Breakdown of Om morgenen lager jeg matpakke til barna før skolen.
Questions & Answers about Om morgenen lager jeg matpakke til barna før skolen.
Om morgenen usually expresses a habitual action: something you (typically) do every morning or in the mornings in general.
So in this sentence:
- Om morgenen lager jeg matpakke til barna før skolen.
→ In the mornings / In the morning I (usually) make packed lunch for the children before school.
It does not refer to one specific morning (like “this morning”); it describes a routine. Context can make it clear whether it’s “every morning” or just “usually in the morning”, but the basic idea is “in the mornings (as a habit)”.
The most natural choices here are om morgenen or på morgenen, and they often overlap in everyday speech. Rough guidelines:
om morgenen
- Very common in written Norwegian.
- Often used for general habits:
- Om morgenen drikker jeg kaffe. – In the mornings I drink coffee.
på morgenen
- Very common in speech.
- Can be used both for specific and more general times:
- På morgenen var det kaldt. – In the morning it was cold (that particular morning).
- På morgenen drikker jeg kaffe. – In the mornings I drink coffee.
i morgenen is wrong in standard Norwegian in this sense.
- i morgen = tomorrow (note: no final -en).
- You don’t say i morgenen for “in the morning” as a time of day.
In your sentence, om morgenen is a very natural way to express a morning routine. På morgenen would also be acceptable in many contexts, but om morgenen reads slightly more “textbook-neutral”.
Norwegian often uses the definite form for parts of the day when you talk about them in a general, habitual way, especially with prepositions like om and på:
- om morgenen – in the (general) morning(s)
- om kvelden – in the evening(s)
- på dagen – in the daytime
So:
- morgen = morning (bare form)
- morgenen = the morning (definite form)
In English, you say “in the morning” or “in the mornings” for routines. Norwegian bundles both of those ideas into om morgenen.
Norwegian main clauses follow the V2 rule: the finite verb (here: lager) must come in second position in the sentence, no matter what comes first.
Sentence structure here:
- Om morgenen – time expression (first element)
- lager – verb (must be second)
- jeg – subject
- rest of the sentence
You cannot say:
- ✗ Om morgenen jeg lager matpakke …
Correct alternatives are:
- Om morgenen lager jeg matpakke til barna før skolen. (time first, verb second)
- Jeg lager matpakke til barna om morgenen før skolen. (subject first, verb second)
Both are grammatical. Starting with Om morgenen just emphasises the time of day a bit more.
Yes. Several word orders are possible, and all keep the same basic meaning. For example:
- Om morgenen lager jeg matpakke til barna før skolen.
- Om morgenen før skolen lager jeg matpakke til barna. (heavier focus on the whole time frame)
- Jeg lager matpakke til barna om morgenen før skolen.
- Jeg lager om morgenen matpakke til barna før skolen. (possible but more marked / less neutral)
Constraints to remember:
In a main clause, the finite verb must be second:
- Om morgenen lager jeg … (correct)
- ✗ Om morgenen jeg lager … (incorrect)
Multiple time expressions usually go from more general to more specific:
- Om morgenen før skolen sounds more natural than før skolen om morgenen.
Matpakke is literally mat (food) + pakke (package), but it’s also a very fixed everyday concept: a packed lunch as part of a daily routine.
Norwegian often drops the indefinite article with routine “meal-like” nouns when you talk about a general, repeated activity:
- Jeg lager middag. – I make dinner.
- Vi spiser frokost klokka sju. – We eat breakfast at seven.
By extension, matpakke behaves similarly in a habitual sentence:
- Jeg lager matpakke til barna. – I make packed lunch for the children.
You can say en matpakke if you want to highlight one specific lunch pack (e.g. contrasting one vs two), but for a general daily routine, article-less matpakke is very natural.
A matpakke is specifically a packed lunch, usually made with:
- slices of bread
- toppings like cheese, ham, leverpostei, etc.
- often wrapped in paper or put in a lunchbox
It’s not just “food” in general. It’s strongly associated with school and work lunches in Norway.
Compare:
- lage mat – to cook / make food (general)
- lage middag – to make dinner
- lage / smøre matpakke – to prepare a packed lunch
So your sentence is specifically about preparing the children’s packed lunches before school.
Til often marks a recipient – roughly “to/for someone” – especially with actions of giving, sending or preparing something for someone:
- Jeg lager matpakke til barna.
→ I make packed lunch for the children (they are the ones who will have it). - Jeg kjøper en gave til deg. – I buy a present for you.
For is possible in Norwegian, but it has a slightly different nuance – doing something on behalf of someone, or for their benefit in a more general sense. Here, til is the standard preposition: you prepare the lunch to/for them as recipients.
You can’t just say Jeg lager matpakke barna without til; that would be ungrammatical. You need the preposition to link matpakke to barna.
Barn (child) is a neuter noun with an irregular plural pattern:
- et barn – a child
- barnet – the child
- barn – children (indefinite plural)
- barna – the children (definite plural)
There is no form barner in standard Norwegian, and barnene exists in some dialects but is not standard Bokmål.
So in your sentence, barna simply means “the children”.
Several things going on here:
Definite form with time-related expressions
When Norwegians talk about typical daily contexts, they often use the definite form without a possessive:- etter skolen – after (the) school
- før frokost / før middagen – before breakfast / before the dinner
Før skolen is understood as “before (the time when) school starts / before the school day”.
No possessive needed
It’s normally obvious whose school we’re talking about (the children’s), so you don’t need deres.
A more explicit but longer version would be:- … før barna drar på skolen. – before the children go to school.
Why not før skole?
Bare skole here would sound unnatural. In this time-expression sense, you almost always use the definite: før skolen, etter skolen.
Norwegian does not have a separate continuous form like English “am making” vs “make”. The simple present lager covers both:
- Jeg lager matpakke nå.
→ I am making a packed lunch now. - Om morgenen lager jeg matpakke til barna.
→ I make / usually make a packed lunch in the morning.
Context tells you whether it’s a one-time ongoing action or a general habit. There is an expression holder på å lage (literally “am in the process of making”), but it’s used only when you really want to emphasise that something is going on right now:
- Jeg holder på å lage matpakke. – I’m in the middle of making a packed lunch.
Not exactly.
- lage mat means to cook / make food in general.
- lage matpakke is specifically to prepare a packed lunch. It usually suggests cold food (bread, toppings) prepared to be taken away, not cooking a hot meal.
If you wanted to say “In the morning I cook food for the children before school”, you’d say something like:
- Om morgenen lager jeg mat til barna før skolen.
In Norwegian, personal pronouns are not capitalised in the middle of a sentence. You only capitalise them if they are the first word of the sentence.
So:
- Jeg lager matpakke til barna. – at the beginning of a sentence, Jeg is capitalised.
- Om morgenen lager jeg matpakke til barna. – here, jeg is in the middle of the sentence, so it’s lowercase.
English is unusual in always writing I with a capital letter; Norwegian does not do that.