De jakter i skogen.

Here, De is most naturally understood as they.

The capital D does not by itself mean anything special here, because the word is at the beginning of the sentence, where it would be capitalized anyway.

It is true that older or very formal Norwegian can use De to mean polite you, but that is uncommon in modern everyday Norwegian. In a normal learning context, De jakter i skogen will usually be read as They hunt / They are hunting in the forest.

Jakter is the present tense of the verb å jakte = to hunt.

A useful pattern in Bokmål is that many verbs form the present tense with -er:

• å jakte → jakter
• å snakke → snakker
• å vente → venter

Also, Norwegian does not change the verb for different persons the way English does. So the same present-tense form is used with all subjects:

• jeg jakter
• du jakter
• han/hun jakter
• vi jakter
• de jakter

Yes.

Norwegian usually uses the simple present where English might use either:

• They hunt in the forest
• They are hunting in the forest

So De jakter i skogen can describe:

• a general habit, or
• something happening now

The exact meaning depends on context.

It does not have to.

In Norwegian, å jakte can be used without an object when the point is just that someone is out hunting.

So:

• De jakter i skogen. = They are hunting in the forest.

If you want to say what they are hunting, you can add it:

• De jakter elg i skogen. = They hunt moose in the forest.
• De jakter hjort i skogen. = They hunt deer in the forest.

I usually means in.

So i skogen means in the forest.

This is the normal preposition when talking about being located inside an area:

• i huset = in the house
• i byen = in the city
• i skogen = in the forest

Because skogen is the definite form: the forest.

Norwegian often puts the definite article at the end of the noun instead of using a separate word like English the.

So:

• en skog = a forest
• skogen = the forest

That -en ending is the definite ending for this masculine noun.

Because Norwegian usually expresses definiteness by adding an ending to the noun.

So instead of saying:

• the forest

Norwegian says:

• skog + en = skogen

This is a very important pattern in Norwegian:

• en bil = a car → bilen = the car
• en hund = a dog → hunden = the dog
• en skog = a forest → skogen = the forest

The basic word order is:

subject + verb + other information

So here:

• De = subject
• jakter = verb
• i skogen = prepositional phrase

This is a very normal Norwegian sentence pattern.

Yes, but Norwegian follows the verb-second rule in main clauses.

That means the finite verb usually stays in the second position.

So you can also say:

• I skogen jakter de.

That sounds more like In the forest, they hunt / are hunting.

Notice what happened:

• I skogen moved to the front
• the verb jakter stayed second
• the subject de moved after the verb

That is a very common Norwegian pattern.

A simple learner-friendly guide would be:

de ≈ dee jakter ≈ YAK-ter i ≈ ee skogen ≈ SKOO-gen

So the whole sentence is roughly:

dee YAK-ter ee SKOO-gen

A few notes:

• j in Norwegian is usually like English y
• i is usually pronounced like English ee
• skogen has a clear g
• the exact vowel sounds vary a bit by dialect

Yes, this is standard Bokmål.

A common Nynorsk version would be:

Dei jaktar i skogen.

So if you are learning Bokmål, De jakter i skogen is the expected form.