Novels, non-fiction and coursebooks to learn Nordic languages I plan to or might use this year, from Swedish to Icelandic.
I already had these books in 2024, started some of them during the year but still have some to begin yet:
Story of Scandinavia, Stein Ringen – detailed history of Sweden, Denmark and Norway from Viking Age to Present!
Sprog, Mikkel Wallentin – a booklet about language as a way to communicate and its peculiarities, part of the series Tænkepauser by Aarhus University.
Started (and already finished) in 2025:
New Finnish Grammar (Nuova Grammatica Finlandese), Diego Marani – novel about a soldier found in an italian harbour without any memory of his past and believed to be Finnish, he will be brought to Finland to re-learn his language and culture.
A few novels I still have to start:
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.
Language books
This year I want to begin by focusing on Japanese, but also Finnish, continuing the coursebook by Hoepli (from Italian).
I am looking forward to improve my Danish a little 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.
That was pretty much all for now.. Let’s hope 2025 continues better than how it started, for me by being sick…
Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Swedish Christmas markets in Rotterdam. Christmas decorations, imported typical Nordic products for sale, a cafe with lunch and cakes in each of them!
Lucia brings light in the darkest night of the year and is a mix of pagan and christian traditions. It is celebrated in Scandinavia with processions, saffron buns and church concerts.
4 tips to practice a language as Swedish and Dutch, where most people are fluent in English and foreigners struggle to improve the local language.
You are learning a language and would be eager to use it when you are in the country where it is spoken. But what if everybody switches to English the second they hear you are not from there?
This is a typical problem in Holland and Scandinavia, where most people speak English well, and the fact that English will simply always work better and be the easiest option prevents you from attempting at speaking anything else.
I have had experiences with Dutch, Swedes, Swedes and Norwegians in various contexts and with the given language being at various levels at different times, and these are a few tips to exercise the language if you are not (or do not feel) fluent yet:
1. important information in English, smalltalk and chitchat in local language
Sometimes you just have to be sure you know what is going on and what you need to do, other times you can miss some parts of a dialogue without causing yourself any damage – in the latter give a go at your target language, you’ll never understand 100% anyway if you never practice.
example: Last time I was in Denmark, I heard a confusing announcement on the train. As i wanted to be 100% sure my train would reach my destination, I first asked that in English to the person sitting next to me, to switch to Danish right after having received that piece of information, (saying that I actually did speak Danish) and had a nice conversation in it.
If your level is still basic, do make sure to (be able to) say small things like hi/thanks/sorry/excuse me/good evening etc. You’ll get those small expression stuck in your head, and give yourself and others the feeling you do speak the language, which is a better start than not using it at all.
3. Prepare what you want to say in advance, or fake it until you make it.
Sometimes you can look up how to properly say something in advance, as in shops and restaurants – things like ‘do you have a free table’ ‘i would like to this and that’, or even look up some extra vocabulary for a conversation of which you already know the topic.
Also: in given contexts like shops the things you get asked tend to be standard, as ‘do you want a bag?/receipt..’ , so you know what words might be pronounced, anticipating what you’ll be asked, and be less scared you will not understand.
example: I had to talk to a Norwegian client on the phone, so I wrote down what I would say, and looked up vocabulary I needed: that means learning new words and getting to practice with them!
3. Find ‘comfort zones’ and people with whom you stick to the language
If your level in a language is not very high, you might not dare making attempts with strangers. I am a quite shy person myself, other than a perfectionist, so I know that feeling well. But you learn a language by practicing it (and making mistakes), and as soon as you have someone or somewhere to freely practice -no matter how off your grammar is, how many gaps you have in your vocabulary, how many times you ask for repetitions – do it. Having active conversations is also important to absorb the language yourself and learn from your language partner.
