As I did for my Nordic books 2025, here is an updated list of books I will be reading and textbooks I want to use in 2026
Below my trackers for 2025 and 2026: in 2025 I mostly studied Japanese and read Swedish novels
Book I am reading in Swedish and Norwegian
Novels to finish
- Straff, Ann-Helen Laestadius – Sami kids taken away from their families to a Sami-hostile environment, who meet again 30 years later.
- Allting växer, Lyra Koli – dystopic novel about a Scandinavian girl set in a post- world war and climate catastrophe world.
Norwegian books got from the thrift book shelf at the Norwegian Seamen Church
- Europeere, Simen Ekern – an essay on the European Union, written around 10 years ago. This was how I opened my 2026 readings!
- Norges Historie – encyclopedia-ish book on Norwegian History, from Vikings to the 70s, when it was published
Books to study Finnish
Later this year, I want to try focusing on Finnish for a while. I still have my coursebook I purchased a couple years ago, and can work on vocabulary thanks to the Ultimate Finnish Notebook (get a discount on such books for a lot of languages! – code ChiaraBeretta)
Due to my limited time, i had no time for Finnish last year, also because I tried to fully focus on studying Japanese (as for Japanese – I will use Irodori/いろどり free online textbooks/resources). I recently purchased an Assimil book for Finnish, which should make learning Finnish while commuting easier thanks to it’s compact format and bite-size lessons
Icelandic and Danish for fun
As I wrote last year, I might try to improve my Danish with the German Assimil edition. Other books, as Swedish assimil and Short Stories in Icelandic, were started in the past and I might continue (for Icelandic) or review (for Swedish) them later.
What books/resources will you use in 2026?
Scandinavian Embassy‘s bakery and cafe in Amsterdam zuid
On a trip to Amsterdam, I decided to test Scandinavian Embassy and both of its two locations, starting with the bakery in europaplein. The two locations are in Amsterdam zuid: Saphatipark and Europaplein: in the former, a more central location, you can sit but it has fewer items than the bakery in Europaplein. The bakery,…
An introduction to Estonian: sister language of Finnish
Estonian is a Finnic language, sharing many similarities with its ‘bigger’ sister Finnish, while being unrelated to all their bigger language neighbours
Scandinavian carnival buns (and where to eat them in the Netherlands)
Cream buns are enjoyed in Nordic and Baltic countries during shrovetide, between January and February. Sweden’s classic semla has almond paste, while other countries variations include jam, vanilla cream, and chocolate icing top.
a Polyglot illustrating Scandinavia 