A passive normally needs an object to promote: The book was read takes the object of read and makes it the subject. So what happens when a verb has no object — dance, laugh, talk? English simply cannot passivise it. Swedish can. With a dummy Det and the -s passive, Swedish forms an impersonal passive out of an intransitive verb: Det dansades hela natten ("there was dancing all night"). Nobody is named, nothing is promoted — the sentence reports that an activity happened, full stop. This page covers that construction, its everyday rival the man-sentence, and the mechanics of demoting or naming the agent.
The ordinary agentless passive: a reminder
Before the exotic case, the baseline. The everyday Swedish passive is agentless: it promotes the object and drops the doer entirely, because the doer is irrelevant or obvious. The default form is the -s passive (The -s Passive).
Beslutet togs igår.
The decision was taken yesterday. The object 'beslutet' becomes the subject; the agent is simply omitted — nobody needs to know who decided.
Dörrarna låses klockan tio.
The doors are locked at ten. Agentless — the person locking them is irrelevant; the -s passive states the rule.
This is the normal use of the passive in any language: an object exists, you promote it, you leave the agent out. The interesting Swedish move is what it does when there is no object to promote at all.
The impersonal passive of an intransitive verb
Here is the construction English lacks entirely. Take a verb with no object — dansa (dance), skratta (laugh), prata (talk), arbeta (work). It has nothing to promote to subject. Swedish solves this by inserting a dummy Det into the empty subject slot and putting the verb into the -s passive anyway. The result reports that the activity took place, with no logical subject at all — not even an implied one in the grammar.
Det dansades hela natten.
There was dancing all night. (lit. 'It was-danced all night') — a dummy 'Det', the intransitive 'dansa' in the -s passive, and no subject anywhere. The sentence reports the activity itself.
Det skrattades mycket på festen.
There was a lot of laughing at the party. 'skrattas' is the -s passive of intransitive 'skratta' — impossible to render literally in English.
Det arbetades hårt under kriget.
There was hard work going on during the war. (lit. 'It was-worked hard') — the activity of working is asserted impersonally, with no named workers.
Notice what is not there: no subject, no object, no agent. The Det is a pure placeholder filling the V2 subject slot — it is the same dummy Det you meet in weather sentences (Det regnar) and existentials (Det finns...; see Existential Sentences), not the pronoun "it." The verb agrees with nothing because there is nothing to agree with. What the sentence communicates is simply: this kind of activity happened, somewhere, by someone unspecified.
The function is to background the participants completely and foreground the activity as an event. It is excellent for describing an atmosphere, a scene, a period — what was going on rather than who was doing it. Because of that, it leans formal and literary: you meet it in narrative prose, history writing, and reportage far more than in casual chat.
Det festades, sjöngs och dracks långt in på småtimmarna.
There was partying, singing and drinking far into the small hours. A string of impersonal passives painting a scene — pure literary/narrative register.
Det viskades i korridorerna om en kommande nedläggning.
There was whispering in the corridors about a coming shutdown. 'viskades' (whisper, intransitive here) — the impersonal passive reports rumour without naming a source. Journalistic/literary.
The man-construction: the everyday alternative
So how does an ordinary Swede say "there was dancing all night" without sounding like a novel? With man — the generic pronoun "one / you / people / they" (covered fully on The Generic Pronoun man). Man supplies an unspecified human subject and lets the verb stay in the plain active.
Man dansade hela natten.
People danced all night. (lit. 'one danced all night') — 'man' is the generic subject; the verb 'dansade' stays active. This is the neutral, everyday equivalent of 'Det dansades hela natten'.
Man skrattade mycket på festen.
People laughed a lot at the party. The everyday counterpart of the literary 'Det skrattades mycket'.
Förr arbetade man hårt och klagade lite.
In the old days people worked hard and complained little. 'man' carries the generic doer in plain active voice — the conversational way to say it.
The two constructions describe the same situation but differ in register and focus:
| Impersonal passive | man-construction | |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Det + verb-s | man + active verb |
| Subject | none (dummy Det) | generic 'man' |
| Focus | the activity itself | an (unnamed) doer |
| Register | formal / literary | neutral, everyday |
| Example | Det dansades hela natten. | Man dansade hela natten. |
Naming the agent: the av-phrase
When you do want to name the doer in a passive, Swedish adds an av-phrase ("by") — but this only works for an ordinary passive with a promoted object, not for the impersonal passive above (which has no participants to speak of). The default, remember, is to leave the agent out; you add av only when naming the doer carries real information.
Beslutet fattades av styrelsen.
The decision was made by the board. The agent 'styrelsen' is named with 'av' because it matters who decided. Without it: 'Beslutet fattades' — equally grammatical, just agentless.
Tavlan målades av en okänd konstnär på 1600-talet.
The painting was painted by an unknown artist in the 17th century. 'av en okänd konstnär' — the agent is the whole point of the sentence, so it's named.
