Novels and books to study Nordic languages in 2026

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?