Modern Swedish has, for all practical purposes, lost the subjunctive. Where older Swedish (and German, and the older Romance languages) used a distinct mood for wishes and counterfactuals, Swedish now uses the indicative or modal auxiliaries. But the subjunctive did not vanish without trace: a handful of forms survive, fossilised inside fixed expressions — toasts, ceremonial wishes, set phrases. This page collects those expressions and explains why they look the way they do. The practical advice up front: learn them as whole idioms, not as a pattern to extend. You cannot generate new subjunctives; you can only recognise and deploy the surviving ones.
Toasts: Skål and its company
Skål! is the all-purpose toast — "Cheers!" Originally "bowl/cup" (the vessel you drank from), it's now simply what you say raising a glass. You toast for someone or something with för:
Skål för Anna — grattis till nya jobbet!
Cheers to Anna — congratulations on the new job! 'Skål för X' toasts someone or something; note the å.
Skål och tack för att ni kom ikväll!
Cheers, and thanks for coming tonight! 'Skål' is the universal toast.
At weddings and formal celebrations you'll hear the ceremonial Leve...! ("Long live...!") and the call-and-response ett fyrfaldigt leve — the traditional Swedish "four-fold cheer," where the toastmaster calls and the guests answer with four *hurra*s.
| Phrase | English | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Skål! | Cheers! | any toast |
| Leve brudparet! | Long live the bride and groom! | weddings |
| Leve kungen! | Long live the king! | ceremonial, national |
| Ett fyrfaldigt leve för... | A four-fold cheer for... | formal toasting, followed by Hurra! Hurra! Hurra! Hurra! |
Låt oss utbringa en skål för brudparet. Leve brudparet!
Let us raise a toast to the newlyweds. Long live the bride and groom! 'Utbringa en skål' (raise a toast) is the formal frame; 'Leve brudparet' is the ceremonial wish.
The fossilised present subjunctive: leve, vare, give
Look closely at leve, vare, bevare, give. These are present subjunctive (optative) forms — the old construction for expressing a wish, "may X happen." The rule that built them was simple: take the verb stem and add -e.
- leva ("to live") → leve — "may (it/he) live" → Leve kungen! "Long live the king!"
- vara ("to be") → vare — "may (it) be" → vare därmed hur det vill "be that as it may"
- bevara ("to preserve") → bevare — "may (X) preserve" → Gud bevare oss! "God preserve us!"
- giva ("to give," archaic for ge) → give — "may (X) grant" → Gud give att... "God grant that..."
In modern Swedish these are the only contexts where you'll meet these forms. They are no longer productive: you cannot take an arbitrary verb and form a fresh subjunctive wish this way. Leve friheten! is idiomatic; inventing *springe han! ("may he run!") is not Swedish.
Leve friheten! ropade demonstranterna i kör.
Long live freedom! the protesters shouted in chorus. 'Leve' (may it live) is the fossilised present subjunctive of 'leva' — alive only in this 'long live X' frame.
Gud bevare oss, vilket oväder!
God preserve us, what a storm! 'Bevare' (may preserve) is the present subjunctive of 'bevara', surviving only in set exclamations.
Det blir nog dyrt, men vare därmed hur det vill — vi gör det ändå.
It'll probably be expensive, but be that as it may — we'll do it anyway. 'Vare' (may it be) survives in this single fixed phrase.
There's one more famous relic: varde ("let there be"), the present subjunctive of varda (archaic "become"), known from the creation account — Varde ljus ("Let there be light"). It's purely biblical/literary now (literary), but educated Swedes recognise it.
Och Gud sade: Varde ljus. Och det vart ljus.
And God said: Let there be light. And there was light. (literary/biblical) 'Varde' is the archaic present subjunctive of 'varda' — recognised, never produced in speech.
måtte: the surviving wish auxiliary
While most monosyllabic verbs lost their subjunctive, the modal må kept a wish-form, måtte ("may / let's hope"). This one is slightly more alive — you can still use måtte + infinitive to express a heartfelt wish or hope, and it doesn't feel as fossilised as leve. It belongs to elevated or emotional register rather than everyday speech.
Måtte det gå bra för dem på resan.
May it go well for them on the journey. / Let's hope it goes well for them. 'Måtte' + infinitive expresses a heartfelt wish — elevated but still usable.
Måtte hon aldrig få veta sanningen.
May she never learn the truth. 'Måtte' carries a genuine, emotional wish — more living than 'leve', but still marked register.
- infinitive for a real wish ("may it..."). But it's emphatic and literary-tinged; in neutral speech a Swede says jag hoppas att... ("I hope that..."). Reserve måtte for moments of genuine feeling, or it sounds theatrical.
vore: the surviving past subjunctive
The most-alive relic of all is vore, the past (preterite) subjunctive of vara ("to be") — equivalent to English "were" in "if I were." Unlike leve and vare, vore is in regular educated use today, especially for polite, tentative, or hypothetical statements. Det vore trevligt ("That would be nice") is softer and more refined than Det skulle vara trevligt; the vore makes the wish feel gentler and more conditional.
