Yes, Norwegian is very similar to Swedish. Both grew out of Old Norse, they share most of their everyday words and grammar, and spoken Norwegian sounds closer to Swedish than to any other language. The twist: written Norwegian looks more like Danish, because Danish was Norway’s written language for about four centuries.
So the honest answer depends on what you mean by similar. If you listen, Norwegian and Swedish are the closest pair in Scandinavia. If you read, you notice a different spelling system, different letters and a handful of very common words that do not match. Below you get the full picture: the shared roots, the words that differ, the grammar, the sound, the false friends that cause real confusion, and what all of this means if you want to learn one of them.
Why are Norwegian and Swedish so similar?
Norwegian and Swedish belong to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, together with Danish, Icelandic and Faroese. A thousand years ago, people across Scandinavia spoke dialects of one language, Old Norse. Over the following centuries those dialects drifted apart, and the borders of kingdoms turned some of them into national languages. But the drift was slow, and the core of the language stayed intact.
You see that core in the basic words. A house is hus in both languages. A car is bil, a day is dag, a boat is båt, and good is bra. Many short everyday sentences are almost identical, which is why a Swede on holiday in Oslo can read shop signs and menus without a dictionary.
Geography helped too. Norway and Sweden share a border of more than 1,600 kilometres, and the dialects on both sides of it blend into each other. For most of history there was no sharp line where Norwegian stopped and Swedish began, only a gradual shift from village to village.
Why does written Norwegian look like Danish?
Because Norway spent roughly 400 years in a union with Denmark, from the late 1300s until 1814. During that time Danish was the language of church, law, schools and books in Norway. Norwegians kept speaking their own dialects at home, but they wrote in Danish. When the union ended in 1814, Norway passed to a union with Sweden that lasted until 1905, and it kept a Danish style of writing.
Modern Bokmål, the written standard most Norwegians use, grew out of that Danish written tradition and was gradually reformed toward Norwegian speech. In the 1850s the linguist Ivar Aasen built a second standard from rural dialects, which became Nynorsk. In Norwegian primary schools in the 2015 to 2016 school year, about 88 percent of pupils wrote Bokmål and about 12 percent wrote Nynorsk, according to the reading centre at the University of Stavanger.
This history explains the odd triangle in Scandinavia. Norwegian is written like Danish but spoken like Swedish. A Norwegian reading a Danish newspaper feels almost at home, and a Norwegian listening to Swedish radio feels the same. That is also why Norwegians tend to understand both neighbours better than the neighbours understand each other, as we explain in can Danes, Swedes and Norwegians understand each other.
Which Norwegian and Swedish words are different?
The first thing you notice on paper is the alphabet. Both languages use å, but Swedish writes ä en ö where Norwegian writes æ en ø. So love is kärlek in Swedish and kjærlighet in Norwegian, and island is ö in Swedish but øy in Norwegian.
Then come the small, frequent words, and these matter because they appear in every sentence. I is jag in Swedish and jeg in Norwegian. Not is inte versus ikke. How is hur versus hvordan, and why is varför versus hvorfor. Thanks is tack versus takk. To speak is usually prata in Swedish and snakke in Norwegian.
Some everyday nouns are completely different. A girl is flicka in Swedish and jente in Norwegian. A boy is pojke versus gutt. None of these differences block understanding for long, because the sentence around them is familiar. But a learner who only knows one language will hit a few blank spots in every conversation.
Is Norwegian grammar the same as Swedish grammar?
Very close. Both languages put the definite article at the end of the noun, which surprises English speakers. The house is huset in both, and the car is bilen in both. Both use the same verb second word order that German and Dutch use, so the verb comes second in a main clause even when the sentence starts with something else.
Verbs are easy in both: they do not change for person. Swedish says jag är, du är, hon är and Norwegian says jeg er, du er, hun er. Compare that with German, where the verb changes for almost every person.
The main grammar difference is gender. Swedish has two genders, common and neuter. Norwegian has three, masculine, feminine and neuter, although Bokmål lets you treat feminine nouns as masculine. So the girl is flickan in Swedish, while Norwegian can say jenta with a feminine ending or jenten with a masculine one. Plurals also look different: the houses is husen in Swedish and husene in Norwegian.
Do Norwegian and Swedish sound the same?
They sound strikingly alike, and this is the part that surprises people most. Both languages have a sing-song melody, because both use two tonal word accents. Two words can be spelled the same and differ only in pitch. The classic Swedish example is anden, which means the duck with one accent and the spirit with the other. Norwegian has the same two-accent system.
Danish lost that melody and uses a glottal catch called stød instead, and it also swallows many consonants. That is why Danish sounds so different from the other two, even though the written forms are close to Norwegian. We go into this in why Danish is so hard to understand.
Norwegian has no official spoken standard, so Norwegians speak their dialects on television, in parliament and at work. A Swede can follow an Oslo speaker quite easily, while someone from a distant western valley takes more effort. Swedish speech is more uniform, which helps Norwegians understand it.
Which false friends confuse Swedes and Norwegians?
False friends are words that look the same but mean something else. Norwegian and Swedish have enough of them to create real moments of confusion. The most famous is rolig: in Swedish it means fun or funny, in Norwegian it means calm. Tell a Norwegian a party was rolig and they hear that it was quiet.
Another one is glass. In Swedish it means ice cream, while in Norwegian it means glass, the material or the thing you drink from. Norwegians call ice cream is. Then there is rar: in Swedish it means sweet or kind, in Norwegian it means strange. Calling someone’s child rar lands very differently on each side of the border.
En semester means holiday or annual leave in Swedish, while in Norwegian it means a term at school or university. A Swede who says they are on semester is relaxing. A Norwegian on semester is studying.
Should you learn Norwegian or Swedish?
For an English speaker both are among the easiest languages you can pick. The US Foreign Service Institute puts Norwegian and Swedish in its easiest group, with an estimated 24 weeks of full-time study to reach professional working proficiency. You can read more about that ranking in the easiest European languages for English speakers.
The bonus is that learning one gives you a large head start on the other. Learn Norwegian and you understand a lot of Swedish speech and a lot of Danish writing. Learn Swedish and you reach roughly 10 million native speakers, about twice as many as Norwegian. Pick the one tied to your plans, your family or the country you love, and you get most of the other for free.
If you want to see where these languages sit next to English, Dutch, German and Frisian, take a look at our Germanic language family tree.
Can Swedes understand Norwegian?
Mostly, yes. Spoken Norwegian sounds close to Swedish, so most Swedes follow a Norwegian speaker with a little effort. Norwegians usually understand Swedish slightly better than the other way around.
Is Norwegian closer to Swedish or Danish?
It depends. Spoken Norwegian is closer to Swedish, while written Bokmål is closer to Danish, because Danish was Norway’s written language for about four centuries.
Is Norwegian or Swedish easier to learn?
They are about equally easy for English speakers. The Foreign Service Institute rates both at around 24 weeks of full-time study. Norwegian has the extra puzzle of two written standards and many spoken dialects.
What does this have to do with Frisian?
Frisian sits on a different branch of the family. Norwegian and Swedish are North Germanic, while Frisian is West Germanic, together with English, Dutch and German. So a Frisian speaker will not understand Norwegian the way a Swede does, although the shared Germanic roots show up in basic words.
Frisian and Norwegian do share one situation: a smaller language next to a bigger, closely related neighbour that dominated its writing for centuries. In Friesland that neighbour is Dutch, and almost every Frisian speaker is bilingual. If you want to explore Frisian words yourself, try our Frisian dictionary.
As an Amazon Associate, LearnFrisian earns from qualifying purchases. Book links on this page are affiliate links.
