Hun tørrer sveden af panden med et håndklæde.

Tørrer is the present tense of tørre.

Danish does not have a separate form like English is wiping. Its present tense can cover both:

• she wipes
• she is wiping

So Hun tørrer sveden af panden med et håndklæde can mean either a general action or something happening right now, depending on context.

It can mean dry, wipe, or wipe off, depending on context.

In this sentence, the meaning is closer to wipe off:

• tørre håret = dry the hair
• tørre bordet af = wipe the table off / wipe the table down
• tørre sveden af panden = wipe the sweat off the forehead

So the verb is broad, and the rest of the sentence tells you which English translation fits best.

Yes, you can think of it as similar to an English phrasal verb like wipe off.

Here, af shows that something is being removed from a surface:

• tørre sveden af panden = wipe the sweat off the forehead

This pattern is very common in Danish:

• tørre noget af = wipe something off

So af is important because it adds the idea of removal.

Because they mean the sweat and the forehead.

Danish usually adds definiteness to the end of the noun:

• pande = forehead
• panden = the forehead
• sved = sweat
• sveden = the sweat

In this sentence, we are talking about a specific situation:

• the sweat that is there
• the forehead involved in the action

So the definite forms sound natural.

Not usually with body parts in a sentence like this.

Danish often uses the definite form instead of a possessive when the owner is obvious:

• Hun vasker hænderne = She washes her hands
• Hun løfter armen = She raises her arm
• Hun tørrer sveden af panden = She wipes the sweat off her forehead

If you did want an explicit possessive for her own forehead, Danish would normally use the reflexive possessive sin, not hendes:

• af sin pande = off her own forehead

Hendes pande usually suggests someone else’s forehead or adds strong contrast. This is a very common difference from English.

Med et håndklæde means with a towel. It tells you the instrument used to do the action.

It is et håndklæde because håndklæde is a neuter noun in Danish:

• et håndklæde = a towel
• håndklædet = the towel

So:

• med et håndklæde = with a towel

The article is indefinite because the sentence does not point to one particular already-known towel.

In this sentence, af is the normal and idiomatic choice.

Both af and fra can sometimes relate to English from, but here af fits the idea of wiping something off a surface. That is why Danish prefers:

• tørre sveden af panden

Using fra here would sound less natural to most learners and is not the standard phrasing to copy.

Yes, you could, but it means something slightly different.

• Hun tørrer sveden af panden med et håndklæde focuses on the sweat being removed
• Hun tørrer panden med et håndklæde focuses more on the forehead as the thing being wiped/dried

Both are natural. The original sentence is just more specific.

The sentence uses the normal Danish main-clause order:

Hun + tørrer + sveden + af panden + med et håndklæde

So it is basically:

• subject
• verb
• object
• extra information

You can move parts for emphasis, but Danish still keeps the finite verb in second position:

• Med et håndklæde tørrer hun sveden af panden.

That is a good example of natural reordering. So the sentence is flexible, but the verb-second rule is very important.

The infinitive is tørre.

So you would get:

• at tørre sveden af panden med et håndklæde = to wipe the sweat off the forehead with a towel

The form in the sentence, tørrer, is just the present-tense form of that verb.