Learn Dutch: Volgens het volksverhaal zou het monster gelukkig ver weg wonen. - According to the folktale, the monster is fortunately said to live far away.

Gelukkig is a sentence-level adverb of evaluation, meaning it expresses an opinion about the whole sentence. In the Dutch middle field, these adverbs typically come right after the subject (het monster) and before specific details like place or direction (ver weg).

Why use zou here instead of just stating that the monster lives far away?

At this level, you will often see zouden used to indicate hearsay or a rumor, translating to "is said to" or "supposedly". Since the information comes from a folktale (volgens het volksverhaal), zou wonen clarifies that this is just what the story claims, not necessarily a proven fact.

Why is the verb zou placed before the subject het monster?

This is a classic case of inversion. Because the sentence starts with a prepositional phrase (Volgens het volksverhaal), the conjugated verb must take the second position to satisfy the V2 rule. Therefore, the subject (het monster) swaps places to immediately follow the verb (zou).

Why does ver weg come right before the infinitive wonen?