Hun har svært ved at få brillestangen til at passe.

It is a very common Danish pattern meaning to have difficulty doing something or to find something hard to do.

So:

• Hun har svært ved at ... = She has difficulty ... / She finds it hard to ...

You should learn have trouble doing X or find it hard to do X as a chunk:

• Jeg har svært ved at sove. = I have trouble sleeping.
• Han har svært ved at forstå det. = He has difficulty understanding it.

The word ved is part of the fixed expression here, not something you should translate literally word for word.

That is because ved is part of the idiomatic expression have svært ved at.

Literally, ved often means by, at, or near, but in this structure you should not try to translate it literally. Just treat this as a set phrase:

• have svært ved at + infinitive

Examples:

• Hun har svært ved at læse.
• Vi har svært ved at finde huset.

So the best approach is: memorize the whole pattern, not the individual pieces.

Because at introduces the infinitive verb phrase.

Structure:

• have svært ved at + infinitive

In your sentence:

• Hun har svært ved at få ...

The infinitive here is få.

This is similar to English to in to get or to do, although Danish at is not always used exactly where English uses to.

This is another common Danish structure:

• få noget til at + infinitive

It often means get something to do something or make something do something.

Here:

• få brillestangen til at passe

means something like:

• get the glasses arm to fit
• make the glasses arm fit

So få does not just mean get in the sense of receiving something. It can also mean manage to get, cause, or make in a structure like this.

Compare:

• Jeg fik døren til at åbne. = I got the door to open.
• Kan du få det til at virke? = Can you get it to work?

Because the sentence contains two different infinitive constructions.

1. har svært ved at få ...

   • at få belongs to har svært ved
   • meaning has difficulty getting/making

2. få brillestangen til at passe

   • til at passe belongs to få
   • meaning to get it to fit

So the sentence is built like this:

• Hun
• har svært ved
• at få
• brillestangen
• til at passe

That is perfectly normal Danish syntax.

Brillestangen is a compound noun:

• brille = glasses
• stang = rod, bar, arm, stem

In context, it usually refers to the arm/temple piece of a pair of glasses.

The ending -en makes it definite singular:

• en brillestang = a glasses arm
• brillestangen = the glasses arm

Danish uses compounds very freely, so learners often need to get used to long words made from smaller parts.

Because Danish very often forms one compound noun where English uses two or more words.

Examples:

• brilleetui = glasses case
• solbriller = sunglasses
• bilnøgle = car key

So brillestang is a normal Danish-style compound. English might prefer something like glasses arm or temple arm, but Danish typically joins the parts together.

Here passe means fit.

That can mean:

• physically fit
• be the right size/shape
• match correctly

So in this sentence it means the glasses arm is hard to get into the right fit or alignment.

Be careful: passe has several meanings in Danish, for example:

• Det passer. = That is correct.
• Skoene passer. = The shoes fit.
• Hun passer børn. = She looks after children.

So the meaning depends a lot on context.

You can, but it will sound unnatural in English if you stay too close to the Danish.

A very literal breakdown is:

• Hun = she
• har svært ved at = has difficulty
• få = get
• brillestangen = the glasses arm
• til at passe = to fit

But natural English would usually be something more like:

• She is having trouble getting the glasses arm to fit.
• She finds it hard to make the glasses arm fit properly.

So for learning, it is useful to understand the parts, but for translation, you should usually switch to natural English phrasing.

Not exactly, though they are close.

• Hun har svært ved at få brillestangen til at passe. = She is having difficulty getting it to fit.

  • This emphasizes that it is difficult.

• Hun kan ikke få brillestangen til at passe. = She cannot get it to fit.

  • This sounds stronger and more final.

So har svært ved suggests difficulty, while kan ikke suggests inability.

Yes. A common alternative would be:

• Det er svært for hende at få brillestangen til at passe.

That means essentially the same thing: It is difficult for her to get the glasses arm to fit.

The difference is mainly stylistic:

• Hun har svært ved at ... is very common and conversational.
• Det er svært for hende at ... is also natural, but slightly more explicit in structure.

The sentence follows normal Danish main-clause word order:

• Hun = subject
• har = finite verb
• svært = complement
• ved at få brillestangen til at passe = the rest of the verb phrase/content

So the finite verb har comes early, as expected in a Danish main clause.

If you move something to the front, Danish still keeps the finite verb in second position:

• I dag har hun svært ved at få brillestangen til at passe.

This verb-second pattern is one of the central features of Danish word order.