Vädra is a word you’ll hear a lot in Sweden during the spring and summer in particular. It’s the verbal form of väder, the word for weather, and refers to airing out or ventilating a room.

Väder originally comes from the Old Swedish term veðr and is related to the equivalent words in many other languages: English “weather”, German Wetter, Danish vejr, and Dutch weer, to name a few.

In older forms of most of these languages, including Swedish, väder was used specifically to refer to windy and/or rainy weather, which is where vädra comes from.

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You can use vädra in a few different ways. It can describe opening a window to replace old, stale air with fresh air, and it can similarly be used to refer to hanging something outside, like clothing or bedding, to freshen it up.

Swedes often consider it important to vädra, with good air quality believed to be important for health, so don’t be surprised if you see your Swedish friends or family airing out their homes and letting cold, fresh air in even in the depths of winter.

You might also see vädra used more metaphorically to describe someone debating something, literally “airing out” their opinions. This is similar to “venting” in English, as well as the phrase “airing out your dirty laundry in public”, which usually refers to someone holding a discussion about something unpleasant or private in front of other people.

It also exists in the word väderkorn, which literally translates as “weather grain”, another word for your sense of smell (although most people would say luktsinne). You might say that a dog has utmärkt väderkorn, or use it figuratively to describe someone who is good at finding things out, similar to “sniffing out” a good story.

Example sentences:

Usch, vi behöver vädra härinne, det luktar unket.

Ugh, we need to air this room out, it smells musty.

Väljarna vädrade sitt missnöje med regeringen.

The voters aired out their dissatisfaction with the government.