The best Norwegian Bokmål courses

NTNU built this for its own international students and left it open to everyone: ten chapters following a cast of characters, each with recorded texts, vocabulary lists, grammar explanations, pronunciation guides and self-marking exercises. NoW2 continues the story into a second course, so the free path runs well past survival Norwegian. There is nothing else this complete for Norwegian at zero cost. It is a self-study website with no teacher and no feedback on your speaking or writing.

If you enrol in a Norwegian class anywhere in Norway you will almost certainly be handed På vei from Cappelen Damm — it is the default A1–A2 course, built around practical situations newcomers actually face. The textbook and workbook are paid, but the companion website is free and open, with per-chapter exercises and audio you can use even without owning the book. That free site is the reason this belongs on any list. It is written entirely in Norwegian with no English scaffolding.

The second rung of Cappelen Damm's ladder, moving from survival Norwegian into the B1 territory the Norskprøven tests, with texts on Norwegian society, work and history rather than shopping and directions. Its free companion site carries chapter exercises and audio in the same way På vei's does. Her på berget continues to B1–B2 after this. The books themselves cost money, and like På vei there is no English support anywhere in them.

Speak Norsk teaches Norwegian in Oslo and online from A0 up to B1–B2, and puts a substantial amount of its teaching on YouTube for free, which is why it is worth listing rather than just being another school. Paid options run from group classroom courses at roughly NOK 928 a month through virtual live classes to pre-recorded online courses and private tuition. Useful if you want the free videos and the option of a real teacher from the same source. The channel mixes teaching with course promotion.

Skapago's course teaches through a single narrative — a boy and a talking figure called Nils — instead of the usual unrelated set-piece conversations, which makes the vocabulary stick because it recurs in context. It is explicitly written for self-learners, with English explanations, so it works where På vei assumes a classroom. Free pronunciation videos accompany the paid books. The story-based approach divides people: if you want systematic grammar tables you will find it slow.

Innovative Language's Norwegian course: hundreds of short audio and video lessons built on native dialogues that get broken down phrase by phrase, plus transcripts, flashcards and word banks. For a smaller language like Norwegian, the sheer quantity of structured listening is hard to match. Subscription-based with frequent discounting. The same complaints apply as to its sister sites — a disorganised catalogue and a progression that runs out somewhere around B1.

A Norwegian company running online courses on its own learning platform, with live teacher-led classes, self-paced tracks and explicit Norskprøven exam preparation — the last being the reason most people find it, since free resources rarely target the test format. Aimed at people who need certified Norwegian for work or residency rather than casual learners. Paid throughout, with course-length pricing. Worth comparing against a local kommune course, which is often cheaper or free for eligible residents.