årenes

Årenes is the genitive plural form of the definite plural noun årene, meaning “the years,” and corresponds to the English expression “the years’.” It is used to denote possession or a relationship that pertains to the entire span of years rather than to a single year.

The base noun is år (year); its definite plural is årene, meaning “the years.” The genitive plural is formed by adding the genitive suffix -s to the definite plural, yielding årenes, the form used to express “the years’” or “of the years.” This construction is common in Norwegian Bokmål and Danish, and it appears in historical writing, statistics, and period-based descriptions.

In usage, årenes serves to attribute qualities, actions, or phenomena to a span of years. Examples include phrases like årenes utvikling (the development over the years) or årenes klima (the climate of the years). The form helps distinguish between events tied to a specific year and broader trends observed across multiple years.

Etymology and morphology reflect broader Scandinavian patterns in which the definite plural ends with -ene and the genitive plural adds -s to form the possessive. While closely related forms exist in neighboring languages, årenes is primarily encountered in Norwegian and Danish contexts when referring to the years of a given period. See also år and årene for related forms.