Free Norwegian learning resources
39 free resources, checked and categorised.
No trials, no paywalls, no sign-up required.
Norwegian is one of the easiest languages for English speakers, and the free material is good enough to take you a long way without paying for anything. The grammar is close to English — no cases, simple verb conjugation, familiar word order — so most of your effort goes into vocabulary and listening rather than rules.
The complication is dialects. Norwegian has two written standards (Bokmål and Nynorsk) and unusually strong regional variation in speech, and there is no single 'neutral' spoken form the way there is in many languages. Pick Bokmål to start unless you have a reason not to, and expect spoken Norwegian to vary more than your course suggests.
Because the grammar is easy, move to real material early. Norwegian news, radio and TV are freely available, and comprehensible input is more valuable here than continued grammar study.
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Lær Norsk Nå Beginner and Intermediate Podcasts
An interesting experiment - the guy has learnt Norwegian without any dictionaries, without any resources in languages other than Norwegian, he didn't even make any notes or try to remember anything. After two months he was able to read and understand a book in Norwegian. You can read how in his account here.
A blog for Norwegian learners - audio entries with transcripts and exercises. Check the Archive for all posts!
Many interesting science articles. Sister site has science for kids articles.
A dictionary (both bokmål and nynorsk).
A monolingual dictionary.
The New Testament in Norwegian (complete).
Google news in Norwegian.
Downloadable resources for Norwegian learning, including a textbook and a vocabulary list.
Free audiobooks in Norwegian (H.C. Andersen tales chiefly).
Recipes and short culinary videos in easy Norwegian.
Norwegian TV (many free programmes).
Norwegian national library. You may need Norwegian IP to access some of the papers.
strona internetowa autorów książki “Anatomia Norweskiego”
Norwegian dialects recordings.
Norwegian tales.
My favourite Youtube channel for Norwegian learning. Videos and lives are in Norwegian only.
Free books in Norwegian.
The Norwegian Language Council.
The Norwegian lexicon.
Learn it there, practise it here
Free resources are great for input — reading, listening, explanations. They are weaker at the two things that actually move you forward: speaking Norwegian out loud, and remembering what you met once. That is what OwnSlides is for.
Say it out loud
Talk to an AI tutor that answers back, or join a live room with other learners and native speakers.
Practise what you read
Turn a grammar point or article into exercises, so it moves from recognised to usable.
Keep the words
Save new words to My Words and let spaced repetition bring them back before you forget them.
This directory began from a community-built list of free language resources — a year of collecting and checking by Joanna (u/chlebka) and dozens of contributors who suggested links, shared freely. See the original list. We have since expanded, re-checked and re-categorised it, and we keep the per-resource credits where the original list recorded them.