2748: A Norwegian Goodbye Jun 29, 2024

A typical Norwegian farewell is the phrase “ha det” which literally translates as “have it”. This may sound fairly weird, but it is formed in a similar way to the English ‘bye’ and for that matter ‘goodbye’. At one point, the phrase in Norwegian was “ha det bra” literally “have it good” (i.e. “be well” or “have a good [day]”) from the French “brave”, wherein the word has more of a sense of ‘strong’, than ‘brave’ does in English. Just as “God be with you / ye” is shortened to ‘goodbye’ and lost its original meaning, “ha det” has also become genericized, no longer really part of the full phrase.