Possessive pronouns are those that tell of...well...possession. They include anything that has to do with ownership, like my, your, his, her, and so on.

Lucky for you, there is no distinction between forms like my and mine, your and yours, etc. in Swedish. You will, however, have to make the pronoun agree with the noun following it (this will make more sense after the section on nouns). For now, just know that there are two grammatical genders in Swedish and that the plural has its own form. This amounts to three possessive pronouns for most categories (e.g. 2nd person singular, 1st person plural, etc.).

Check out the table below for the full list of possessive pronouns.

A word on the difference between hans, hennes, hens, dess, and deras versus sin, sitt, and sina

This is often confusing for beginners to wrap their heads around, but we'll try to find an informational gateway into your head. Here are a few simple guidelines that should help you out:

1. At the beginning of a sentence, you will always use the former versions. It's "Hennes hus är stort" (Her house is big) and will never be "Sitt hus är stort."
2. Sin, sitt, and sina are reflexive possessive pronouns, which apart from being a mouthful, means that they refer back to someone or something that has already been mentioned, for example "Lukas gillar sin hund" (Lucas likes his dog) or "Sofia träffar sina vänner" (Sofia meets her friends).
3. Sin, sitt, and sina are used to refer to the subject's OWN thing(s), whereas the others, when used in a sub clause (that is, not like in guideline #1), are used to refer to ANOTHER individual's thing(s). For instance, consider the following sentence: "Maria gillar Anita, men Maria gillar inte Anitas mormor." (Maria likes Anita, but Maria does not like Anita's grandmother.) If we switch out the names for pronouns in the second clause (the phrase starting with "men," meaning but), what should the pronouns be? Take a second to think that through. The answer is: "Maria gillar Anita, men hon gillar inte hennes mormor." This ensures we still refer to Anita's grandmother. If instead, we said "Maria gillar Anita, men hon gillar inte sin mormor," we would be saying that Maria likes Anita but that she doesn't like her OWN grandmother. That would be a true tragedy.