Breakdown of Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere mens hun bodde nærmere.
Questions & Answers about Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere mens hun bodde nærmere.
Literally, vi skulle ønske is “we should/would wish” (with skulle as the past tense of skal).
In modern Norwegian, though, skulle ønske is a fixed expression that means “we wish” (a regret or unreal wish), and it usually refers to a feeling in the present, not the past.
Compare:
- Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere …
→ We wish (now) that we had visited Grandma more often (back then).
So:
- The wish itself is felt now.
- The thing you wish had happened (hadde besøkt) is in the past.
You can think of skulle here like the “softening” past in English polite forms:
- I was wondering if… (present request)
- Jeg skulle gjerne… (I would really like to…)
Hadde besøkt is the past perfect (pluperfect): “had visited”.
After skulle ønske, Norwegian uses the same pattern as English for unreal, counterfactual wishes:
- English: We wish we had visited Grandma more often.
- Norwegian: Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere.
You are talking about a past situation that did not happen the way you wanted (you did not visit her often enough), so you use past perfect.
If you said:
Vi skulle ønske vi besøkte bestemor oftere.
This would normally be understood as a wish about a repeated action now or in general (“We wish we visited Grandma more often (these days)”).Vi skulle ønske vi har besøkt bestemor oftere.
This is not idiomatic for this meaning. You don’t use har besøkt (present perfect) for these English “wish + past perfect”-type regrets.
So for a finished time period in the past that you regret, hadde + past participle is the natural choice:
- hadde besøkt, hadde ringt, hadde hjulpet, etc.
Yes, you can:
- Vi skulle ønske at vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere mens hun bodde nærmere.
The word at here is the conjunction “that” introducing a subordinate clause, just like in English:
- We wish that we had visited Grandma more often…
In Norwegian:
- After verbs of thinking, saying, feeling, wishing (e.g. tro, si, vite, ønske), at is often optional, especially in speech.
- Both versions are grammatically correct and natural:
- Vi skulle ønske at vi hadde besøkt … (a bit more explicit, slightly more formal/written)
- Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt … (very common in everyday language)
So there is no change in meaning; it’s just a style choice.
Bestemor is a kinship term (“grandmother”). In Norwegian, these are often used without an article, especially about your own family, in a way that’s similar to a name:
- Jeg skal besøke bestemor.
→ I’m going to visit Grandma.
This feels personal and close, like saying “Grandma” in English, not “the grandmother”.
Other options:
- bestemoren – “the grandmother”
- bestemora – colloquial feminine form of the same thing (common in many dialects)
- bestemoren vår / bestemora vår – “our grandmother”
The nuance:
- besøkt bestemor → typically your grandma, with a warm, familiar feel.
- besøkt bestemoren → “visited the grandmother” (more neutral, could be any specific grandmother, less “intimate”).
- besøkt bestemoren vår → “visited our grandmother” (explicit about whose, a bit more formal/precise).
In this kind of sentence about regretting not visiting Grandma enough, bare bestemor is the most natural.
Oftere is the comparative form of the adverb ofte (“often”):
- ofte = often
- oftere = more often
- oftest = most often
You want to say “more often”, so Norwegian uses the synthetic comparative with -ere:
- Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere …
What about alternatives?
- mer ofte – This is understandable and sometimes used, but oftere is shorter and more idiomatic here. Native speakers overwhelmingly prefer oftere.
- ofte (without comparative) would just mean:
- We wish we had visited Grandma often
and does not express comparison (“more often than we actually did”).
- We wish we had visited Grandma often
So:
- To match English “more often”, use oftere.
Yes, but some positions sound more natural than others.
Very natural:
- Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere mens hun bodde nærmere.
- Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere. (if you drop the last clause)
Also possible (but a bit more marked/emphasized):
- Vi skulle ønske vi oftere hadde besøkt bestemor mens hun bodde nærmere.
→ Slight emphasis on oftere.
Generally:
- Adverbs like oftere often come after the object or before the main verb of the clause.
- Vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere is the default, smooth order here.
Less natural/awkward:
- Vi hadde oftere besøkt bestemor – still possible, but gives a different rhythm / slight emphasis and isn’t as neutral as the original order.
Both mens and da can mean something like “when” in English, but they are used differently.
- mens = while, during the time that
Emphasises that two things are happening in parallel over a period of time. - da = when (referring to a specific time or known period in the past).
In this sentence:
- mens hun bodde nærmere highlights the entire period during which she lived closer:
- We wish we had visited her more often during the time she lived nearby.
You could say:
- Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere da hun bodde nærmere.
That is also acceptable. The nuance:
- mens clearly stresses the idea of “while she was living closer (over that span of time)”, which fits nicely with oftere (more often over that period).
- da is a bit more neutral about “at that time in the past”, less focused on simultaneity.
In practice, many native speakers prefer mens in exactly this kind of “we should have done X more often while Y was the case” sentence.
Bodde is the simple past (preterite) of bo (“to live / reside”).
- mens hun bodde nærmere → “while she lived closer”
It describes a past situation that is over (she no longer lives close), so the preterite is the normal choice.
Alternatives:
mens hun har bodd nærmere
→ “while she has lived closer”
This would sound odd here, because har bodd (present perfect) usually connects the past situation up to now, but in this context we understand that she no longer lives close.mens hun hadde bodd nærmere
→ “while she had lived closer”
This is past perfect, and it would normally need another, even later reference point. It doesn’t fit well here; we’re already talking about a finished period from the speaker’s current vantage point.
So for “back then, at that time, while she lived closer”, bodde is exactly right.
Nærmere is the comparative form of nær (“near/close”):
- nær = near, close
- nærmere = nearer, closer
- nærmest = nearest, closest
The idea in English is “while she lived closer (to us)”, i.e. more close than now. That’s a comparison with the current situation.
So:
- mens hun bodde nærmere (oss)
→ while she lived closer (to us)
If you said:
- mens hun bodde nær oss
→ while she lived near us (no comparison, just stating she lived near).
That’s also possible, but it doesn’t contain the comparative idea.
The original sentence implies: she used to live closer than she does now, which is why nærmere is used.
Yes, you can move that clause to the front, and you do not need to change the internal word order:
- Mens hun bodde nærmere, skulle vi ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere.
Things to notice:
Word order inside the subordinate clause (mens hun bodde nærmere) stays:
- conjunction (mens) + subject (hun) + verb (bodde) + the rest.
In the main clause after a fronted element, Norwegian normally follows the V2 rule (verb in 2nd position).
Here, the first main-clause element is skulle, so the order is:- skulle vi ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere
This fronted version is grammatically fine, but the original order:
- Vi skulle ønske vi hadde besøkt bestemor oftere mens hun bodde nærmere.
is more natural and common in everyday speech.