Vi vände om inom en timme.

Vände is the past tense of vända. So the sentence is talking about something that already happened.

A few forms of the verb are:

• infinitive: vända
• present: vänder
• past: vände
• supine: vänt

So Vi vände om means we turned around / we headed back in the past.

Vända om is a verb + particle combination. Swedish often makes meanings this way.

• vända = turn
• vända om = turn around, go back, head back the way you came

So the om changes the meaning. It is not just extra filler; it is part of the expression.

No. Swedish om has several different uses.

In this sentence, om is a particle belonging to the verb vända om.

Compare:

• Vi vände om. = We turned around.
• Jag vet inte om han kommer. = I don’t know if he is coming.
• Vi pratade om det. = We talked about it.

Same word, different job.

Inom en timme means at some point before one hour had passed. It gives a limit or deadline.

So it does not mean exactly after one hour. It means the turning back happened no later than one hour later.

You can think of it as:

• within an hour
• before an hour had passed

These are easy to confuse, but they mean different things:

• inom en timme = within an hour
  something happens before one hour has passed

• på en timme = in an hour / in the course of an hour
  often used for how long something took to complete

• om en timme = in an hour from now/then
  a point in time one hour later

• efter en timme = after an hour
  only once an hour has already passed

So Vi vände om inom en timme is about a latest time limit, not the duration of an action.

Because timme is an en-word in Swedish, not an ett-word.

So you say:

• en timme
• den här timmen
• flera timmar

This is something you mostly have to learn with each noun.

Yes. You can also say:

Inom en timme vände vi om.

That is still correct. Swedish main clauses follow the V2 rule, which means the finite verb usually comes in the second position.

So:

• Vi vände om inom en timme.
• Inom en timme vände vi om.

Both are grammatical. The second version gives a bit more focus to the time expression.

Usually it suggests a change of direction or heading back, often literally.

In many contexts, it means something like:

• turn around
• go back
• head back

Depending on context, it can also be understood more generally as reversing course or changing direction, not necessarily just making a physical turn on the spot. But the basic idea is that the movement or plan is reversed.