With strangers you can stick to English if you feel uncomfortable otherwise, but it is good to have a situation in which you’ll always stick to the language (This counts also when chatting online!). Or at least often enough that your default language is Swedish, Finnish, etc. You learn to swim by swimming – but it does not have to be in the open sea from moment one.
Other options if you do not know anybody, you can use find tandem partners on apps such as hellotalk, tandem etc. and give yourself the rule to rather use translators, but never use English. Events as language cafés are also great occasions to practice if you find any!
keypoint: sometimes it is a matter of self-confidence more than language level
The thing with Swedish, Dutch, Danish etc. is, you might be pretty good at them, but if you are a bit insecure, allowing yourself to use them language over English will be hard. In countries where the average level of English is poor, that is of course completely different.
So you’ll just exercise your Italian, Japanese, Spanish, etc. without thinking much about whether you are good enough at it. You might barely know how to order a drink in Italian or Japanese, but still, you’ll do it, because they will understand it better than in English, even with bad pronunciation or grammar. Maybe they will be relieved they can use their language with you, while the Dutch either want to help you by using a language you are more fluent in or just want to have a smooth communication.
It does take some self-confidence to stick to a language if the counterpart easily switches to English! Even if it does not necessarily mean you are bad at it. It is all about finding contexts and people to use the language, broadening them gradually as you get more comfortable or fluent enough to use it for everything.
How I have done it: First I would use Dutch only in written form and with given people, then I got to the point I’d dare using it with strangers, in shops, but not at an airport desk, then I started using it even for formal things like registering at the municipality , but I did not switch back to Dutch if people switched to English. Now i stick to Dutch, always. With Danish I am in the phase where I could use it in formal context but do not always dare due to fear of not understanding. But I did ask for information in Danish at a museum desk, which I did not do one year ago.
idioms in Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Danish with berries
Berries are a big thing in Nordic countries, and you can hear that in their languages as well! So I have collected a few sayings and idioms involving them in Swedish, Norwegian Finnish and Danish.
Swedish
Smultronstället – Place of wild strawberries – a special place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation; a personal idyll free from stress or sadness
Blott Sverige svenska krusbär har – Only Sweden has Swedish gooseberries – There’s no place like home… Originally a quote by writer Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793-1866)
Hej hopp i blåbärsskogen! / Hej svejs i lingonskogen tjosan hoppsan hej! – hey hey in the blueberry/lingonberry wood hey hey: a funny surprised expression Swedes may use in a joking way
Norwegian
Det er bare blåbær – It’s just blueberries: it’s not a big deal/it’s a piece of cake
Være på bærtur – To be picking berries: being completely lost/wrong.
Finnish
Oma maa mansikka, muu maa mustikka – our land strawberry, other land blueberry: No place like home, here too 🙂
he ovat kuin kaksi marjaa – they are like two berries: they look very much alike
se maksaa mansikoita – it costs strawberries: very expensive
and last but not least paskanmarjat – sh*t berries: bullsh*t
Danish
stikkelsbærben – gooseberry legs: pale, skinny, and hairy legs
et surt ribs – a sour redcurrant: a grumpy person
at give (eller få) en på bærret: to give (or get) one on the berry: to hit or get hit on the face
Identical words with different meanings that Finnish, Japanese, Italian share.
Homonyms are words with the same sound (homophones) or spelling (homographs), but differ in meaning.
Finnish is totally unrelated to Japanese and Italian, but it has quite a few curious homonyms with them because of featured they share:
Consonant/vowel alternation
Words frequently ending in a vowel
A common trait is also double consonants (alternated by vowels)
This results in completely unrelated words being identical! What is a noun in one language, can be an adjective or a verb in another though. Other times it’s surprisigly words in the same domain (see me/te in Finnish and Italian!)
te: plural you (Finnish), you (complement pronoun, Italian), hand (Japanese)
Finnish and Japanese both use (or Japanese is transcripted with) a K for the esact same sound Italian uses C for:
kani/cani: bunny (Finnish), dogs (Italian), crab(s) (Japanese) – here surprisingly all animal names!
