Learn Hardcore Danish: Hendes onkel er kunstner og ejer et lille galleri i byen. - Her uncle is an artist and owns a small gallery in the city.

In Danish, when you use a possessive pronoun (min, din, hans, hendes, vores, jeres, deres, sin/sit/sine), you normally do not use any article (neither en/et nor a definite ending).

So you say:

hendes onkel = her uncle
min bog = my book
vores hus = our house

You do not say:

hendes en onkel ✗
hendes onkelen ✗

The possessive itself already makes the noun specific, so an additional article or definite ending would be redundant.

Why is it er kunstner and not er en kunstner?

With professions, nationalities, and religions, Danish normally omits the indefinite article after er (to be) when you are just stating what someone is:

Hun er kunstner. = She is (an) artist.
Jeg er lærer. = I am (a) teacher.
Han er dansker. = He is (a) Dane.

So Hendes onkel er kunstner is the standard, neutral way to say Her uncle is an artist.

You can say er en kunstner, but then it often has a more specific or evaluative feeling, like:

Han er en rigtig kunstner. = He is a real artist.
Han er en kunstner, man husker. = He is an artist you remember.

In your sentence, we just state his profession, so er kunstner is natural.

What exactly is og ejer doing here, and why don’t we repeat hendes onkel?

The subject hendes onkel applies to both verbs: er and ejer.

The structure is:

Hendes onkel (subject)
- er kunstner (verb + complement)
- og ejer et lille galleri i byen (another verb phrase joined with og)

In English we also often avoid repeating the subject:

Her uncle is an artist and (he) owns a small gallery in town.

You could say in Danish:

Hendes onkel er kunstner, og han ejer et lille galleri i byen.

That is also correct, but usually you only repeat han when you want a bit more emphasis or when the sentence is longer or more complex. Here, coordinating the two verb phrases under the same subject is completely natural.

Is ejer here a verb or a noun, and what form is it?

In this sentence ejer is a verb, the present tense of at eje (to own).

at eje = to own
jeg/du/han/hun/vi/I/de ejer = I/you/he/she/we/you/they own

Danish verbs (unlike English) do not change form with different persons, so it is always ejer in the present:

Jeg ejer et hus. = I own a house.
De ejer et firma. = They own a company.

There is also a noun en ejer = an owner, but that would typically appear like this:

Han er ejer af et lille galleri. = He is the owner of a small gallery.

In your sentence, the grammar and meaning make it clear that ejer is a verb: er kunstner og ejer et lille galleri.

Why is it et lille galleri and not en lille galleri?

Danish has two grammatical genders:

common gender (n-words) – article en
neuter gender (t-words) – article et

The noun galleri is a neuter noun, so its indefinite article is et:

et galleri = a gallery
galleriet = the gallery

If it were a common-gender noun, it would use en, for example:

en by = a town / city
byen = the town / city

Unfortunately, there is no simple rule to predict the gender from the word’s shape; you generally need to learn each noun with its article (e.g. et galleri, en by).

Shouldn’t the adjective change after et? Why is it et lille galleri, not something like et lillet galleri?

Adjectives in Danish do change form, but here lille is already the correct form for indefinite singular:

General pattern for adjectives:

Indefinite singular, common gender: en stor by (a big town)
Indefinite singular, neuter gender: et stort hus (a big house)
Definite (singular) and all plurals: den store by, det store hus, store byer, store huse

However, lille is irregular:

Indefinite singular (both genders): en lille by, et lille galleri
Definite singular: den lille by, det lille galleri
Plural: små byer, små gallerier

So in et lille galleri, the form lille is exactly what you expect for an indefinite singular neuter noun with this particular adjective.

Why is it i byen and not i en by? What is the difference?

Both are grammatically correct, but they mean slightly different things:

i byen = in the town / in town
- Refers to a specific town that is known from context, often simply the local town where the people live or work.
- Very natural in a sentence like this, because we imagine the town where the uncle’s gallery is.
i en by = in a town
- Refers to some town, not specified which one.
- You would use this when the exact town does not matter or is unknown.

So ejer et lille galleri i byen suggests we both know which town we are talking about (for example, the speaker’s town or the uncle’s town).

Why is the definite form byen made with -en and not -et?

The definite endings in Danish depend on the noun’s gender:

Common gender (en-words): add -en
- en by → byen (the town)
- en stol → stolen (the chair)
Neuter gender (et-words): add -et
- et hus → huset (the house)
- et galleri → galleriet (the gallery)

Since by is a common-gender noun (en by), the definite singular form is byen, not byet.

Both er and ejer are present tense. Do Danish verbs change with the subject like English verbs do?

No. Danish verbs do not change form depending on the subject. They are the same for all persons in the present tense.

For at være (to be):

jeg er = I am
du er = you are
han/hun er = he/she is
vi er = we are
I er = you (plural) are
de er = they are

For at eje (to own):

jeg ejer
du ejer
han/hun ejer
vi ejer
I ejer
de ejer

So in Hendes onkel er kunstner og ejer et lille galleri i byen, both er and ejer are simple present tense forms that stay the same no matter who the subject is.