Swedish pronouns will feel familiar at first — jag is "I," du is "you," han is "he" — and then two features will catch you off guard, because English simply does not have them. The first is the reflexive possessive sin/sitt/sina, which forces a distinction English collapses into plain "his/her." The second is that Swedish has no single word for "it": an inanimate noun is den or det depending on its grammatical gender. This page lays out the full inventory and routes you to the page that drills each piece, so you can see how the system fits together before diving into detail.
The inventory at a glance
Swedish pronouns fall into a handful of families:
- Personal pronouns — the everyday "I / you / he / she" words, which come in a subject form and an object form (jag → mig, han → honom).
- The reflexive sig — used when the object is the same person as the subject (Han rakar sig, "He shaves himself").
- Reflexive possessives sin / sitt / sina — "his/her/their own," referring back to the subject. This is the famous hurdle.
- The generic man — "one / you / people in general" (Man vet aldrig, "You never know").
- The gender-neutral hen — used when gender is unknown or irrelevant, and for non-binary people.
- The inanimate den / det — "it," chosen by the noun's gender.
- Demonstratives — den här / den där, denna, det här, etc. ("this / that").
- Relatives — som, vilken, vars ("who / which / whose").
- Indefinites — någon ("someone/any"), ingen ("no one/none"), alla ("everyone/all").
Personal pronouns: subject and object
Like English (I / me, he / him), Swedish personal pronouns change form between subject and object position. The subject form does the acting; the object form is acted upon or follows a preposition.
Jag ser honom, men han ser inte mig.
I see him, but he doesn't see me. Subject jag/han vs object honom/mig — the forms change, just like English I/me, he/him.
Vi bjöd dem, men de kom inte.
We invited them, but they didn't come. Subject de vs object dem (both pronounced 'dom' in speech).
The full subject set is jag, du, han, hon, hen, den, det, man, vi, ni, de; the matching object set is mig, dig, honom, henne, hen, den, det, en, oss, er, dem. They get their own pages: Subject Pronouns and Object Pronouns.
The reflexive sig and sin/sitt/sina — the big hurdle
When the object refers back to the subject of the same clause, Swedish uses the reflexive sig for the third person (he/she/they/it/one), where English just says "himself / herself / themselves."
Hon tvättar sig varje morgon.
She washes (herself) every morning. sig = the third-person reflexive object.
The harder cousin is the reflexive possessive sin / sitt / sina. It means "his/her/their own" and points back to the subject of the clause. Compare:
Han tog sin bok.
He took his (own) book. sin = his own — it belongs to the subject 'han'.
Han tog hans bok.
He took his book — somebody else's book. hans points to a different man, not the subject.
This single contrast — sin (the subject's own) vs hans/hennes (someone else's) — is something English cannot express with pronouns at all; English "his book" is ambiguous. It is drilled fully on sin vs hans/hennes and the reflexive sig.
The generic man
Swedish uses man for general statements — "one," "you," "people," the impersonal subject. It is extremely common and not at all formal (unlike English "one").
Man vet aldrig vad som händer.
You never know what's going to happen. man = the generic 'one / you / people in general'.
When man needs an object form, it becomes en (Det gör en glad, "It makes one happy"). See The generic man for the details.
The gender-neutral hen
hen is Swedish's gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. It is used when gender is unknown or irrelevant, and for people who are non-binary. It is fully standard — it has been in the official word list since 2015 — and it sits alongside han and hon rather than replacing them.
Om någon ringer, säg åt hen att vänta.
If someone calls, tell them to wait. hen = a single unknown person, gender unspecified.
This gets its own page: The gender-neutral pronoun hen.
den / det — there is no single "it"
Here is the second feature with no English parallel. English has one word, it, for all inanimate things. Swedish has two, and you pick by the noun's grammatical gender: den for common-gender (en-) nouns, det for neuter (ett-) nouns.
Jag köpte en bil. Den är röd.
I bought a car. It is red. bil is an en-word, so 'it' = den.
Jag köpte ett hus. Det är gammalt.
I bought a house. It is old. hus is an ett-word, so 'it' = det.
So before you can say "it," you have to know the noun's gender. det also does double duty as a sort of placeholder subject (Det regnar, "It's raining"), which the dedicated page sorts out: den and det.
Demonstratives, relatives, indefinites
Three more families round out the system, each with its own page:
- Demonstratives ("this / that"): den här bilen, det där huset, the more formal denna / detta / dessa.
