Hi there! No worries, I always like talking about learning Norwegian ^^

It depends on what you count as time spent studying Norwegian, because I’ve taken breaks from it and I basically didn’t know what I was doing during the first year or so lol. I usually say about 4-4.5 years. It’s possible to reach that level a lot more quickly though (I was reading a post on Norsklærer Karense’s facebook group and some people were like “yeah I went from zero to B2 in 3 months” lol rip) but for some people it takes longer. It all depends on the time you put in, how much exposure you have, how many opportunities you have to practise and how naturally you pick up languages.

As for free resources for complete beginners:

NTNU has a free course

Memrise is a good website/app with several Norwegian courses (I recommend starting with Norwegian 1, but there are loads of vocab lists on there)

Other apps include Drops and uTalk. I’m not big on Drops, but I quite like uTalk, even if the amount of coins you earn seems to be completely random (don’t be fooled into thinking you have to buy coins to progress!)

Lingohut has loads of lessons suitable for beginners

CALST is pretty great, focusing more on spoken Norwegian, and gives you the option to learn dialects (I recommend just learning Oslo dialect if you’re a total beginner, unless you’re moving to a specific area of Norway)

God i Norsk is a course in Norwegian for adult Norwegian-learners with lots of listening, reading, grammar and vocabulary exercises

Bildetema is also good for learning vocab and is available in both bokmål and nynorsk

Lesnorsk has lots of texts of different levels (I’ve linked you to the beginner level texts)

Norskpodden is a Norwegian podcast for beginners that comes with transcripts and games to test your understanding

Norwegian Teacher Karin on youtube has lessons suitable for beginners (check out her beginners playlists)

Norsklærer Karense is a qualified Norwegian teacher - her videos are entirely in Norwegian so you’ll need some basics first, but they’re a fantastic free resource (here you can find her videos specifically aimed at beginners)

Learn Norwegian Naturally is another good youtube channel

Here’s an English-Norwegian / Norwegian-English dictionary

Some other things I recommend:

Stick the radio on in the background while you’re doing housework/scrolling tumblr etc. You won’t understand anything at first, but that’s not the point - the point is to get you used to the rhythm of the language. I recommend NRK P2 as it has more talk and less shitty English music

Keep a journal. By that, I don’t mean write about your day in detail - obviously that’s not going to happen when you’re a beginner - start by writing things like “today is Wednesday. I wake up at 8am. I eat breakfast.” The purpose of your journal is to practise using the language, not to write coherent, connected prose with perfect or even good/correct grammar (my Finnish journal entries, for example, consist of 2-3 short sentences, using the only two tenses I know). You can share it if you want, but I keep most of my journal entries to myself.

Listen to Norwegian music. Search “norsk (your favourite genre)” on spotify for playlists.

If you haven’t already, create a langblr. Use it to reblog resources, vocab lists, posts about grammar etc. Write short posts and ask for feedback if you feel brave enough (it’s scary at first, but I find getting corrections is the most effective way for me to learn). Ask other langblrs questions about grammar and vocab (even if they don’t know the answer, there are usually a lot of native speakers lurking that are always willing to help!)

closed. @exs-et-ohs​

Geralt sighed as he closed the door to his office behind him. He threw his leather jacket across his chair and sat down on his desk. A huge pile of files lay on the right side but he looked at them with a plaintive gaze. The most important was the case in the file in front of him. This whole thing started a week ago as worried citizens told the police about disturbing videos appearing on social media websites. Starting with rape and torture through to murder; everything was involved. Pictures which gave the new recruits nauseous feelings and probably the first trauma. But for Geralt it hadn’t be new. He knew such videos from the dark net and even within there only experts knew how to find that stuff.

All the more it became critical that such videos were now free to watch by everyone. And they became more every day. Geralt sighed when he thought back to the the press report from yesterday. Again, it was the fault of the police. They should have reacted much earlier and now they were acting too slowly. Geralt ran his fingers through his hair and opened the file. The papers inside showed pictures from the latest video. A young man was tortured to the bitter end. And the man wasn’t unknown. It was the son of a famous actor who vanished three years ago while on a walk. Half a year ago, the search was stopped. And now they got this video.

But the most mysterious thing wasn’t the video itself or that it showed that the young man was still alive. No. This video didn’t get published on any social media website but found its way directly to the police via an anonymous hint. Which meant the culprit played with them. And he wanted to show who got the upper hand in this game. Geralt closed the file when the door to his office opened and a man stepped inside. “Hey, Wolf”, Vesemir greeted him. He was the chief of this office. Geralt rolled his eyes when he heard his nickname. He hated it. His colleagues gave it to him a few years ago. Vesemir always tried to explain to him that the others just wanted to praise his sense for the solution of many cases with this name. But Geralt knew better. His rough and eccentric nature didn’t only scare off his last three partners but often brought conflicts with his colleagues on himself. He was the lonely wolf in this office.

“Good Morning, Vesemir”, Geralt said and stood up. The chief smiled. “I see that you’re already into the case. Perfect. I’m sure you remember the last meeting where we talked about external support.” Geralt nodded. A few days ago they had sat down with some colleagues from other offices to discuss the best way to approach this case. Geralt had made the suggestion to get an IT expert into the team which only resulted in tired laughs. Until Vesemir took the suggestion and turned it into a good idea.