One of the many stereotypes about Swedes is that they aren’t always the most talkative. But one subject they’re more than willing to talk about is the weather In fact, Katja did a great job of putting together a couple of posts about starting conversations in Sweden, one is titled How to small talk in Swedish and the other is titled An all time favorite conversation starter 🙂. You should check out both of them.

With winter upon us though and Christmas just behind us, the weather has been an important topic of conversation for many. Mostly because people have been traveling and trying to get to wherever you need to be during a snow storm is not fun. Trust me. I once drove from Stockholm to Helsingborg in December during a snow storm with no heat in my car.  I ended up lighting small tea lights and keeping them on my dashboard to keep warm. I don’t recommend it. Fun tip one of those tea lights (known in Swedish as a värmeljus) will keep your car warm for several hours. Hence the värme part. Värme = warm.

But as anyone who has had to drive with tea lights in their car will tell you, when you get to where you’re going, you really need the vocabulary to complain about the weather you just traveled through. So with that in mind, here are a handful of nouns and verbs (and even an adjective) to help you talk about the winter weather you’re dealing with.