kasa/casa: pile (Finnish), house (Italian), umbrella (Japanese)
Sometimes the same word is actually very similar in other languages, but the way Finnish, Japanese and Italian adapt it is very similar or ends up looking identical to other words:
poro: reindeer (Finnish), pore (Italian), the polo game (Japanese)
shokki:shock (Finnish), tableware (Japanese)
kokki:cook (Finnish), national flag (Japanese)
Finnish – Japanese
ase: weapon (Finnish) – sweat (Japanese:汗)
haka: hook (Finnish) – grave (Japanese)
hana: tap/faucet (Finnish) – flower, nose (Japanese:花／鼻)
haku: search (Finnish), vomit (Japanese:吐く)
himo: lust (Finnish) – ribbon (Japanese:綬)
kanki: wood/metal bar +slang for bon..r – ventilation (Japanese:換気)
Days on which the Finnish language, suomenkieli, and culture is celebrated in Finland, on birthdays of Finnish poets and artists
Finland celebrates its language and culture during special days chosen for birthdays of Poets and artists. Most are flag days in the country, on which the Finnish flag Siniristilippu(“blue cross flag”) shall fly.
Runeberg day – 5 February
In Finnish Runebergin päivä, it is the birthday of the national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–1877). The highlight of the celebration is eating Runeberg’s torte (Finnish: Runebergintorttu; Swedish: Runebergstårta).
Runeberg lived in Porvoo/Borgå and although he is considered the national poet of Finland, he only wrote in Swedish! His Vårt land (“Our Land”, Maamme in Finnish) became an unofficial Finnish national anthem.
Runeberg ate the torte now carrying his name everyday, baked by his wife Fredrika. it is an almond and rum flavoured pastry with raspberry jam, and a ring of icing on top. You can find it in shops from the beginning of January until 5 February. The exception to this is Runeberg’s hometown Porvoo, where you can enjoy the torte the whole year round!
Kalevala day – 28 February
InFinnish Kalevalan päivä, it also known as Finnish Culture Day because of the central role Kalevala has as the national epic of Finland and Karelia. EliasLönnrot (1802 – 1884), a Finnish physician and philologist, compiled it in the 19th century by collecting traditional Finnic oral folklore in Finland, Karelia, the Kola Peninsula and the Baltic countries.
Kalevala means land of Kaleva, and its main character is Väinämöinen, a sort of godlike shaman with a magical voice, and it tells about the hero’s search for a wife.
As a symbol of Finnish culture and history, Kalevala has inspired many Finnish artists, among others the classical composer Jean Sibelius and the painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
A. Gallen Kallela, Aino Myth, Triptych, 1891
Something as old and quintessentially Finnish can be described as kalevalainen “Kalevala-esque”!
Finnish Language day – 9 April
On 9 April Mikael Agricola, the “father of literary Finnish” died, and Elias Lönnrot was born. For this reason it is celebrated as Finnish language day, suomen kielen päivä.
While the previously mentioned Elias Lönnrot compiled the Kalevala, Mikael Agricola was a Bishop and scholar who created Finnish as a written language in the 1500s, with all its lovely double vowels.
Agricola’s role for the Finnish language was similar to that of Luther for German. Both translated the bible into their people’s language. He did that with other Finns while living in Wittenberg, Luther’s town. Agricola also wrote theAbckiria (ABC Book), the first piece of literature in Finnish.
Other important days for Finnish culture
3 February – Day of Finnish architecture and design, Arkkitehtuurin ja muotoilun päiviä. It is the birthday of Alvar Aalto
12 may – Day of Finnish Identity, suomalaisuuden päivä, birthday of the statesman Johan Vilhelm Snellman
9 August – Tove Jansson day, Since 2020 this day, Tove Jansson’s birthday, is a flag day in Finland, celebrating Finnish art. Tove Jansson was a painter and illustrator, most known as the creator of Moomintrolls. Her novels and other written work have been translated into more than 50 languages
8 December – John Sibeliusday, Birthday Jean Sibeliuksen päivä/ also day of Finnish music
The ‘anchor’ language concept allowed me to learn Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian easily starting from studying properly only one language. This approach helps prevent confusion and builds a solid foundational understanding of language structures.
