När solen gick ner frågade farmor om vi hade mer citron till teet.

Because Swedish follows the V2 rule in main clauses: the finite verb usually comes in the second position.

Here, När solen gick ner is placed first as a time clause. After that, the main clause begins, and the finite verb frågade must come before the subject farmor:

När solen gick ner | frågade | farmor ...

If you started directly with the subject, then you would say:

Farmor frågade om vi hade mer citron till teet.

So frågade farmor does not mean asked grandma here. It means grandma asked.

It is a subordinate time clause introduced by när, which means when.

• När = when
• solen = the sun
• gick ner = went down / set

So the whole clause means when the sun went down or as the sun was setting, depending on context.

A key thing to notice is that this clause sets the time for the main action in the sentence.

Because Swedish usually uses the definite form for things that are specific or already understood.

• sol = sun, a sun
• solen = the sun

In English, we also normally say the sun, not just sun, in a sentence like this. So solen is exactly what you would expect here.

Literally, gick means went, and ner means down. So gick ner literally means went down.

In this sentence, it is the normal way to say the sun went down or the sun set.

This is a very common Swedish particle verb:

• gå ner = go down

With the sun, it corresponds to English set:

• Solen gick ner = The sun set / The sun went down

Because fråga om can mean ask whether/if when it introduces an indirect yes/no question.

Here:

• frågade = asked
• om vi hade mer citron = whether/if we had more lemon

So frågade om means asked if.

This is different from another use of om, which can mean about:

• Hon frågade om vägen = She asked about the way / asked for directions

In your sentence, om clearly means if/whether, not about.

Farmor means paternal grandmother — your father’s mother.

Swedish distinguishes between the two grandmothers:

• farmor = father’s mother
• mormor = mother’s mother

English usually just says grandmother or grandma, so this can feel more specific than English.

Because the sentence is narrated in the past.

The main verb is frågade = asked, so the question being reported is also shifted into the past:

• frågade ... om vi hade ... = asked if we had ...

This is very similar to English:

• Direct question: Do we have more lemon?
• Reported in the past: She asked if we had more lemon.

So hade is the natural past-tense form here.

Because citron here is being treated more like an uncountable ingredient or substance, not as individual whole lemons.

• mer citron = more lemon
• fler citroner = more lemons

In context, the grandmother is almost certainly asking whether there is more lemon for use in the tea — for example lemon slices or lemon juice. English does something similar:

• Do we have more lemon for the tea? rather than
• Do we have more lemons for the tea?

Both can be possible in some contexts, but mer citron focuses on the ingredient, not the number of fruits.

Here, till means for.

So:

• till teet = for the tea

It means the lemon is intended to go with the tea.

This does not necessarily mean the lemon is already in the tea. It just means it is for use with the tea.

Other examples:

• socker till kaffet = sugar for the coffee
• mjölk till gröten = milk for the porridge

Because te is an ett-word, and its definite singular form is made with -et:

• ett te = a tea
• teet = the tea

Since the word already ends in e, adding -et creates teet.

This kind of spelling is normal in Swedish. The same thing happens with some other vowel-final nouns.

Yes, depending on the exact nuance in English.

När solen gick ner most directly means when the sun went down, but in natural English it could also be rendered as:

• as the sun went down
• when the sun was setting

The Swedish sentence itself does not strongly force one poetic nuance over another. The core idea is simply that the grandmother asked this at that time.

Yes, a little.

After om in an indirect question, Swedish uses normal subordinate clause word order, not the word order of a direct question.

So you get:

• om vi hade mer citron = if we had more lemon

Not:

• om hade vi mer citron

Compare:

• Direct question: Hade vi mer citron? = Did we have more lemon?
• Indirect question: ... om vi hade mer citron = ... if we had more lemon

That is very important in Swedish: indirect questions do not invert the verb and subject the way direct questions do.

A very literal version would be:

When the sun went down, grandma asked if we had more lemon for the tea.

That matches the Swedish structure quite closely:

• När = when
• solen gick ner = the sun went down
• frågade farmor = grandma asked
• om vi hade = if we had
• mer citron = more lemon
• till teet = for the tea

A more natural English version might vary slightly depending on style, but the Swedish grammar is very straightforward once you notice the word order and the indirect-question structure.