When diving into genealogy (släktforskningen), you will frequently need to connect historical figures, documents, and locations. To say "whose" in Swedish, you use the word vars.
In everyday spoken Swedish, prepositions often drift to the end of a relative clause. However, in formal written Swedish—such as historical archives or literature—the preposition is placed directly before vars. This creates an elegant structure that perfectly mirrors English phrasing like "in whose," "by whose," or "from whose."
Preposition + Vars
To build this structure, use the following pattern:
- [Preposition] + vars + [Noun]
One of the most convenient rules in Swedish grammar is that vars is completely invariable. It never changes form, regardless of whether the noun it refers back to (or the noun it possesses) is an en-word, an ett-word, or plural.
| There was an ancestor in whose parish register the name was missing. | Det fanns en förfader i vars kyrkobok namnet saknades. |
| She found the correspondence from whose pages the truth emerged. | Hon hittade brevväxlingen ur vars sidor sanningen kom fram. |
| He was the emigrant by whose decision the whole extended family was affected. | Han var utvandraren av vars beslut hela släkten påverkades. |
Describing Places and Objects
While vars translates to "whose," it is not limited to people. You can use this exact same structure to describe inanimate objects, historical documents, or places like a croft (ett torp) or a native district (en hembygd).
| It seems to be an old family, about whose origin we know very little. | Det verkar vara en gammal släkt, om vars ursprung vi vet väldigt lite. |
| We are drawing the family tree, from whose roots we ourselves descend. | Vi ritar släktträdet, från vars rötter vi själva härstammar. |
| He walked along the road towards the croft, under whose floor the chest lay. | Han gick längs vägen mot torpet, under vars golv kistan låg. |