Main features in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and my experience with studying Íslenska (Icelandic) and Suomi (Finnish)
Some time ago I made an Instagram post comparing these two languages, which I started simultaneously during the hard lockdown in spring 2020 (you can see it on @chiara.klara.claire, as a summary of this article). With this article I’ll dig in deeper and talk about more aspects.
A short overview of Icelandic and Finnish main characteristics:
Icelandic belongs to North Germanic languages, as Swedish, Norwegian and Danish and Faroese, the closest of all to it (learn how totell them all apart) . It is still very close to what Old Norse was and retained a highly inflected grammar and ð/þ.
Finnish is an Uralic language, sister language of Estonian and related to Sámi languages but completely unrelated to its Scandinavian Neighbors. Its grammar is as complex as Icelandic but as an agglutinative language, lacking however genders.
In a language difficulty ranking 1-5 with 5 being the hardest, Icelandic was category 4 and Finnish between 4 and 5.
You can find useful language resources at the end of this article!
Alphabets & ortography
Icelandic Ðð (eth) is as “th” in the, Þþ (thorn) as in think. the former is also present in Faroese, its closest language
a, á, e, é, i, í, o, ó, u, ú, y, ý, æ, ö are all the vowels, each is a distinct letter of the Icelandic alphabet
c, q, w are not present in Icelandic. Z was removed in 1973 and replaced with S in words which had it. It is still present in some historic names as the Verzló school in Reykjavík.
Finnish actually uses only 21 of the 29 letters in its alphabet, which derives from Swedish: b, c, f, g, q, w, x, z, å are not present in native Finnish words. For example, the Swedish name of Turku, city with a significant number of Swedish speakers, is Åbo.
Finnish is the only language in which the frequency of vowels exceeds that of consonants, and both are often doubled: suosittelette. vaapukka, terveellistä, laatikko, karjalanpiirakka. With its relatively small inventory of letters being often doubled, many words change meaning with one letter: muta “mud”, mutta “but”, muuta “other”, muuttaa “to move”
Both languages use a lot of long compound words (common in most Germanic languages) as a way to construct new words. Those long stretches of letters might look obscure, but if you break them into smaller words they are quite normal: Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull is just “island-mountain glacier”. An example in Finnish could be lumipallosotatantere = “snowball fight field”, English would be no different if it removed spaces after all!
Grammar
This is what Finnish and Icelanidc are most (in)famous for, both have an arguably complicated grammar, but more or less hard depending on the aspects.
In Icelandic and Finnish words change depending on their role in a sentence, with the so-called cases. Although to a much smaller extent cases existin English too, in personal pronouns: she becomes her when it’s an object. In the following table you can see how cases change words in these two languages:
(a) beatiful country
in (a) beautiful country
to (a) beautiful country
from (a) beautiful country
Icelandic
fallegt land
í fallegu landi
til fallegs lands
frá fallegu landi
Finnish
kaunis maa
kauniissa maassa
kauniiseen maan
kaunista maasta
Icelandic has 4 cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive (nefnifall, þolfall, þágufall, eignarfall) – familiar if you know German or Latin – in which nouns, pronouns and adjectives are declined differently depending on gender: (masculine, feminine, neuter), with weak or strong nouns, and number. Icelandic has no articles but it does have definite forms, which as in Scandinavian languages is marked in the end of the nouns: maður= (a) man, maðurinn= the man). More detailed info here
function
M*
pl.
F*
pl. *
N*
pl. *
nom.
subject
-i; -ur, ll..
