Category Archives: Language

Christmas Dates

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Of course in Norway, Norwegian is the primary language spoken. Unfortunately, some words don’t translate or even transliterate into useful meanings, and this includes the names of the various Christmas dates! It’s kind of the same thing in the US, you can’t inherently know that Christmas Day is the 25th of December, but for the most part, there’s only 2 days you have to know around Christmas time, and their “Eve” variations, so it’s fairly straightforward to remember. But there’s far more variations in Norway, and when trying to figure out what days a store is open, you’ll often only find the terms, not the actual numerical dates! To that end, hopefully this blog post can shed some light on what the different dates are!

For comparison, let’s just list the US days real quick, there’s only 4:

  • Christmas Eve – Dec 24th. This is usually a half day at stores and businesses, if not a complete holiday.
  • Christmas Day – Dec 25th. Christmas presents are usually opened in the morning. Most businesses are closed all day.
  • New Years Eve – Dec 31. Some businesses have reduced hours.
  • New Years Day – Jan 1. Some businesses are closed.

But here are all the dates in Norway: (It’s worth noting that “aften” translates to “Eve”)

  • Lille julaften – (Little Christmas Eve) – Dec 23. This is usually a normal business day, but Christmas festivities often begin during this day.
  • Julaften (Christmas Eve) – Dec 24. Christmas presents are usually opened in the evening. This is usually a half day at stores and businesses, including grocery stores. Some stores are closed the whole day.
  • Første (1.) juledag (First Christmas Day) – Dec 25. Virtually all stores and businesses (except normally Sunday open ones like small convenience stores) are closed. Any store that is open likely has reduced hours anyways compared to normal.
  • Andre (2.) juledag (Second Christmas Day) – Dec 26. If a store was closed on First Christmas Day, it’s likely still closed today. Stores that were open on First Christmas Day may have extended hours compared to the day before, but may be reduced compared to normal.
  • Tredje (3.) juledag (Third Christmas Day) – Dec 27. This is not celebrated in modern times, but until 1770, was also a public holiday.
  • Romjulen (No good English translation, literally “space Christmas” or something) – Dec 27 – Dec 30/31. This is the “space between” Christmas and New Years. Some stores have different hours than normal during this time, but by and large you can expect normal operating hours. Technically, Romjulen includes Dec 31, but Dec 31 is also a special day on its own.
  • Nyttårsaften (New Years Eve) – Dec 31. This is usually a reduced hours day at stores and businesses, though not usually quite as much as on Christmas Eve.
  • Nyttårsdag (Sometimes called Første (1.) Nyttårsdag, New Years Day) – Jan 1. Most stores are closed on this day, or at least have reduced operating hours in the case of small convenience stores.
  • Days after: Some stores have reduced or increased hours on Jan 2. Most stores return to normal hours by Jan 3.

In general, these dates assume that the holiday is not on a weekend. If the holiday also happens to fall on a weekend, then the hours may be further changed, but you’ll need to consult each store’s hours. In any case, the names of the days and which number they fall on do not change.

How to learn Norwegian

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Norwegian is actually a fairly obscure language when it comes down to it. There are only 5 million speakers of Norwegian in the entire world, and not a ton of demand to learn it, so that means that most language learning companies ignore Norwegian. For instance, Rosetta Stone does not currently offer a Norwegian program (though they do offer a Swedish program). No matter, there are still plenty of resources out there, it’s just a matter of finding them. I have bought 2 textbooks, a Norwegian-English dictionary, and I am using a deck of Anki flash cards. If you aren’t familiar with Anki, it’s flashcard software, which follows a supposedly researched pattern of presenting you with flashcards as soon as you were about to forget them, and does continual review. It has been fantastic for helping to increase my vocabulary, and helping it to stick. Additionally, the deck of flashcards that I have also include a native speaker saying the phrases, which allows me to hear the correct pronunciation, as well as practising hearing Norwegian. The 2 textbooks that I have are really nice as well. One of them is a textbook that came with audio CDs, which are useful for practising listening skills, and the other textbook is actually a book that explains the Norwegian grammar, in a clear, precise, English way. This has been very helpful to making my Norwegian be not just intelligible, but actually correct.

The textbook with the audio can be found here, and the grammar book can be found here. The dictionary I use is here, though I suspect that any dictionary will do just fine, and the set of flashcards that I use can be found here, and the program you need to download (anki) can be found here.

Oh, and one last super important thing, I’ve made a bunch of Norwegian friends to help me out when I have specific questions that the books don’t answer, and to have conversations with in Norwegian. That is an incredibly important part of truly learning the language! 800px-Flag_of_Norway_tiny