Breakdown of Var och en sätter sig i sin hytt.
i
in
sätta sig
to sit down
sin
his/her/its/their own (en-word)
var och en
each one
hytten
the cabin
Questions & Answers about Var och en sätter sig i sin hytt.
Why use var och en here instead of alla (everyone)?
Var och en emphasizes the individuals within a group, meaning 'each one' or 'every single one'. Alla refers to the group as a whole. Because everyone is going to their own separate cabin, var och en highlights this individual action.
The English translation says 'their cabin', so why do we use sin instead of deras?
In English, 'their' is often used as a singular gender-neutral pronoun. In Swedish, var och en is grammatically singular. Since the subject is doing the action involving their own cabin, we use the singular reflexive possessive sin. If you used deras here, it would refer to a plural group and mean they were sitting in someone else's cabin!
Why is sig needed after sätter?
The Swedish verb for 'to sit down' is reflexive: att sätta sig (literally 'to set oneself'). Because the subject var och en acts as a third-person singular pronoun, it takes the matching third-person reflexive pronoun sig. Without sig, sätter would just mean placing an object down.
Would the phrase change if we were talking about an ett-word instead of people?
Yes! When referring back to a specific group of ett-words (like ett fönster or ett bord), you use the matching form vart och ett. However, when referring to people in general, as we are in this sentence, you always use the en-word form var och en.
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