Learn Hardcore Swedish: För tre år sedan jobbade han som sjuksköterska i ett annat land. - Three years ago he worked as a nurse in another country.

In sentences like this one, you should keep both:
För tre år sedan jobbade han … ✅ (natural)
Tre år sedan jobbade han … ❌ (sounds wrong)
You do not use för when you say “It’s three years since …”:
Det är tre år sedan vi träffades. (not för tre år sedan)

So: with this sentence structure, learn för … sedan as a fixed pattern for “X time ago.”

Can för tre år sedan go at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning?

Yes. Time expressions are flexible in Swedish.

All of these are grammatical, with only slight differences in emphasis:

För tre år sedan jobbade han som sjuksköterska i ett annat land.
(Emphasis: when this was true – three years ago.)
Han jobbade som sjuksköterska i ett annat land för tre år sedan.
(More neutral; time info comes at the end.)
Han jobbade för tre år sedan som sjuksköterska i ett annat land.
(Also possible, but less common; can sound a bit clunky.)

Word‑order rule to remember: in a main clause, the finite verb (jobbade) must be in second position:

För tre år sedan (first element) + jobbade (second) + han (third) …

Why is it jobbade and not something like jobbat or jobba?

Jobbade is the past tense (preterite) of the verb jobba.

Basic forms of jobba:

att jobba – to work
jobbar – work / is working (present)
jobbade – worked (past)
har jobbat – has worked / have worked (present perfect)

In this sentence we’re talking about a finished situation in the past (“three years ago”), so Swedish uses the simple past:

jobbade = “worked”

What’s the difference between jobba and arbeta? Could the sentence use arbetade instead?

Both mean “to work”:

jobba – more informal/colloquial, very common in speech
arbeta – more formal, used in writing, official contexts, job ads, etc.

Your sentence could also be:

För tre år sedan arbetade han som sjuksköterska i ett annat land.

That is grammatically fine, just a bit more formal. In everyday speech, jobbade is more typical.

Why do you need som in jobbade han som sjuksköterska? Why not just jobbade han sjuksköterska?

In Swedish, when you say “work as [a profession]”, you almost always use som:

jobba som läkare – work as a doctor
jobba som lärare – work as a teacher
jobba som sjuksköterska – work as a nurse

If you say jobbade han sjuksköterska, it sounds ungrammatical or foreign.
Som here means “as” (in the sense of “in the role of”) and is required.

Why is there no article before sjuksköterska? Why not som en sjuksköterska?

With professions, roles, and nationalities, Swedish normally drops the indefinite article when it’s about what someone is/does:

Han är läkare. – He is a doctor. (not en läkare)
Hon är lärare. – She is a teacher.
Han jobbade som sjuksköterska. – He worked as a nurse.

You can use en sjuksköterska in other contexts:

Jag såg en sjuksköterska. – I saw a nurse. (a specific, but unknown person)

But after vara (to be) and jobba/arbeta som, you normally omit the article when it’s a profession or similar role.

The word sjuksköterska looks feminine. Can it really refer to a man (han) as in this sentence?

Yes. Sjuksköterska means “nurse” regardless of the person’s gender.

Historically, the ending -ska is associated with feminine forms, but in modern Swedish:

en sjuksköterska – a nurse (any gender)
sjuksköterskor – nurses

If you really need to emphasize gender, you can say:

en manlig sjuksköterska – a male nurse
en kvinnlig sjuksköterska – a female nurse

But normally sjuksköterska is treated as gender‑neutral for the profession.

Is år singular or plural in tre år? Why doesn’t it change form?

År is a bit special. For the noun år (year):

ett år – one year (singular, indefinite)
tre år – three years (plural, indefinite)
året – the year (singular, definite)
åren – the years (plural, definite)

So the indefinite form is the same in singular and plural:

1 år, 2 år, 10 år – all use år, not årer or anything else.

Why is it ett annat land and not en annat land?

In Swedish, the indefinite article en/ett depends on the grammatical gender of the noun:

en
- common gender noun: en bil (a car), en bok (a book)
ett
- neuter noun: ett hus (a house), ett land (a country)

Land is a neuter noun, so:

ett land – a country
det här landet – this country
andra länder – other countries

The adjective annan (“other/another”) must agree with the noun:

ett annat land – another country (neuter singular)
en annan stad – another city (common gender singular)
andra länder – other countries (plural form andra)

Why do you use i in i ett annat land and not på?

Swedish has some fairly fixed patterns with i and på, especially for geography.

For countries, cities, and most larger places, you normally use i:

i Sverige – in Sweden
i Tyskland – in Germany
i ett annat land – in another country
i Stockholm – in Stockholm

You often use på with:

islands: på Island, på Gotland
some areas/regions: på landet (in the countryside), på kontoret (at the office), på sjukhuset (at the hospital)

So i ett annat land is the standard choice here.

Could the sentence use hen instead of han? What’s the difference?

Yes, grammatically you could say:

För tre år sedan jobbade hen som sjuksköterska i ett annat land.

Differences:

han – “he” (male)
hon – “she” (female)
hen – gender‑neutral pronoun (“they” in the singular sense)

Hen is widely understood and used in modern Swedish, especially:

when gender is unknown or irrelevant
in inclusive language
for people who identify outside the binary

In many neutral examples and textbooks, though, you’ll still often see han or hon.

How would this sentence look as a yes/no question in Swedish? Does the word order change?

Yes, Swedish also changes word order in questions.

Statement:

För tre år sedan jobbade han som sjuksköterska i ett annat land.

Yes/no question:

Jobbade han som sjuksköterska i ett annat land för tre år sedan?
(Verb jobbade comes first.)

The main pattern for a yes/no question:

Verb + subject + rest of the sentence

So you don’t add “do/does/did” like in English; you just invert verb and subject.

Could you use har jobbat instead of jobbade here?

You could, but it would usually change the meaning slightly.

För tre år sedan jobbade han som sjuksköterska …
→ Focus on a finished situation in the past at that time.
För tre år sedan har han jobbat som sjuksköterska …
→ This sounds odd/wrong in standard Swedish.

Swedish tends to use the simple past (preterite) with för … sedan:

För tre år sedan flyttade jag. – I moved three years ago.
För tre år sedan jobbade han … – He worked three years ago.

The present perfect har jobbat is more like English “has worked” and is used when the past has a clear connection to the present, without a specific “X years ago” time marker.