Learn Hardcore Swedish: Det är stolen som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor på. - It is the chair that the guests always put their bags on.

Basic sentence: Gästerna lägger alltid sina väskor på stolen.
= The guests always put their bags on the chair.
Cleft (emphasizing the chair): Det är stolen som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor på.
= It is the chair that the guests always put their bags on.

Det here is a “dummy” pronoun (like English it in It is John who…). You can’t drop it — just saying Stolen som gästerna… would be ungrammatical as a main clause. The pattern is:

Det är + [focused element] + som + [rest of clause]

What exactly does som do in this sentence?

Som is a relative pronoun here, introducing a relative clause that describes stolen:

stolen = the chair
som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor på = that the guests always put their bags on

So som here corresponds roughly to English that or which:

It is the chair *that the guests always put their bags on.*

In Swedish:

som is used for both people and things (unlike English who/that/which).
In this cleft structure Det är X som …, you basically always use som.

Why is it stolen and not stol? What’s going on with the definite ending?

Swedish usually marks definiteness with an ending on the noun:

stol = chair (indefinite, “a chair”)
stolen = the chair (definite, “the chair”)

Here, you are talking about a specific, known chair — the one that the guests always use for their bags. So Swedish requires the definite form stolen.

Compare:

Det är en stol som gästerna lägger sina väskor på.
= It is a chair that the guests put their bags on. (some unspecified chair)
Det är stolen som gästerna lägger sina väskor på.
= It is the chair that the guests put their bags on. (a particular one we both know about)

Why is the preposition på at the end: lägger sina väskor på? Could we say Det är stolen på som…?

You can’t say stolen på som… — that’s wrong word order.

Swedish allows preposition stranding in relative clauses, similar to spoken English:

English: It’s the chair that the guests put their bags *on.*
Swedish: Det är stolen som gästerna lägger sina väskor på.

So in the relative clause som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor på, på stays with the verb phrase lägger … på, not directly after stolen.

You could also front the preposition, but then you’d typically move the prepositional phrase as a whole:

Det är på stolen som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor.
= It is on the chair that the guests always put their bags.

Both are correct; the original version focuses on stolen (the chair itself), the second one focuses more on på stolen (the location).

Could I say Det är på stolen där gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor instead of using som?

That sounds wrong in standard Swedish. You don’t use där in this cleft construction the way you might use where in English.

Incorrect: Det är på stolen där gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor.
Correct options:
- Det är stolen som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor på.
- Det är på stolen som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor.

Där means “there/where” and can introduce a kind of relative clause, but not in this structure. Here, Swedish strongly prefers som as the relative marker.

What’s the difference between gäster and gästerna here? Why is it gästerna?

gäster = guests (indefinite plural, “(some) guests”)
gästerna = the guests (definite plural, “the guests”)

In this sentence, you’re referring to a known group of guests in a particular context (for example, guests in your house, in your hotel, etc.), so Swedish uses the definite form:

gästerna = those particular guests we’re talking about

If you said:

Det är stolen som gäster alltid lägger sina väskor på.

it would sound like “It is the chair that guests (in general, any guests) always put their bags on,” which is possible but feels more generic and less natural in many contexts than gästerna.

Why is it lägger? What’s the difference between lägga, ställa, and sätta?

Swedish has different verbs for “put” depending on the final position of the object:

lägga (lägger, lade, lagt) – to lay, put something in a lying/horizontal position
ställa (ställer, ställde, ställt) – to put/place something in a standing/vertical position
sätta (sätter, satte, satt) – to set, often for sitting things or placing in a more fixed way

Bags are usually thought of as being put down in a more “lying” way, so lägga is natural:

Gästerna lägger sina väskor på stolen.
= The guests put (lay) their bags on the chair.

You might use ställa for e.g. bottles, vases, or other things that stand upright:

Han ställer flaskan på bordet.
= He puts/stands the bottle on the table.

Why is it sina väskor and not deras väskor?

This is about the difference between sina (reflexive) and deras (non‑reflexive) possessive pronouns.

sina refers back to the subject of the same clause.
deras refers to someone else’s things.

In the clause som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor på:

Subject = gästerna
Possessive = sina (bags belonging to the same guests)

So sina väskor means “their own bags” (the guests’ bags).

If you said deras väskor here, it would usually mean that the guests put someone else’s bags on the chair, not their own. That would change the meaning.

Why sina and not sin or sitt?

Sin/sitt/sina all mean “one’s own / his own / her own / their own,” but they agree with the noun they describe, not with the owner.

sin – with an en‑word in singular
sitt – with an ett‑word in singular
sina – with any plural noun

Here, väskor is plural:

en väska → väskor
plural → so you must use sina

Examples:

Gästerna lägger sin väska på stolen. (one bag each)
Gästerna lägger sina väskor på stolen. (multiple bags)

Can I just say Gästerna lägger alltid sina väskor på stolen? How is that different from the original sentence?

Yes, that’s a perfectly correct and very natural sentence:

Gästerna lägger alltid sina väskor på stolen.
= The guests always put their bags on the chair.

The difference is mainly focus:

Gästerna lägger alltid sina väskor på stolen.
– a neutral statement about what the guests do.
Det är stolen som gästerna alltid lägger sina väskor på.
– emphasizes stolen:
“It’s that chair (not some other place) that the guests always put their bags on.”

So you use the cleft form when you want to highlight or contrast a specific part (here, the chair).

Why isn’t there any article like den stolen? In English we say “the chair”.

In Swedish, the definite article is normally attached as an ending to the noun:

stol → stolen
bok → boken
rum → rummet

You only add a separate article (den, det, de) before the noun in certain cases, for example when the noun has an adjective:

den stora stolen = the big chair
den här stolen = this chair

But with a simple, bare noun like here, you just use the suffixed form:

stolen = the chair (no extra den needed)