Breakdown of Etter noen vintre blir vi vant til å kjøre med vinterdekk i mørketiden.
Questions & Answers about Etter noen vintre blir vi vant til å kjøre med vinterdekk i mørketiden.
The noun vinter has an irregular plural in Norwegian:
- singular indefinite: en vinter – “a winter”
- singular definite: vinteren – “the winter”
- plural indefinite: vintre – “winters”
- plural definite: vintrene – “the winters”
So after noen (“some / a few”), you must use the correct plural form vintre, not vintere or vintrer, which are ungrammatical here.
In etter noen vintre, noen means “a few” or “several”, and it’s intentionally vague. It suggests “not just one, but a small number of winters”.
You could say:
- etter et par vintre – “after a couple of winters” (more specific: about two)
- etter flere vintre – “after several winters” (emphasizes “more than a few”)
Noen is the most neutral choice when you just want to say “some / a few” without being precise.
Both word orders are possible:
- Etter noen vintre blir vi vant til å kjøre med vinterdekk i mørketiden.
- Vi blir vant til å kjøre med vinterdekk i mørketiden etter noen vintre.
Norwegian main clauses have the V2 rule: the conjugated verb must be in second position. In the original sentence:
- Etter noen vintre (time expression – position 1)
- blir (verb – position 2)
- vi (subject – position 3)
Starting with a time expression is very common and sounds natural, but putting it later is also correct. The meaning doesn’t change; it’s just a stylistic choice.
Norwegian often uses the present tense to talk about:
- general truths
- regular habits
- future events understood from context
Here, blir describes what generally happens after a few winters, not a specific future event. So:
- Etter noen vintre blir vi vant til …
≈ “After a few winters, we (generally) get used to …”
You could say vil bli vant til to focus more strongly on the future result, but the present tense is more natural for a general statement like this.
- bli vant til = “to become/get used to” (the process of getting used to something)
- være / være vant til = “to be used to” (the state of already being accustomed)
In the sentence:
- blir vi vant til å kjøre … – “we get used to driving …” (over time)
Compare:
- Nå er vi vant til å kjøre med vinterdekk.
“Now we are used to driving with winter tyres.”
So bli vant til focuses on the change, er vant til on the end result.
You need both:
- vant til – vant is an adjective meaning “used (to) / accustomed (to)”, and it always takes the preposition til.
- å kjøre – å is the infinitive marker before verbs (“to drive”).
So the structure is:
- vant (adjective) + til (preposition) + å kjøre (infinitive)
You cannot drop:
- til, because vant requires til: vant til noe / vant til å gjøre noe
- å, because Norwegian normally needs å in front of an infinitive after this kind of construction.
Therefore, vant til å kjøre is the only correct form here.
In Norwegian, med is often used to express “with (using / equipped with) something”. Common patterns:
- kjøre med vinterdekk – “drive with winter tyres on (the car)”
- kjøre med briller – “drive wearing glasses”
- gå med sekk – “walk with a backpack on”
So med shows that winter tyres are the equipment you’re using when you drive.
You’ll also hear kjøre på vinterdekk, literally “drive on winter tyres”. Both med and på are used, and both are idiomatic; med is a bit more neutral and fits very well here.
Vinterdekk is a neuter noun that has the same form in singular and plural in the indefinite:
- singular indefinite: et vinterdekk – “a winter tyre”
- plural indefinite: vinterdekk – “winter tyres”
- singular definite: vinterdekket – “the winter tyre”
- plural definite: vinterdekkene – “the winter tyres”
In kjøre med vinterdekk, context tells you it’s plural (“with winter tyres”). The form happens to be identical to the singular indefinite, which is normal for many neuter nouns in Norwegian (e.g. et hus / hus).
Mørketiden literally means “the dark time”. Culturally, it usually refers to the period in the far north of Norway when:
- the sun doesn’t come above the horizon (polar night), or
- the days are extremely short and it’s dark most of the time.
Forms of the noun:
- mørketid – “dark time” (indefinite)
- mørketiden – “the dark time” (definite)
People normally talk about this specific, recognized seasonal period, so they almost always use the definite form: i mørketiden = “during the (winter) dark season”.
It can also be used more loosely or metaphorically, but the default is this definite, seasonal meaning.
All of these are possible, but they don’t mean exactly the same:
- i mørketiden – focuses on the dark season (especially in northern areas), the time when it is mostly dark. It says nothing explicitly about temperatures, just light.
- om vinteren / på vinteren – “in (the) winter”, focusing on the season as such (cold, snow, etc.), not specifically the darkness.
So i mørketiden gives a stronger image of darkness and long nights, which fits well with driving with winter tyres.
Yes, you could say:
- Etter noen vintre blir man vant til å kjøre med vinterdekk i mørketiden.
Differences:
- vi – “we”; includes the speaker and some group (e.g. “we who live here”). It feels more personal and involves the speaker’s own experience.
- man – impersonal “one / you / people in general”; it makes the statement more general, like a generic observation about people.
The original vi suggests “we (e.g. Norwegians / people living here) get used to it after a few winters.” Using man makes it a broader generalization.