- Relatives ("who / which / whose"): som is the workhorse (mannen som bor här, "the man who lives here"); vilken / vilket / vilka and vars ("whose") appear in more formal writing.
- Indefinites: någon / något / några ("someone / something / some"), ingen / inget / inga ("no one / nothing / none"), alla ("everyone / all"), varje ("each").
Är det någon hemma? Nej, det är ingen här.
Is anyone home? No, there's no one here. någon = anyone, ingen = no one.
Mannen som bor här heter Lars.
The man who lives here is called Lars. som = the all-purpose relative 'who/which/that'.
How the rest of this group fits together
- Subject forms: Subject Pronouns — jag, du, han, hon, hen, den, det, man, vi, ni, de.
- Object forms: Object Pronouns — mig, dig, honom, henne, oss, er, dem.
- Reflexive: The reflexive sig.
- The hurdle: sin vs hans/hennes.
- "It": den and det.
Common Mistakes
❌ Han tog hans bok. (meaning he took his own book)
Incorrect for 'his own' — hans points to someone else. Use sin for the subject's own book.
✅ Han tog sin bok.
He took his (own) book.
❌ Jag köpte ett hus. Den är gammalt. (for 'It is old')
Incorrect — hus is an ett-word, so 'it' must be det, not den.
✅ Jag köpte ett hus. Det är gammalt.
I bought a house. It is old.
❌ Jag ser han. (for 'I see him')
Incorrect — after a verb you need the object form honom, not the subject form han.
✅ Jag ser honom.
I see him.
❌ Hon tvättar henne varje morgon. (meaning she washes herself)
Incorrect — for 'herself' you need the reflexive sig, not henne (which is another woman).
✅ Hon tvättar sig varje morgon.
She washes (herself) every morning.
Key Takeaways
- Personal pronouns come in subject and object forms (jag/mig, han/honom), just like English.
- Swedish verbs don't agree with the subject, so the pronoun carries all the person information.
- The two features English lacks: the reflexive possessive sin/sitt/sina (the subject's own, vs hans/hennes = someone else's) and no single "it" — it's den for en-words, det for ett-words.
- man ("one / you / people") and hen (gender-neutral) are everyday, standard pronouns — neither is formal or marginal.
- Orthography: hen, sig, sin / sitt / sina; note that mig / dig / sig are commonly pronounced mej / dej / sej.
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- Subject PronounsA1 — The Swedish subject personal pronouns — jag, du, han, hon, hen, den, det, man, vi, ni, de — including that de is pronounced (and often spelled) 'dom', that hen is the standard gender-neutral pronoun, and that den/det are the inanimate 'it' chosen by gender. Because Swedish verbs don't conjugate, the pronoun carries all the person information.
- Object PronounsA1 — The Swedish object personal pronouns — mig, dig, honom, henne, hen, den, det, en, oss, er, dem — used after verbs and after prepositions. Includes the spoken forms (mig/dig/sig = mej/dej/sej, dem = 'dom') and why the spoken collapse of de and dem makes the written distinction hard even for natives.
- The Reflexive Pronoun sigA2 — When the object of a verb is the same person as the subject, Swedish 1st and 2nd persons just reuse the ordinary object pronoun (jag tvättar mig, du tvättar dig) — but the 3rd person has a dedicated reflexive word, sig, for he/she/it/they/one. Using honom or henne instead of sig flips the meaning to 'someone else', a mistake English's '-self' suffix makes very easy to fall into.
- sin/sitt/sina vs hans/hennes/derasB1 — The decision procedure for Swedish's reflexive possessive. Use sin/sitt/sina ('one's own') when the owner is the third-person SUBJECT of the SAME clause; use hans/hennes/deras for everyone and everything else. 'Han tvättar sin bil' means he washes his OWN car; 'Han tvättar hans bil' means he washes some other man's car — a distinction English can't make in a single word. The hard part is embedded clauses, where 'sin' points to the nearest subject.
- den and det for Things (and Sentence det)A2 — Swedish has no single word for 'it': you say den for a singular en-word and det for a singular ett-word — the pronoun follows the noun's gender. But det also has a second life as a dummy subject (Det regnar, Det är kallt) and as a neutral 'it/that' pointing at a whole situation (Det är sant), and there it is ALWAYS det, gender or no gender.