Read Your First Norwegian Story

Quick facts about Norwegian

Speakers

About 4.3 million people speak Norwegian as a first language (2012 estimate).¹

Did you know?

Norwegian has two official written standards, Bokmål and Nynorsk, but no official spoken standard: any Norwegian dialect is accepted as correct spoken Norwegian. Stichos writes Bokmål.¹

The main challenge

Listening: most Norwegians speak their own dialect in every situation, so the speech learners hear often differs from the written Bokmål they read.¹

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language

About the Norwegian language

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language
2. https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/folketall/statistikk/befolkning
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V2_word_order

Norwegian reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR)

Stichos levels are modelled on the CEFR. Norway’s official Norskprøven, developed by the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir), reports results directly on the CEFR levels A1 to C1. This column is a reading guide, not an exam result.

Reference corpora

• Leksikografisk bokmålskorpus (LBK): The University of Oslo’s lexicographic corpus of Bokmål, led by Ruth Vatvedt Fjeld, holds about 100 million words of text from 1985 to 2013, weighted as 45% non-fiction, 35% fiction, 10% newspapers and magazines, 5% TV subtitles and 5% unpublished material.¹
• Written standard: Stichos writes standard, dialect-neutral Bokmål vocabulary and spelling at every level and does not mix in Nynorsk forms.

1. https://www.hf.uio.no/iln/om/organisasjon/tekstlab/prosjekter/lbk/

Readability design principles

The standard Scandinavian readability index counts letters rather than syllables.¹

• LIX: Carl-Hugo Björnsson’s läsbarhetsindex, developed for Swedish in the 1960s, adds the average sentence length to the percentage of words longer than six letters. In Norwegian, around 40 counts as a normal score, 60 or more as heavy reading, and first-grade textbooks score about 20.¹
• Lexical complexity: Wold, Mæhlum and Hove (LREC-COLING 2024) estimate how complex Norwegian words are from the documents they appear in, and compare the measure with word length, frequency and syllable count.²
• Speech: Like Swedish, Norwegian is a pitch-accent language with two distinct tonal word accents. No standard of spoken Norwegian is officially sanctioned: most Norwegians speak their own dialect in every setting, and any dialect is accepted as correct spoken Norwegian.³
• Stichos: Stichos does not score its readers with LIX; it controls difficulty with grammar rules and sentence-length limits set for each level.

1. https://snl.no/lesbarhetsindeks
2. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01196
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language

Script & grammar scaffolding

• Word order: A0 keeps the subject first and inverts only in yes/no questions (Har du kaffe?). A1 allows sentences that open with an adverb, with the verb in second place.
• Tenses: A0 uses only the present. A1 adds the simple past (preteritum), A2 the present perfect (presens perfektum) and the modals kan, vil, må and skal, and B1 the past perfect and relative clauses with som. A0 to A2 use no passive; B2 explicitly allows the bli-passive and the s-passive in the present and infinitive.
• Articles: At A1, a singular countable noun always takes an article (en kaffe, jakken); bare singulars appear only in fixed phrases such as ha bil.
• Pronouns and address: Subject pronouns are always written out, since Norwegian does not drop them. Everyone is addressed as du; the old formal De is avoided.

Related academic & framework resources

• Hva er Norskprøven? (HK-dir): HK-dir’s description of the official Norwegian test for adult immigrants and the CEFR levels it reports.
• Hva betyr nivåene i Norskprøven? (HK-dir): What each result level from A1 to C1 means for a candidate’s Norwegian.
• Språkrådet: The Language Council of Norway, the state body that sets the norms for written Bokmål and Nynorsk.
• Leksikografisk bokmålskorpus (University of Oslo): The project page for the 100-million-word Bokmål corpus.
• Lesbarhetsindeks (Store norske leksikon): The Norwegian encyclopedia’s entry on LIX and how scores are read in Norwegian.
• Estimating Lexical Complexity from Document-Level Distributions: The 2024 paper by Sondre Wold, Petter Mæhlum and Oddbjørn Hove.

Frequently asked questions

What writing system does Norwegian use?

Latin alphabet of 29 letters, adding æ, ø and å. There are two official written standards: Bokmål, the language of instruction for 86.5% of primary and lower-secondary pupils (2010), and Nynorsk. Stichos writes Bokmål.

Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?

Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.

Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?

Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.

Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?

Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.

Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?

Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.

How does word lookup work while reading?

Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.

Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?

Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.

Do stories include audio or narration?

Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).