Learn Hardcore Swedish: Det gamla brevet påminner henne om ett fint minne från universitetet. - The old letter reminds her of a nice memory from the university.

Indefinite: ett brev = a letter
Definite (no adjective): brevet = the letter
With an adjective, you add a separate definite article that agrees in gender:
- den for common gender (en‑words): den gamla boken (the old book)
- det for neuter (ett‑words): det gamla brevet (the old letter)

So den gamla brevet is ungrammatical because den doesn’t match the neuter noun brev.

Why do we have both det and the ending -et in brevet? Isn’t that like saying “the the letter”?

This is called double definiteness, and it’s normal in Swedish when a definite noun has an adjective before it.

Pattern:

Without adjective:
- brevet = the letter
With adjective:
- det gamla brevet = the old letter

More examples:

boken (the book) → den nya boken (the new book)
huset (the house) → det stora huset (the big house)
bilarna (the cars) → de röda bilarna (the red cars)

So: article (den/det/de) + adjective + definite noun (with -en/-et/-n/-t/-na) is the normal structure. You can’t normally drop det here: *gamla brevet is wrong in standard Swedish.

Why is the adjective gamla here instead of gammal or gammalt?

Because gamla is the definite form of the adjective.

For gammal (old), the main forms are:

Indefinite singular, common gender (en‑words):
- en gammal bok (an old book)
Indefinite singular, neuter (ett‑words):
- ett gammalt brev (an old letter)
Indefinite plural (both genders):
- gamla böcker, gamla brev (old books, old letters)
Definite (singular and plural):
- den gamla boken (the old book)
- det gamla brevet (the old letter)
- de gamla böckerna/breven (the old books/letters)

In our sentence, brevet is definite, so the adjective must also take the definite form: gamla.

How would the beginning change if I wanted to say “An old letter reminds her …” instead of “The old letter …”?

Then you make the noun phrase indefinite:

Ett gammalt brev påminner henne om ett fint minne från universitetet.
= An old letter reminds her of a nice memory from university.

Changes compared to det gamla brevet:

Drop the definite article det
Use ett (indefinite neuter article)
Change the adjective to indefinite neuter: gammalt
Remove the definite ending -et on the noun: brev instead of brevet

Why is påminner followed by om here? Could we leave om out?

No, you need om in this meaning. The verb pattern is:

påminna någon om något
= remind someone of/about something

So:

Det gamla brevet påminner henne om ett fint minne …
= The old letter reminds her of a nice memory …

Some useful patterns with påminna:

Det påminner mig om dig. – It reminds me of you.
Påminn mig om att ringa mamma. – Remind me to call Mum.
Påminn mig att ringa mamma. – (also possible) Remind me to call Mum.

In the “remind someone of something” sense, om is required. Without it, the sentence feels incomplete or changes meaning.

Why is it henne and not hon?

Because henne is the object form (like English her), and here it is the object of the verb påminner.

Swedish personal pronouns (singular) work like this:

Subject forms:
- jag, du, han, hon, den/det
Object forms:
- mig, dig, honom, henne, den/det

Examples:

Hon läser brevet. – She reads the letter. (subject = hon)
Brevet påminner henne. – The letter reminds her. (object = henne)

So *Det gamla brevet påminner hon … is wrong; we need the object form henne.

Why is it henne and not sig?

Sig is a reflexive pronoun: it refers back to the subject of the sentence.

Hon påminner sig om ett fint minne.
= She reminds herself of a nice memory.

In your sentence, the subject is det gamla brevet (the old letter), not the woman. If you wrote:

Det gamla brevet påminner sig om ett fint minne …

then sig would refer to brevet – so the letter is reminding itself, which makes no sense.

We want “reminds her”, so we use the normal object pronoun henne.

Why is it ett fint minne and not en fint minne?

Because minne is also a neuter noun (ett‑word).

Indefinite: ett minne = a memory
Definite: minnet = the memory

Adjectives agree with the noun’s gender and definiteness:

en fin bok – a nice book (common gender)
ett fint minne – a nice memory (neuter)

So:

en fint minne is wrong (article and adjective don’t match the noun)
ett fint minne is correct: ett (neuter) + fint (indefinite neuter form) + minne (neuter noun).

Why does the adjective change to fint here, while it was gamla earlier? How do these adjective endings work?

You’re seeing two different situations:

Indefinite neuter singular → adjective usually gets -t
- ett fint minne – a nice memory
- ett stort hus – a big house
Definite (singular) or any plural → adjective usually gets -a
- det gamla brevet – the old letter
- den fina boken – the nice book
- de fina böckerna – the nice books
- de gamla breven – the old letters

So:

fint is the indefinite neuter form of fin.
gamla is the definite (and plural) form of gammal.

That’s why you get ett fint minne but det gamla brevet.

Why is it från universitetet and not just från universitet or with some extra article like från det universitetet?

A few things are going on:

Definite form with a suffix
- universitet (a university)
- universitetet (the university)
Swedish usually marks “the” with a suffix, not a separate word, so från universitetet literally means “from the university”.
No extra article before a simple definite noun
You normally don’t say *från det universitetet. A basic definite noun just uses the suffix:
- på universitetet, i skolan, på jobbet
  = at university, at school, at work
Difference from English usage
English often uses a bare noun: “from university”, “at school”. Swedish tends to use the definite form instead:
- från universitetet ≈ from university (in general, from her time at university)

So från universitetet is the normal way to say this; *från universitet is ungrammatical.

Can I change the word order, for example Det gamla brevet påminner om ett fint minne henne från universitetet?

No, that word order is wrong. The object pronoun henne has to come right after the verb (unless something is fronted for special emphasis).

Neutral word order is:

[Subject] [Verb] [Object] [Other parts]

So:

Det gamla brevet påminner henne om ett fint minne från universitetet.

Some variations are possible, especially for emphasis, but you don’t normally split henne from the verb phrase like this:

Om ett fint minne från universitetet påminner det gamla brevet henne.
(grammatical but very marked, poetic/literary word order)

For everyday Swedish, keep:

påminner henne om …, not påminner om … henne ….