hvor

Hvor is a function word used in Danish and Norwegian to express location, meaning "where." It also appears in constructions that express degree with adjectives, similar to how "how" is used in English in certain contexts. In everyday speech, it is common in questions about place, in relative clauses, and in exclamatory phrases.

In questions, hvor typically appears at the beginning of the clause: Hvor bor du? (Where do you live?) Hvor mange bøker har du? (How many books do you have?) In relative clauses, it can link a description to a noun: Det er stedet hvor jeg møtte ham. (That is the place where I met him.) In exclamatory or emphatic use, it can intensify an adjective: Hvor god den filmen var! (What a good film that was!) In Norwegian, the same form is used in Bokmål; in some dialects and in Nynorsk, variants such as kvar may be preferred for "where."

Etymology traces tilbake to Old Norse, with forms like hvar, related to other Germanic languages’ words for location. The English word where, and the Scandinavian hvor/hvar forms, share common ancestry within the Germanic language family.

See also: language variations between Danish and Norwegian usage, and related question words such as hvorfor (why) and hvordan (how).