When you put a modal verb together with the perfect, Norwegian lets you talk about modality in the past: what must have happened, what someone should have done, what could have been. The good news for an English speaker is that the core pattern — modal + ha + supine — lines up with English "must/should/could have done" almost word for word. Må ha glemt = "must have forgotten." The two things to get right are the word order inside the cluster and the supine forms of the modals themselves (måttet, kunnet, villet, skullet, burdet), which you need for the second, rarer pattern. This page covers both.
Pattern 1: modal + ha + supine ("must have done")
This is the everyday one. You keep the modal in its normal present or preterite form and follow it with ha + the supine of the main verb. The supine is the har-form (perfect participle): glemt, reist, sagt, kommet.
| Modal |
| Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| må | må ha glemt | must have forgotten |
| kan | kan ha reist | may / might have left |
| burde | burde ha sagt fra | should have spoken up |
| skulle | skulle ha kommet | should have come / was supposed to have come |
| kunne | kunne ha hjulpet | could have helped |
| ville | ville ha gjort det | would have done it |
The order is rigid: modal first, then ha, then the supine last. Norwegian never splits ha from its supine and never puts ha before the modal.
Epistemic: må ha / kan ha (deduction about the past)
Present-tense må and kan here are epistemic — they express how certain you are about something that already happened. må ha = a confident deduction ("must have"); kan ha = a guarded possibility ("may/might have").
Jeg må ha glemt nøklene på jobben — de er ikke i lomma.
I must have left my keys at work — they're not in my pocket.
Han kan ha reist allerede; bilen står ikke i garasjen.
He may have already left; the car isn't in the garage.
Det må ha skjedd noe — hun svarer ikke.
Something must have happened — she's not answering.
That last one, det må ha skjedd noe, is the natural Norwegian for "something must have happened" — a deduction from evidence, identical in logic to English.
Counterfactual / regret: burde ha, skulle ha, kunne ha
Here is the structural insight worth holding onto: the preterite modal (burde, skulle, kunne, ville) plus ha + supine carries the counterfactual meaning — the regret, the missed opportunity, the "if only." The preterite form is doing the same job it does in conditionals: stepping back from reality.
Du burde ha sagt fra tidligere — nå er det for sent.
You should have said something earlier — now it's too late.
Jeg skulle ha kommet, men jeg ble syk.
I should have come / I was going to come, but I got sick.
Vi kunne ha rukket toget hvis vi hadde løpt.
We could have caught the train if we'd run.
Notice how skulle ha kommet covers two English shades at once — "I should have come" (regret) and "I was supposed to have come" (an arrangement that didn't happen). Context decides which; the form is the same.
ha is often dropped in speech
In relaxed spoken Norwegian, the ha is frequently left out, especially after skulle, burde and kunne: Du burde sagt fra, Jeg skulle kommet. This is heard constantly and is fully natural in conversation, though careful writing keeps the ha.
Du burde sagt det med en gang.
You should've said so right away. (spoken — ha dropped)
Jeg skulle ringt deg i går, men jeg glemte det.
I should've called you yesterday, but I forgot. (informal)
For learners, the safe rule is: keep ha in writing and when you want to be clear; recognise the dropped version when you hear it. Do not drop ha after må and kan in their epistemic sense — må ha glemt keeps its ha.
Pattern 2: har / hadde + modal supine ("I've had to...")
The second pattern is the mirror image: the perfect of the modal itself. Here har or hadde comes first, and the modal goes into its supine form. This is how you say "I have had to," "she had wanted to," and so on — the modal is the thing being placed in the perfect.
| Modal | Supine | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| måtte | måttet | har måttet jobbe | have had to work |
| kunne | kunnet | har kunnet svømme | have been able to swim |
| ville | villet | hadde villet komme | had wanted to come |
| skulle | skullet | har skullet ringe | have been meaning to call |
| burde | burdet | har burdet gjøre det | ought to have done it (rare) |
These supine forms — måttet, kunnet, villet, skullet, burdet — are worth memorising; they are irregular-looking and learners rarely meet them. The order is har/hadde + modal-supine + bare infinitive of the main verb (no å): har måttet jobbe.
