Let’s start with the basics. There are a few words for cold in Swedish. Kyla is a noun meaning ‘the cold’, as in kylan är på väg or ‘the cold is on its way’, while kall is the adjective – kallt väder is ‘cold weather’. You might also come across the word köld, another noun for cold (usually temperatures below freezing), which in some cases also refers to frost.
The word kyla can also be used as a verb – att kyla: to cool down, while the adjective form is kyligt, which roughly translates as ‘chilly’.
You don’t have to spend long learning Swedish to discover how much Swedes love making compound words to strengthen the meaning of something, and the cold is no exception. Some of the most common cold-related compound words are probably svinkallt (literally ‘pig cold’), iskallt (a more logical ‘ice cold’) and jättekallt (‘giant cold’). There’s even a word for a cold and overcast day – gråkall or ‘grey cold’.
There are also multiple different types of kyla. Råkyla or ‘raw cold’ is the kind of biting chill which feels like it chills you all the way down to your bones, while iskyla means ‘ice cold’ (as a noun this time rather than the verb form above). Kyla is also often combined with a season or time of day, for example höst- or vinterkyla would be the autumn or winter cold, while afton- or nattkyla is the evening or night cold.
Ruggigt is another word you might hear used to describe the weather on a cold day. This word is usually used in situations where the weather is particularly unpleasant, perhaps because of strong winds, rain or a heavy snowstorm which makes you want to spend as little time outdoors as possible. It’s more or less synonymous with ruskigt.
In contrast to ruskigt and ruggigt, the word for days which are cold in a nice way – on an autumn morning, for example – is krispigt (‘crispy’) which refers to a day with bright sunshine, fresh air and a bit of a chill.
There are also a number of different words for various kinds of cold-related precipitation, such as slask ('slush'), snöblandat regn ('snow-mixed rain', or sleet), and hagel ('hail'). That's without mentioning all the different words for snow, including blötsnö (wet snow), pudersnö (powder snow), nysnö (new snow) and snömodd (slush, but often mixed with mud and not as far along in the melting process as slask).
Kramsnö literally translates as "squeeze snow" and refers to snow that is just wet and firm enough to make excellent snöbollar (snow balls). Skare refers to the crisp surface on snow, which is formed when the top layer melts and then freezes again. Finally, there's dagsmeja, when the sun is strong enough to melt the snow or ice, despite it still being below freezing.
There are surprisingly few words for wind ‒ you'd probably just use blåst or vind.
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