
I've known it the whole time.
Key Takeaways
- vite / vet / visste / har visst / vit! — irregular; the present is the bare vet, with no ending.
- The past doubles letters: preterite visste (ss + tt), supine visst (ss) — don't confuse them with vise → viste, vist ("show").
- English "know" splits three ways: vite (facts/clauses), kjenne (people/places), kunne (skills/languages).
- Handy units: vite om (know about), så vidt jeg vet (as far as I know).
Now practice Norwegian
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- vite vs kjenne vs kunne: Three Ways to 'Know'A2 — vite knows a fact, kjenne knows a person or place, and kunne knows how to do something or knows a language — English 'know' maps onto three different Norwegian verbs.
- Irregular and Contracted Present FormsA1 — The small set of high-frequency verbs whose present tense breaks the infinitive-plus-r rule — er, har, vet, gjør, sier, får, går — plus the modals, which take no -r at all.
- 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).