De skal sprenge fjellet.

shall

Breakdown of De skal sprenge fjellet.

• de: they
• fjellet: the mountain
• sprenge: to blast; blow up

Questions & Answers about De skal sprenge fjellet.

Does De mean they or a polite/formal you?

It can be either, depending on context.

At the beginning of a sentence, de is capitalized anyway, so De does not automatically mean the formal pronoun.

• de = they
• De = old-fashioned or very formal you

In modern Norwegian, the polite De is quite rare. So unless the context is very formal, learners will usually understand sentence-initial De as they.

What does skal mean here?

Skal is a very common modal verb. In this kind of sentence, it often means:

• will
• is going to
• is supposed to
• sometimes must

So skal does not always map neatly to one single English word. It often expresses future action, plan, intention, or obligation, depending on context.

In this sentence, it most naturally suggests that the action is planned or expected to happen.

Why is sprenge in the infinitive form?