When telling a story, it isn't enough to say something happened. You need to say when it happened. Swedish has a few key tools for marking time in the past. We'll look at how to say something happened a certain amount of time ago, and how to describe for how long an action took place.

The most common way to say "ago" in Swedish is with the construction "för ... sedan". You place the amount of time between the two words. It's a straightforward equivalent to the English structure.

• för en timme sedan (an hour ago)
• för tre dagar sedan (three days ago)
• för tio år sedan (ten years ago)

This phrase usually appears at the beginning or end of a sentence. Placing it at the start adds a little emphasis to the time element.

Notice how the word order changes in the second example. When a time phrase starts the sentence, the verb must come right after it, before the subject. This is a common rule in Swedish sentence structure called V2 word order. The verb always tries to be in the second position.

To describe how long a completed action lasted in the past, you use the preposition i, which translates to "for" in this context. This is often paired with verbs in the preterite (past) tense to show the action is finished.

Using i specifies a self-contained block of time during which something occurred. The action started and ended within that period. This is different from using i with the present tense, which would imply an action that is still ongoing.

Besides describing duration, i is also part of many fixed expressions for the past. You just have to memorise these. For example, 'yesterday' is i går.

These phrases function just like för ... sedan in that they can be placed at the beginning or end of a sentence. And remember the V2 rule if you start a sentence with them.

• Jag såg filmen i går. (I saw the film yesterday.)
• I går såg jag filmen. (Yesterday, I saw the film.)

Now you have the tools to pinpoint when events happened and describe how long they lasted.