(Picture by ELG21 from Pixabay; no copyright.) Hei! Hvordan går det med deg? Jeg håper du har det bra… (Hi, how are you doing? I hope you’re doing fine…) Learning any language takes a lot of time and work. Sometimes it gets a little too technical with all the details you need to remember: Grammar, uttale (pronunciation) and what not. Below is a small collection of phrases that might be useful. (I’m sure some of them have been mentioned before in this blog, but not in the same post!)   Hva heter du? (What is your name?) Jeg heter Ola. (My name is Ola.) Vi er på ferie i Norge. (We’re on h ..read more

(Picture courtesy of monicore from Pixabay; no copyright.) Since you read this blog last month, a horrible krig [kreeg] (war) has broken out in the midst of Europa. Let’s all hope and wish it will end as soon and as peacefully as humanly possible. Verden trenger fred. (The world needs peace.) And we need to be able to communicate respectfully and try to understand each other, even if we don’t always agree – isn’t that why we’re language learners, after all? Learning, however, isn’t easy when your mind is full of frykt (fear). Focusing on nice and even nerdy things is, I think, the way forwar ..read more

(Illustrative photo courtesy of Michael Hiemstra at Flickr, CC License, no copyright.) Komma er rare. (Commas are strange.) Du skriver dem, men du hører dem ikke. (You write them, but you can’t hear them.) Well, sometimes you do hear them, as little pause/r (breaks) when people talk. In written Norwegian, a comma might be a matter of life and death, so let’s take a crash course!1 As in English, you use commas in order to avoid having multiple ”ands” in lists. Instead of ”saft og vafler og smør og sukker og syltetøy” (juice and waffles and butter and sugar and jam) you replace every og, excep ..read more

(Photo by Jona02 from Pixabay; no copyright.) Hurra, det er jul! (Hooray, it’s Christmas!) For billions of people, that means glede (joy) and spending time with familien (the family). But what is special about the høytid (feast, literally ’high time’) in Norway? Jul [yool] is a very old tradition in Norge – in fact, even the Vikings had a party this time of year! They called it jól [yohl], and it was a celebration of vintersolverv (winter solstice): From now on, the days would get longer. After the Viking Age, the ancient jul was replaced by a kristen fest (Christian festival) celebrating th ..read more

(Photo courtesy of Noel Bauza from Pixabay; no copyright.) North of the Arctic Circle, there’s no sunrise in the winter sky. But do Northern Norwegians really live in total darkness? I asked Bjørn Farbu – a doctor until recently residing in Harstad1 – about life in mørketida (the dark season). What brought you to Nord-Norge (Northern Norway)? My girlfriend is from Tromsø. We met in Trondheim and lived there for several years before moving to Harstad, a small town south of Tromsø. I already had an appreciation for fjellene og naturen i Nord-Norge (the mountains and the nature). Furthermore, t ..read more

(Picture by ELG21 from Pixabay; no copyright.) Hei! Hvordan går det med deg? Jeg håper du har det bra… (Hi, how are you doing? I hope you’re doing fine…) Learning any language takes a lot of time and work. Sometimes it gets a little too technical with all the details you need to remember: Grammar, uttale (pronunciation) and what not. Below is a small collection of phrases that might be useful. (I’m sure some of them have been mentioned before in this blog, but not in the same post!)   Hva heter du? (What is your name?) Jeg heter Ola. (My name is Ola.) Vi er på ferie i Norge. (We’re on h ..read more

(Picture courtesy of monicore from Pixabay; no copyright.) Since you read this blog last month, a horrible krig [kreeg] (war) has broken out in the midst of Europa. Let’s all hope and wish it will end as soon and as peacefully as humanly possible. Verden trenger fred. (The world needs peace.) And we need to be able to communicate respectfully and try to understand each other, even if we don’t always agree – isn’t that why we’re language learners, after all? Learning, however, isn’t easy when your mind is full of frykt (fear). Focusing on nice and even nerdy things is, I think, the way forwar ..read more

(Illustrative photo courtesy of Michael Hiemstra at Flickr, CC License, no copyright.) Komma er rare. (Commas are strange.) Du skriver dem, men du hører dem ikke. (You write them, but you can’t hear them.) Well, sometimes you do hear them, as little pause/r (breaks) when people talk. In written Norwegian, a comma might be a matter of life and death, so let’s take a crash course!1 As in English, you use commas in order to avoid having multiple ”ands” in lists. Instead of ”saft og vafler og smør og sukker og syltetøy” (juice and waffles and butter and sugar and jam) you replace every og, excep ..read more

(Photo by Jona02 from Pixabay; no copyright.) Hurra, det er jul! (Hooray, it’s Christmas!) For billions of people, that means glede (joy) and spending time with familien (the family). But what is special about the høytid (feast, literally ’high time’) in Norway? Jul [yool] is a very old tradition in Norge – in fact, even the Vikings had a party this time of year! They called it jól [yohl], and it was a celebration of vintersolverv (winter solstice): From now on, the days would get longer. After the Viking Age, the ancient jul was replaced by a kristen fest (Christian festival) celebrating th ..read more

(Photo courtesy of Noel Bauza from Pixabay; no copyright.) North of the Arctic Circle, there’s no sunrise in the winter sky. But do Northern Norwegians really live in total darkness? I asked Bjørn Farbu – a doctor until recently residing in Harstad1 – about life in mørketida (the dark season). What brought you to Nord-Norge (Northern Norway)? My girlfriend is from Tromsø. We met in Trondheim and lived there for several years before moving to Harstad, a small town south of Tromsø. I already had an appreciation for fjellene og naturen i Nord-Norge (the mountains and the nature). Furthermore, t ..read more