-ar
-a; –
-ur; -ir
-a; –
-u; –
acc.
object
-a; -, -l..f
-a
-u; –
-ur; -ir
-a; –
-u; –
dat.
indirect object
-a; -um, -i
-um
-u; –
-um
-a; -i
-um
gen.
possession
-a; -s
-a
-u; -ar
-a
-a; -s
-a
definite form noun declension: *weak; strong.
Finnish uses many suffixes instead of prepositions, with a total of 15 cases, in which nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals are declined. The good news is that Finnish has no genders nor articles: even the personal pronoun hän means both he and she.
Verbs are divided in both languages into groups, 3 in Icelandic and 6 in Finnish, depending on which conjugations slightly change, but are not (in my opinion) much harder than in Romance languages as Italian and French. They have different endings for each person, and the infinitive form is sometimes not immediately recognisable knowing a conjugated form.
Vocabulary
As you might have already figured out, Icelandic is more accessible with knowledge of (North) Germanic languages, while Finnish will look completely unfamiliar unless you speak an Uralic language:
Icelandic
Scandinavian (se/dk/no)
German
Dutch
Finnish
apple
epli
äpple/æble/eple
Apfel
appel
omena
book
bók
bok
Buch
boek
kirja
hair
hár
hår
Haar
haar
hiukset
house
hús
hus
Haus
huis
talo
mother
móðir
mor
Mutter
moeder
äiti
night
nótt/nátt
natt
Nacht
nacht
yö
stone
steinn
sten
Stein
steen
kivi
that
það
det
das
dat
se
word
orð
ord
Wort
woord
sana
However, due to its history under Swedish rule -other than having the Scandinavian country as neighbour- Finnish adopted many loanwords from and through Swedish, adapting them to its spelling and pronounciation:
katu – gata (street)
koulu – skola (school)
sokeri – soker (sugar)
tuoli – stol (chair)
suklaa – choklad (chocolate)
pankki – bank
kahvi – kaffe (coffee)
During the 19th century, Icelandic started avoiding borrowing neologisms found in most European languages with its Linguistic purism policy, creating new vocabulary with Old Norse roots for new concepts: Theatre is Leikhús, “acting house”; AIDS is alnæmi, from al “all/complete” and næmi “sensitive”, which is what the disease really is about.
Finnish also has a good number of neologisms with native words when most European languages use a common Latin/Greek or English form:
Icelandic
Finnish
grammar
málfræði “language science”
kielioppi “language study”
electricity
rafmagn “amber power” calquing the Greek root
sähkö based on sähähtää “to sizzle (briefly)” + säkenöidä “to sparkle”
phone
sími originally “cord”
puhelin “I chatter”
computer
tölva (computer)=tala+völva “number seeress”
tietokone “knowledge/data machine”
film
kvikmynd “alive/moving picture”
elokuva “life picture”
As mentioned before Finnish did anyway adopt many words common in European languages, while Icelandic has words of its own, probably also thanks to its geographical isolation:
Icelandic
Scandinavian
Finnish
idea
hugmynd “mind picture”
idé
idea
comet
halastjarna “tail star”
komet
komeetta
psychology
sálfræði “soul study”
psykologi
psykologia
history
sagnfræði
historia/historie
historia
philosophy
heimspeki
filosofi
filosofia
bus
strætó
buss
bussi
helicopter
þyrla
helikopter
helikopteri
president
forseti
president/præsident
presidentti
normal
eðlilegt
normal
normaali
immune
ónæmur
immun
immuuni
alcohol
áfengi
alkohol
alkoholi
notice how Finnish often adds -i!
Pronunciation
Icelandic: Although not as inconsistent as English, in Icelandic different positions in the words or letter combinations make the same consonants sound differently, with many variations which at least for me took long to grasp and I am often in doubt about the pronounciation of Icelandic words. Here is a list of tricky features from wikibooks
HV is pronounced as KV, (or as Scots WH in some areas)
LL is often pronounced something liketl.MM and NN as pmand tn.
