Tomruten gir ikke en spare.

Tomruten is written as one word because Norwegian normally writes compound words as one unit. It looks like tom + rute.

A form like den tomme ruten is a regular adjective + noun phrase, meaning something like the empty route/cell in a more descriptive way. A compound such as tomrute / tomruten can sound more like a label, category, or fixed term, depending on context.

Also, the T is capitalized here only because it is the first word of the sentence. In the middle of a sentence, it would usually be tomruten, not capitalized.

The ending -en is the singular definite ending, roughly like English the.

So:

• en rute = a route / a square / a cell
• ruten = the route / the square / the cell

So tomruten means the tomrute.

One extra detail: in Bokmål, many nouns that are historically feminine can also take masculine/common-gender forms. So you may also see forms like ruta instead of ruten, depending on style and dialect.

Gir is the present tense of å gi, which means to give.

Examples:

• jeg gir = I give
• du gir = you give
• han gir = he gives
• vi gir = we give

Unlike English, Norwegian does not add an -s for the third person singular, so gir is the same with all subjects.

In a normal Norwegian main clause, the finite verb usually comes in second position. After that, sentence adverbs such as ikke normally come after the finite verb.

So:

• Tomruten gir ikke en spare.

This is standard Norwegian word order.

A useful comparison:

• Main clause: Tomruten gir ikke ...
• Subordinate clause: ... at tomruten ikke gir ...

So English speakers often need to get used to the fact that ikke is often placed after the verb in main clauses, not before it.

Because Norwegian does not use do-support the way English does.

English says:

• does not give

Norwegian simply says:

• gir ikke

So there is no extra helping verb corresponding to English does here. The main verb itself carries the present-tense meaning.

Here it is being used as a noun, because it has the article en in front of it: en spare.

That said, this is exactly the kind of thing that may confuse a learner, because spare is much more commonly recognized as the infinitive of the verb å spare, meaning to save.

So grammatically, en spare is noun-like here, but many learners would correctly feel that it sounds unusual without more context.

Often, yes. In Norwegian, if you mean no / not any, ingen or ikke noen is often the more neutral choice.

Compare the idea:

• ikke en = often more emphatic, like not even one
• ingen / ikke noen = more neutral no / not any

So if the intended meaning is simply that there is no spare, many speakers might expect something closer to ingen or ikke noen rather than ikke en.

It sounds a bit unusual.

The part Tomruten gir ikke ... is structurally fine. The least natural part is en spare, because spare is not a common everyday noun in standard Norwegian without a specific context.

So a native speaker would probably want either:

• a different noun, if spare is meant as a thing
• or a different construction, depending on the exact meaning

Also, as mentioned above, ikke en may sound more emphatic than a neutral negative.

So the sentence is understandable as a grammar example, but it does not sound like especially natural everyday Norwegian unless there is a very specific context behind it.