Jeg har måttet jobbe hver helg denne måneden.
I've had to work every weekend this month.
Hun har aldri kunnet svømme.
She has never been able to swim.
Vi hadde villet bli lenger, men flyet gikk.
We would have liked to stay longer, but the plane was leaving.
By far the most common of these is har/hadde måttet ("have/had had to"). Har kunnet is also frequent. Har skullet and har burdet exist but are rare and a touch clunky; speakers usually rephrase. Don't force them.
Etter ulykken har han måttet lære å gå på nytt.
After the accident he has had to learn to walk again.
English vs Norwegian: where they line up and where they don't
For Pattern 1, the mapping is beautifully tight: må ha glemt = "must have forgotten", burde ha visst = "should have known", kunne ha hjulpet = "could have helped". The supine sits at the end in both languages. The trap is adding extra "to" or rearranging: English "have to have done" tempts learners into wrong orders.
For Pattern 2, English is messier. "I've had to work" maps to har måttet jobbe, but English uses the suppletive "had to" while Norwegian has a clean supine måttet. And English cannot perfect "must" or "should" at all ("I have musted" is impossible), so where English reaches for "had to / been able to / been meaning to", Norwegian simply puts the modal in the supine.
Du burde ha visst bedre.
You should have known better.
Det kan ha vært en misforståelse.
It may have been a misunderstanding.
Common Mistakes
The classic English-speaker errors here are word order and dropping ha in the wrong place.
❌ Jeg skulle sagt ha det.
Incorrect word order — ha comes before the supine: skulle ha sagt.
✅ Jeg skulle ha sagt det.
I should have said it.
❌ Du burde sagt fra, men du måtte ha det glemt.
Tangled order — keep it modal + ha + supine: du måtte ha glemt det.
✅ Du burde ha sagt fra, men du må ha glemt det.
You should have spoken up, but you must have forgotten.
❌ Han må glemt nøklene.
Incomplete — the past deduction needs ha: må ha glemt.
✅ Han må ha glemt nøklene.
He must have forgotten the keys.
❌ Jeg har måtte jobbe hele helga.
Incorrect — the perfect needs the supine måttet, not the preterite måtte.
✅ Jeg har måttet jobbe hele helga.
I've had to work the whole weekend.
❌ Hun har kunne svømme siden hun var fem.
Incorrect — supine of kunne is kunnet: har kunnet svømme.
✅ Hun har kunnet svømme siden hun var fem.
She's been able to swim since she was five.
Key Takeaways
- Pattern 1 — modal + ha + supine = past modality: må ha glemt (must have), kan ha reist (may have), burde/skulle/kunne ha … (should/would/could have).
- Present modal + ha = deduction (må ha, kan ha); preterite modal + ha = regret/counterfactual (burde ha, skulle ha).
- Order is rigid: modal — ha — supine, with the supine last. Never split ha from its supine.
- In speech, ha is often dropped after skulle/burde/kunne (du burde sagt fra) — but keep it after må/kan and in writing.
- Pattern 2 — har/hadde + modal supine perfects the modal itself: har måttet jobbe (have had to work), har kunnet svømme. Learn the supines: måttet, kunnet, villet, skullet, burdet.
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Modal Verbs: OverviewA2 — The six core Norwegian modals (kan, vil, skal, må, bør, få), their endingless present forms, their preterites, and the bare infinitive they govern — no å.
- The Conditional: ville/skulle + InfinitiveB1 — How Norwegian expresses English 'would' with the preterite modals ville and skulle, including the ville + infinitive vs ville + supine flexibility English lacks.
- The Present Perfect: har + supineA2 — How to build the Norwegian present perfect with har plus the invariant supine — and why Norwegian uses har for every verb, including come, go and be.
- The Pluperfect: hadde + supineB1 — The pluperfect (past perfect) — hadde + supine for an action completed before another past action — in narrative, reported speech, and counterfactual conditionals, with English 'had + participle' as your guide.