KK, PP, and TT are pronounced with an h sound to their left. Pre-aspirated tt is analogous etymologically and phonetically to German and Dutch cht (Night-Icelandic nótt, German/Dutch Nacht.
If a K is followed by a t, it is pronounced similarly to a Spanish j (e.g. lukt – lantern). Likewise, a P followed by a t changes into an f sound (e.g. Að skipta – to shift). F in the middle of a word is often pronounced as a v (e.g. Að skafa – to shave), FF is pronounced as English F.
Word-final voiced consonants are devoiced pre-pausally, so that dag (‘day (acc.)’) is pronounced as [ˈta:x] and dagur (‘day (nom.)’) is pronounced [ˈta:ɣʏr̥
I and Y share the same pronunciation, as do Í and Ý.
Finnish: Extremely consistent and read just like it is written: Each grapheme (independent letter), represents almost exactly one phoneme (sound).
Double consonants can be challenging for English speakers among others, and failing to pronounce them correctly can result in confusion with other words.
Some vowel combinations can be tricky for your tongue: yö,pyöreä (with y pronounced as ü in German).
With little exposure I was confident in pronouncing Finnish, while Icelandic requires much more effort & time, this might be influenced by the fact that Italian phonology is more similar to Finnish, and double consonants are not problematic to me as an Italian native speaker.
Language variations
Icelandic has very small dialect variations, presumably due to its strong writing culture throughout history. However, some local pronunciation variants exist.
Finnish has dialects divided into two distinct groups, Western and Eastern.Finnish dialects are largely mutually intelligible and operate on the same phonology and grammar, not going too far from standard Finnish. What Finnish is mostly known for is however the distinction between the two registers: the formal, written form Kirjakieli “book language” and Puhekieli “spoken language”. The former is used in written texts and formal situations like political speeches and newscasts, the latter is the main variety of Finnish used in everyday speech, popular TV, radio shows and at workplaces. In Puhekieli words are often shortened: minä olen “I am” becomes mä oon, anteeksi “excuse me” drops the last i and so on.
Conclusions
Both languages can be pretty challenging, with a significant amount of grammar one can hardly just absorb by practicing as in my experience it was with languages as Dutch and Swedish. What I do think is that practicing and paying attention to certain features can be more helpful than only focusing on repeating declensions without context, and I try to mix both. That being said, Icelandic and Finnish are my “slow” languages with Japanese, and at the moment I’m trying to proceed with textbooks once a month, trying to practice with little things as apps and learning/translating things I see here and there on social media.
I personally find Finnish a bit easier per se, since it has no arbitrary gender and different declensions connected to it, a rather easy pronounciation and so on. However, since I speak Germanic languages, I study (& understand!) Icelandic with much more ease and find myself more easily lost in Finnish, for now at least.
Have you tried studying these languages? If both, which one did you think was harder?
p.s. Perse means “ass” in Finnish and Estonian so maybe don’t say per se too often when talking to Finns.
Learning resources
You find many free, online resources for Finnish and Icelandic on my Language Resources page, other than all for mant other languages.
Sources
Sanders, Ruth H. The languages of Scandinavia (2017) The University of Chicago Press, p. 99-100: Finnish sound structure
Learn quickly how to distinguish and identify all Nordic languages!
As a language lover I tend to take for granted that certain languages are clearly different from others or recognizable from certain features. Some time ago my sister asked what was the language I was reading in, and I was expecting her to know that with ð’s it has to be Icelandic. But if language learning is not your hobby, Dutch and Swedish might as well be the same thing, purely because you never get to see them. I still remember reading about differences between Danish and Norwegian and finding it really useful, so I decided to make a summary of features and differences that can come in handy as a guide for those who would enjoy being able to distinguish all Nordic languages without actually studying or knowing much.
