Norwegian Language
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40 free Norwegian Language trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Norwegian looks friendly to an English speaker, and then it springs its surprises. Familiar-looking words turn out to mean something else entirely, the country cannot agree on a single way to write its own language, and a short trip between valleys can change how everything sounds. This quiz covers the everyday side of Norwegian, such as greetings, family words and the names of famous foods, alongside the history: Viking-age roots, centuries of Danish influence, and the long argument over how the language should be written. Several questions look at the words English has taken from Norwegian. It is written for learners, travellers, people with Norwegian relatives, and anyone curious about Scandinavia. You do not need to speak Norwegian to play. Every Norwegian word is explained, and each answer comes with a short note on why it is worth knowing.
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Q 01The Norwegian word 'gift' means 'married' and also which far less romantic thing?
Poison
Poison and marriage share one spelling in Norwegian, making 'gift' a classic false friend for English speakers. In German, the same word carries only the toxic meaning.
Q 02Which number is meant by the Norwegian word 'fire', a notorious trap for English-speaking learners?
Four
Four is 'fire' in Norwegian, said in two syllables rather than like the English word for flames. It descends from Old Norse 'fjórir', a distant cousin of the English number.
Q 03In Norwegian, the everyday word 'barn' has nothing to do with farm buildings; what does it mean?
Child
Child is the meaning of 'barn' in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish alike. Its close cousin 'bairn' is still used for a little one in Scotland and northern England.
Q 04Lørdag, the Norwegian word for Saturday, comes from an Old Norse name marking which weekly chore?
Washing
Washing gave Saturday its Nordic name, from Old Norse 'laugardagr', literally washing day. Unlike most weekday names, it honours no Norse or Roman god.
Q 05English borrowed 'ski' from Norwegian; in Old Norse the word first described a piece of which material?
Split wood
Split wood is the root sense: Old Norse 'skíð' meant a cleft stick before it meant the gear. Before 1920, English speakers often wrote the word as 'skee'.
Q 06In Norwegian slang, saying a party was 'helt' plus the name of which US state means it was wild?
Texas
Texas is Norwegian slang for craziness, a nod to the Wild West. A typical use is to say that a chaotic evening 'was completely texas'.
Q 07The English word 'window' comes from Old Norse 'vindauga', which literally means what?
Wind eye
Wind eye is the literal meaning: a window was at first an unglazed hole in a roof. The Norse loan pushed out Old English 'eagþyrl', which literally meant eye-hole.
Q 08Which Norwegian politician's surname became an English word for a traitor after he sided with Nazi occupiers?
Quisling
Quisling became a byword after Vidkun Quisling's failed 1940 coup. That April, The Times of London ran an editorial headed 'Quislings Everywhere', and the name stuck.
Q 09Which Norwegian exclamation of dismay became a catchphrase of Scandinavian Americans in the Upper Midwest?
Uff da
Uff da sailed to America with 19th-century emigrants, and Rutland, North Dakota, now holds an annual Uffda Day festival. Back in Norway, 'uff' is just a mild, polite groan.
Q 10The Norwegian word 'utepils' names the simple pleasure of drinking what outdoors on a sunny day?
Beer
Beer is the 'pils' in utepils, literally 'outdoor beer'. The word was first recorded in 1963, in a newspaper phrase about the first one of spring.
Q 11Which self-taught linguist toured rural Norway collecting dialects to create the written standard Nynorsk?
Ivar Aasen
Ivar Aasen began the work at 22 and was a botanist as well as a linguist. He published his new written Norwegian in several books between 1848 and 1873.
Q 12Bokmål, the written standard used by most Norwegians, has a name that literally translates as what?
Book tongue
Book tongue became the official name in 1929, replacing Riksmål. A rival proposal to call the standard Danish-Norwegian lost in parliament by a single vote.
Q 13By what name was Nynorsk officially known until the Norwegian parliament renamed it in 1929?
Landsmål
Q 21Norwegian grandparent words reveal the family side; who exactly is a person's 'mormor'?
Mother's mother
Mother's mother is spelled out by simply doubling 'mor'. The same logic builds farmor, morfar and farfar, so a Norwegian never has to add 'on my dad's side'.
Q 22The Norwegian word 'kjæreste', used for a boyfriend or girlfriend alike, is literally a superlative meaning what?
