Days, months, and dates in Swedish
The Swedish days of the week and months of the year (all lowercase), how to say dates and birthdays, and why Thursday belongs to Thor.
Two facts organise this whole topic. First: Swedish writes days and months in lowercase, always, and it looks wrong to English eyes for about a week. Second: the days of the week are a little tour of Norse mythology that Swedes themselves mostly stopped noticing.
The days of the week
Yes, bath day: Old Norse lögardag, the day the Vikings washed. And yes, English Wednesday and Thursday come from the same gods; Swedish just spells them more transparently.
To say something happens on a coming day, use på: Vi ses på måndag, see you on Monday. The word for week is en vecka, and the weekend is en helg. (Time expressions like "last Monday" and "on Fridays" have their own small system, covered in the time prepositions article.)
The months
All lowercase, all close to their English cousins:
januari, februari, mars, april, maj, juni, juli, augusti, september, oktober, november, december
The only spellings that regularly trip learners are maj (no y) and augusti (ends in i). Months take i: Jag fyller år i maj, my birthday is in May.
While we're at it, the four seasons: vår (spring), sommar (summer), höst (autumn), vinter (winter).
Dates and ordinals
Spoken dates use ordinal numbers with den: den femte maj, the fifth of May. The ordinals you need first:
From 13th to 19th, add -de to the number (trettonde, fjortonde...). The tens end in -nde (tjugonde, twentieth), and compounds reuse the small ordinals: tjugoförsta, twenty-first.
In writing, Swedes usually skip the ordinal entirely: "5 maj" or "den 5 maj". Official contexts use the ISO format 2026-05-05, year first, which is why Swedish paperwork feels like it was designed by programmers.
Two date questions worth learning as chunks:
- Vilket datum är det i dag? What's the date today?
- När fyller du år? When is your birthday? (Literally: when do you fill years. Fylla år is the standard idiom for having a birthday.)
Hear it
Five sentences about days and dates.
Swedish
I dag är det fredag.
Vi ses på måndag.
Jag fyller år den femte maj.
Sverige har fyra årstider.
December är en mörk månad.
English
Today is Friday.
See you on Monday.
My birthday is the fifth of May.
Sweden has four seasons.
December is a dark month.