Please note that I’m mostly writing about the written form, as nuances of the spoken language can be much harder to describe. For what concerns the oral form, you just have to listen to them a lot, and as a Swedish friend once told me:
Swedish is up ‘n downs, Norwegians is all ups, Danish is all downs.
And well, it makes sense.
How similar are Nordic languages to each other?
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese belong to the North Germanic language family. Their cousins are German, Dutch and English. If you speak two of these three a big amount of vocabulary and grammar will be familiar to you.
Swedish, Svenska; Norwegian, Norsk; and Danish, Dansk, are the languages of Scandinavia, (yes, the Scandinavian paeninsula is made up of only these three countries) could be considered siblings (or twins?) because they are mutually intelligible, a Swede and a Norwegian will likely converse in their own language without recurring to English, the same goes with a Dane although Danish can be more problematic…But you can read about that later. Theirunique letter is Å, which is roughly pronounced as O. So yeah, remember that when you talk about songs by Måneskin…
Icelandic,Íslenska, is essentially old Norse – the ancestor of all North Germanic languagages – that got crystallized in the middle of the North Atlantic. Because of this Icelanders find it pretty easy to read old viking sagas than the Scandinavians, who don’t really understand Icelandic. Faroese, Føroyskt, spoken in the Faroe islands – between Iceland, Norway and Scotland – is similar to Icelandic in the written form, but the spoken language is quite different. They are classified as Insular languages of the North Germanic family, its distinguishing letter is ð (called eð in Icelandic and edd in Faroese, capitalÐ), pronounced as th in this. Both have æ, á í ó úin their alphabets.
Swedish and Danish would be classified as East-North Germanic, while Norwegian and Icelandic West-North Germanic, the bound between Icelandic and Norwegian is is noticeable in some Norwegian dialects, but the geographical distance made Norwegian become more intelligible with the eastern branch instead.
However, there’s an odd one out of the Nordic languages. Not only Finnish, Suomi, does not belong to the North Germanic family, but it is not even indo-european. That means Hindi is potentially closer than its neighbour Swedish. Finnish belongs to the Finno-ugric family and is completely different grammar-wise, but has quite a lot of loanwords and cultural influence from Swedish. You can recognize it by very frequent double letters with combinations as yy and ää, double consonants after another consonant: tsemppiä, pankki. Finnish does not have B, G, D in its alphabet.
The Sámi, indigenous people of north Scandinavia, have their own languages, which are related to Finnish as they belong to the Uralic language family, this article i wrote focuses on them.
And now let’s go into detail!
Swedish vs Danish & Norwegian
Norwegian and Danish look very much alike in the written form, but if you hear them you will be more likely to think Swedish and Norwegian sound similar while Danish stands out for its “weirdness”, It is said that Danes speak as if they had potatoes in their mouths, if you want to know more look up the stød linguisti phenomenon.
Swedish: Ö, Ä / Norwegian & Danish: Ø, Æ: The first and easiest difference
CK/KK: ck is found in Swedish, usually K or KK in the other two: lycka/lykke (luck); tack/takk, tak (thanks).
-A/-E: Swedish tends to have a lot of -a endings, while you have E’s in Norwegian and Danish. See the example above of lycka/lykke, also in plural adjectives: mina/mine (my) goda/gode (good).
HV/V is not found in Swedish, which got rid of the H: vad, vem/hvad, hvem; (what, who)
X an Q sometimes occur in Swedish, only in foreign names in the other two: exempel/eksempel (example).
