Breakdown of Vandrarhemmet låg nära kusten.
Questions & Answers about Vandrarhemmet låg nära kusten.
Because Swedish usually writes compound nouns as a single word.
Here, vandrarhem means hostel or youth hostel, and then -et is added to make it definite:
- ett vandrarhem = a hostel
- vandrarhemmet = the hostel
So Swedish does not separate this into something like vandrar hemmet.
It is the definite article attached to the end of the noun. In English, you would use the before the noun, but in Swedish it is often added as a suffix.
- ett vandrarhem = a hostel
- vandrarhemmet = the hostel
The ending -et shows that vandrarhem is a neuter noun (an ett noun).
Låg is the past tense of ligga. Literally, ligga often means lie, but Swedish also uses it very commonly for the location of places, buildings, towns, islands, and so on.
So in this sentence, låg means something like:
- was located
- lay
- was situated
It does not mean the hostel was physically lying down in some strange way. This is just normal Swedish usage for location.