Dearest
Dearest is the literal sense, the superlative of the adjective 'kjær'. One word covers a romantic partner of any gender, where English has to choose between two.
Q 23Norwegians say 'tusen takk' for a warm thank-you; which number does 'tusen' add to the thanks?
A thousand
Landsmål was the name its creator chose, meaning 'national language', though it is often misread as 'rural language'. The new name stressed a link to Old Norwegian.
Q 14Which planned 'common Norwegian', meant to merge Bokmål and Nynorsk into one, was officially abandoned in 2002?
Samnorsk
Samnorsk had the support of 79% of Norwegians in a 1946 poll. A mass protest movement then rose against it in the 1950s, angered by the 'radical' forms in school textbooks.
Q 15Which language group of an indigenous Arctic people is official in Norway alongside Norwegian?
Sami
Sami is a group of languages rather than a single one, and it belongs to the Uralic family, so it is unrelated to Norwegian. It is official in northern municipalities such as Kautokeino and Karasjok.
Q 16Which letter, the last in the Norwegian alphabet, officially replaced the double 'aa' in a 1917 spelling reform?
Å
Å tidied up some startling place names: before 1917 a ridge now spelled Blååsen was written Blaaaasen. Denmark made the letter official only in 1948.
Q 17Because Z appears only in loanwords, how does Norwegian spell the name of the striped animal 'zebra'?
Sebra
Sebra shows how Norwegian respells borrowed words to match its own sounds. The letters c, q, w, x and z turn up only in loanwords and in a few family names.
Q 18Norwegian has a special word for 'yes' that contradicts a negative question; what is it?
Jo
Jo is the reply when someone asks 'Don't you speak Norwegian?' and you do. German 'doch' and French 'si' do the same job, a third answer word that modern English lacks.
Q 19Which gender-neutral pronoun joined the official Norwegian written standards in 2022, beside 'han' and 'hun'?
Hen
Hen was accepted for both Bokmål and Nynorsk at once. The Norwegian Academy's own dictionary had already listed the pronoun in December 2017, almost five years earlier.
Q 20Which Norwegian city's dialect is unusual for having dropped the feminine gender entirely, leaving only two?
Bergen
Bergen stands apart because Norwegian dialects have traditionally kept the three genders inherited from Old Norse. In Bergen, masculine and feminine merged into a single common gender.
A thousand thanks is the literal meaning of the phrase, which works as a very polite 'many thanks'. Plain 'takk' on its own covers an everyday thank-you.
Q 24The everyday Norwegian goodbye 'ha det' is short for 'ha det bra', which literally means what?
Have it well
Have it well is the word-for-word meaning: 'ha' is the command form of 'to have', 'det' is 'it' and 'bra' is 'well'. The clipped two-word farewell simply drops the last part.
Q 25When Norwegian friends greet each other with 'takk for sist', what are they thanking each other for?
The last time
The last time they were together is what the greeting recalls: the phrase means 'thanks for last time'. Icelandic has a matching formula, 'takk fyrir síðast'.
Q 26The word 'frokost' means lunch in Danish, but which meal does it name in Norwegian?
Breakfast
Breakfast is 'frokost' in Norway, so a Dane and a Norwegian agreeing to meet for frokost could turn up hours apart. Swedish 'frukost' sides with the Norwegians.
Q 27Brunost, a sweet Norwegian staple often sliced onto waffles, has a name that literally means what?
Brown cheese
Brown cheese comes from boiling down whey, a Scandinavian practice at least 2,500 years old. The firm modern kind is credited to milkmaid Anne Hov, who devised it on a mountain farm in 1863.
Q 28Lutefisk, the Norwegian Christmas dish of dried cod, takes the first half of its name from what?
Lye
Lye is the caustic bath the dried cod soaks in for two days, until it swells and turns jelly-like. The name of the dish simply means 'lye fish'.
Q 29Akevitt, the Norwegian caraway spirit, takes its name from a Latin phrase with which meaning?
Water of life
Water of life translates the Latin 'aqua vitae'. Whisky hides exactly the same meaning, since it comes from the Gaelic 'uisce beatha'.
Q 30Which Norwegian word, meaning 'small fry of fish', does English use for the tiny crustaceans eaten by whales?
Krill
Krill kept its Norwegian spelling when English adopted it. In its home language the word is also often applied to young fish, not just to the shrimp-like animals.