Breakdown of Der var adskillige grunde til mytteriet.
til
to (preposition) / for (purpose) / at (an event or occasion) / at (good at something)
der var
there was / there were
grunden
the reason
adskillige
several
Questions & Answers about Der var adskillige grunde til mytteriet.
Why do we use til here instead of for like in the English translation ("reasons for")?
In Danish, the noun grund (reason) almost always pairs with the preposition til when you specify what the reason is for. Prepositions rarely translate one-to-one between languages, and en grund til noget (a reason for something) is a fixed combination you just have to memorize.
What is the difference between adskillige and flere?
Both can translate to "several", but adskillige is slightly more formal and emphasizes a considerable or surprisingly large number. Using adskillige implies there were quite a lot of reasons, whereas flere is the standard, neutral word for "several" or "more".
Since this lesson is about fossilized phrases like til bords, why doesn't the noun after til get an -s ending here?
The archaic rule where til forces a genitive -s ending on the following noun only survives in a handful of fixed, historical expressions (like til søs or til fods). When constructing a regular, modern phrase pointing to a specific noun—like til mytteriet—you just use standard modern grammar without the -s.
Mytteri (mutiny) gets the neuter definite ending -et. Is there a reliable rule for words ending in -eri?