Det vore snällt om du kunde hjälpa mig med det här.
It would be kind of you to help me with this. 'Vore' (were/would be) softens the request — gentler and more polite than 'skulle vara'.
Det vore trevligt att ses snart igen.
It would be nice to meet again soon. 'Det vore trevligt' is a refined, common way to express a wish — fully alive in modern Swedish.
Om jag vore du skulle jag tacka ja.
If I were you, I'd accept. 'Om jag vore du' = 'if I were you' — the past subjunctive lives on in this conditional, just as English keeps 'were'.
So Swedish has a clean three-tier survival: vore (fully alive, polite/hypothetical), måtte (alive but elevated, heartfelt wishes), and leve / vare / bevare / varde (truly frozen, recognised only inside fixed phrases).
Common Mistakes
❌ Springe han fort! (inventing a new subjunctive wish)
Not Swedish — the present subjunctive isn't productive. You can't coin 'may he run!' this way; only the fixed set (leve, vare, bevare...) survives.
✅ Måtte han springa fort! / Jag hoppas att han springer fort.
May he run fast! / I hope he runs fast. Use 'måtte' + infinitive or a plain 'jag hoppas att' clause.
❌ Leve kungen lever länge! (conjugating the frozen form)
Incorrect — 'leve' is already the complete frozen wish ('long live'). Don't add a conjugated verb on top of it.
✅ Leve kungen!
Long live the king!
❌ Det vare trevligt. (using 'vare' for a polite wish)
Wrong relic — 'vare' is the present subjunctive frozen in set phrases ('vare därmed...'). For 'it would be nice' you want the past subjunctive 'vore'.
✅ Det vore trevligt.
It would be nice.
❌ Skål till Anna!
Wrong preposition — you toast 'för' someone, not 'till': Skål för Anna.
✅ Skål för Anna!
Cheers to Anna!
❌ Sprinkling 'måtte' into everyday hopes (Måtte bussen komma i tid varje morgon).
Overuse — 'måtte' is emphatic and literary-tinged. For a routine hope, a plain 'jag hoppas' is natural; 'måtte' everywhere sounds theatrical.
✅ Jag hoppas att bussen kommer i tid. (reserve 'måtte' for heartfelt wishes)
I hope the bus comes on time.
Key Takeaways
- The Swedish subjunctive is dead as a productive mood — what survives is a closed set of fossilised forms inside fixed expressions. Learn them as idioms, never extend them.
- Toasts: Skål! (cheers — toast för, not till), Leve brudparet / kungen! (long live...), ett fyrfaldigt leve (the four-fold cheer).
- Present subjunctive relics (stem + -e, all frozen): leve (live), vare (be), bevare (preserve), give (grant), varde (literary, "let there be").
- måtte
- infinitive — a still-usable but elevated, heartfelt wish ("may it..."); in neutral speech use jag hoppas att.
- vore — the past subjunctive of vara, fully alive for polite/hypothetical statements: Det vore trevligt, Om jag vore du. The most living relic of all.
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- The Subjunctive (vore, leve) and Its SurvivalC1 — Swedish once had a full subjunctive; modern Swedish has almost none left. The present subjunctive survives only in frozen wishes (Leve kungen! 'Long live the king'). The one form still genuinely alive is the past subjunctive vore ('were'): Om jag vore rik, Det vore trevligt. Everywhere else, modern Swedish uses skulle or the plain indicative.
- Seasonal and Occasion GreetingsA2 — The fixed holiday and occasion greetings: God jul, Gott nytt år, Glad påsk, Trevlig midsommar, Grattis (på födelsedagen), Lycka till, Krya på dig, Trevlig helg. The key insight: each greeting fossilises a particular adjective (god / gott / glad / trevlig) with its occasion — you can't swap them. It's God jul, never *Bra jul or *Trevlig jul. These are memorised units where the normal bra/god rule is overridden by convention.
- Literary and Archaic SwedishC1 — Older and literary Swedish looks foreign in one decisive way: until about 1945 verbs agreed in NUMBER, so a plural subject took a plural verb — vi äro ('we are'), de voro ('they were'), vi hava ('we have') — forms a modern learner never meets. Add the pre-1906 hv- spellings (hvad, hvit), the archaic pronouns I and eder, the subjunctive vore/vare, and the optional masculine -e, and you have the toolkit for reading Strindberg, Lagerlöf, and the old Bible without panic.
- Exclamations and InterjectionsA2 — When a Swede is delighted, surprised or dismayed, the reaction comes out in a small set of fixed interjections (Oj! Usch! Jaså!) and, above all, in a special exclamative pattern: Vad or Så plus an adjective — Vad gott! ('How delicious!'), Så snällt av dig! ('How kind of you!') — built without a verb, or with the word order inverted (Så fint det är!). This page teaches the interjections and that exclamative syntax, which is genuinely different from a question.