skyddades

Skydades is a Swedish verb form functioning as the preterite passive of the verb skydda, meaning to protect. It is used to indicate that something or someone was protected in the past, often by an agent introduced with av, such as “av myndigheterna” (by the authorities).

In practice, skyddades marks the subject as having received protection during a past event. The synthetic passive in Swedish is formed by adding the ending -des to the verb stem, as in skyddades. The passive voice can also be expressed with the periphrastic construction bli + past participle, for example blev skyddad or blev skyddade, depending on number and gender, but skyddades remains the standard form for the simple past passive in many contexts.

Usage and style: skyddades appears frequently in historical writing, legal or policy reports, and descriptive prose where protection or safeguarding is described as having occurred in the past. It is often used when the doer of the protecting action is unknown or not emphasized, aligning with passive voice conventions in Swedish.

Related forms include skydda (to protect) in its active present tense, skyddad (past participle used as an adjective, e.g., skyddad byggnad), and the present passive skyddas (is protected). The language allows both synthetic (des) and periphrastic (bli + past participle) passes depending on emphasis and register.

In sum, skyddades is a normative, concise way to express that protection occurred in the past within Swedish prose, aligning with standard passive-voice usage and common legal-historical phrasing.