Compare the two choices directly. The agentless version is the unmarked, neutral one; the av-version is marked, used precisely when the doer is newsworthy:
Boken översattes förra året.
The book was translated last year. Agentless — who translated it is irrelevant here.
Boken översattes av en prisbelönt poet.
The book was translated by an award-winning poet. The 'av'-agent earns its place — that detail is the news.
Why English forces a rephrase
The reason English cannot mirror Det dansades is structural. The English passive is built on promoting an object to subject (read → was read). No object, no passive — was danced is ungrammatical as a standalone clause (*There was danced does not exist). So English must rephrase: "there was dancing" (a noun), "people danced" (an active generic), "everyone danced." Swedish, by contrast, treats the -s passive as an operation on the verb's voice that does not depend on having an object, and patches the empty subject slot with dummy Det. That decoupling — passive voice without object-promotion — is exactly what gives Swedish the impersonal passive.
Det pratades länge om saken innan beslut togs.
There was a long discussion about the matter before a decision was made. 'pratades' (impersonal passive of intransitive 'prata') sits right next to 'togs' (ordinary passive of transitive 'ta') — two different passive jobs in one sentence.
Common Mistakes
❌ Det dansades hela natten av oss. (trying to add an agent)
Incorrect — the impersonal passive has no slot for an agent. Drop the av-phrase: 'Det dansades hela natten', or switch to 'Vi dansade hela natten' if you want to name the dancers.
✅ Det dansades hela natten.
There was dancing all night.
❌ Dansades hela natten. (no dummy subject)
Incorrect — the subject slot must be filled. Swedish requires the dummy 'Det' at the front: 'Det dansades hela natten'.
✅ Det dansades hela natten.
There was dancing all night.
❌ Det dansade hela natten. (active, no -s)
Incorrect for the impersonal reading — without -s this reads as 'It danced all night' (some 'it' dancing). The impersonal passive needs the -s: 'dansades'.
✅ Det dansades hela natten.
There was dancing all night. (Or, everyday: 'Man dansade hela natten'.)
❌ Beslutet fattades av. (av with no agent)
Incorrect — if you use 'av' you must name the agent. Either name it ('av styrelsen') or drop 'av' entirely ('Beslutet fattades').
✅ Beslutet fattades av styrelsen.
The decision was made by the board.
❌ En dansade hela natten. (using 'en' as the generic pronoun in writing)
Marked — the standard written generic pronoun is 'man'. (Subject 'en' for 'man' is regional/colloquial.) Use 'Man dansade hela natten'.
✅ Man dansade hela natten.
People danced all night.
Key Takeaways
- Swedish can form an impersonal passive from an intransitive verb by combining dummy Det with the -s passive: Det dansades hela natten ("there was dancing all night"), Det skrattades mycket ("there was a lot of laughing"). There is no logical subject — the activity itself is foregrounded.
- English has no equivalent: its passive needs an object to promote, so it must rephrase ("there was dancing", "people danced").
- The everyday counterpart is the man-construction — Man dansade hela natten — a generic subject + plain active verb. The impersonal passive is formal/literary; man is neutral.
- The ordinary Swedish passive is agentless by default; add an av-phrase only when naming the doer adds real information (Beslutet fattades av styrelsen).
- The impersonal passive takes no agent — there is nothing for av to attach to.
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Start learning Swedish→Related Topics
- The -s PassiveB1 — The synthetic -s passive adds -s to the verb across all tenses (present läses/öppnas, past lästes/öppnades, supine har lästs/öppnats, infinitive ska läsas). It is the DEFAULT Swedish passive — the form on signs, rules, recipes and instructions (Dörren öppnas automatiskt; Serveras kallt) — far more frequent than English speakers expect.
- The Generic Pronoun manA2 — man is Swedish's everyday word for an unspecified 'you / one / people / they' — Man måste vara försiktig ('You have to be careful'). It takes a singular verb, has the object form en and the possessive ens, and is completely casual, unlike the stiff English 'one'. Don't reach for the passive or 'people' when a Swede would simply say man.
- Existential Sentences (det finns / det är)A2 — How to say 'there is / there are' in Swedish — and why it splits into two constructions English merges into one. Det finns marks pure existence ('is there such a thing?': Det finns en lösning), while det är and presentational verbs mark located presence ('is something here right now?': Det är någon vid dörren / Det står en man där). The dummy subject is det, the real ('logical') subject follows the verb — and it must be INDEFINITE.
- Complex Grammar: OverviewB1 — A map of the advanced sentence-building constructions — relative clauses, conditionals, reported speech, comparison structures, information-packaging devices (clefts, extraposition) and non-finite constructions — and the single liberating idea behind all of them: almost none introduce a new word-order rule. They are recombinations of the V2 and BIFF machinery you already know, plus fronting and embedding. The difficulty is combinatorial, not novel.