Modern written Norwegian was based off Danish so it can be extremely similar and if you have a very short text it might even be all spelt the same way, but a few features will signal which of the two you are reading:
ØJ/ØY: øj in Danish while øy in Norwegian: tøj/tøy (clothes)
MIG/MEG: Norwegian Bokmål uses E in deg/meg/seg, while Danish has mig as in Swedish
K/KJ: kj an b found frequently in Norwegian while Danish has directly a vowel after K: kære/kjære (dear); at kende/ å kjenne (to know)
TION/SJON: Norwegian’s spelling in words of foreign origin is more “tamed” to the language, for instance words ending in-tion, where Danish keeps the -tion ending and Norwegian has -sjon: international/internasjonal; chokolade/sjokolade (chocolate).
Tendencies:
D, G, B/ T, K, P: Danish tends to have much more D, G, and B’s (it could be compared to Spanish vs Italian I think?). bog/bok (book); nouns in -hed/het; at vide/å vite (to know); peberkager/pepperkaker (gingerbread). Swedish and Norwegian are usually more similar for what concerns this.
Norwegian got rid of many “unnecessary” letters (often D’s, G’s) to its pronounciation: at sige/å si (to say); vidste/visste (knew), sagde/sa, -ld, -nd endings trold/troll (troll); end/enn (than)
Æ frequence: Danish tends to have a lot more Æ, where Norwegian has a ‘simple’ E: næsten/nesten (almost); at tænke/å tenke (think). at hjælpe/ å hjelpe (help). Swedish usually has an Ä here: att hjälpa, nästan, att tänka.
Norwegian could be further divided into Bokmål and Nynorsk, which are just two different ways to spell it. Bokmål “book language”, is fundamentally Danish with adjustments to the Norwegian language and the most widespread one, while Nynorsk “New Norwegian” was an attempt to create a more Norwegian-Norwegian, and it is more frequent in the west part of the country, used by about 12% of Norwegians. I won’t go into detail with Nynorsk, but ein, eit indicates Nynorsk, while en, et are Bokmål.
Icelandic vs Faroese
Faroese and Icelandic pronounciations contrast with their similar spelling, that is because Faroese was given an ethymological ortography to resemble its ancestor Old Norse. On top of that, Faroese adopted some words of Danish origin because of its history.
Þ/T: Only Icelandic has Þþ (þorn in Icelandic) which corresponds to English th in mouth, Icelandic words with Þ have T in Faroese: þú/tú (you); það/tað (it).
Ö/Ø: Icelandic uses ö while Faroese adopted ø.
Icelandic has accented E’s, É, not present in the Faroese alphabet: ég/eg (I).
Finnish: the outsider
As previously mentioned, Finnish is completely unrelated to the North Germanic family, it belongs to the Ugro-Finnic family and its closest language is Estonian.
TO HELP: att hjälpa-at hjælpe-å hjelpe ; að hjálpa ; autaa
SOMEONE: någon-nogen-noen ; einhver-onkur ; joku
TO SAY: att säga-at sige-å si ; að segja-at siga ; sanoa
APPLE: äpple-æble-eple ; epli; omena
WHAT: vad-hvad-hva ; hvað-hvat; mikä
Article 1 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
Swedish: Alla människor är födda fria och lika i värde och rättigheter.
Danish: Alle mennesker er født frie og lige i værdighed og rettigheder.
Norwegian bokmål: Alle mennesker er født frie og med samme menneskeverd og menneskerettigheter; Nynorsk: Alle menneske er fødde til fridom og med same menneskeverd og menneskerettar.
Faroese: Øll menniskju eru fødd fræls og jøvn til virðingar og mannarættindi.
Icelandic: Hver maður er borinn frjáls og jafn öðrum að virðingu og réttindum.
Finnish: Kaikki ihmiset syntyvät vapaina ja tasavertaisina arvoltaan ja oikeuksiltaan.
If you want to go even more in detail, you can check out this on mylanguagebreak.com, but my advice is to just expose yourself to the languages, and experience all the differences yourself. 🙂 Here you can briefly read about even more languages used in the Nordic countries.
if you want to see an even more succint summary of all this, you can check out my post on instagram.
a Polyglot illustrating Scandinavia 