Having your first conversation in a foreign language is always a feat. If you know how to say ”hello” and ”goodbye”, you have the tools to break the ice – and to sneak away, if the whole thing gets too embarrassing!

Hei! is the normal way to say ”hi!” The sound lies somewhere between English hey an hi (a bit closer to hi). Add a dose of jolly optimism, and you’ll sound very Norwegian.

If someone calls you and you can’t hear the person, your word-of-choice should be hallo?

Of course there are also the good something! kind of greetings. Like when you meet somenone in the morning, you say god morgen [goh MOORen], in the middle of the day the words to use are god dag [goh DAHG], and in the evening you go for god kveld [goh KVELL]. Please note that ”good day” doesn’t sound strange in Norwegian – it’s a totally natural thing to say.

If you’re in Norway and take a stroll after dark, however, it’s a bad idea to greet strangers with god natt [goh NATT] (good night), no matter how beautiful the stars are! They’ll think you’re leaving for bed, or expecting them to do it!

This brings us over to taking leave. The normal way to say bye in Norwegian is

ha det!

If you’ve only listened to Norwegian, you might assume it should be written ”hade” [HAHdeh], as that’s the way it’s pronounced. The expression actually comes from ha det bra! [HAHdeh BRAH], which means ”have it good!” You’re basically wishing someone a good time. Now, isn’t that a nice way to leave a person?

And I’ll end this post by saying vi snakkes! (talk to you later!) and wishing you lykke til (good luck) with your language studies.

Hipp hurra for 17. mai! It’s May 17th, the day when all Norwegians går mann av huse (go to the streets, literally ’go man off house’) to celebrate their beautiful country. In every Norwegian by (town) and bygd (little town, hamlet) there are 17. mai-tog (May 17th parades) with people waving norske flagg (Norwegian flags) and musicians playing. If you look around you, you’ll see a lot of people wearing bunad [BOOnahd], the Norwegian national costume!

All bunader have a lot in common, but vary in the details. In fact, every major Norwegian region has its own bunad! (Norwegians of Sami origin wear kofter on 17. mai, which are quite different.) Today, most bunader are worn by kvinner (women) on festive occasions. However, the traditional mannsbunad (male costume) is being used by an increasing number of menn.

Ingeborg Fatnes kindly agreed to be photographed in her rogalandsbunad.

The ordinary (female) bunad usually contains a skjørt (skirt, pronounced ”shirt”), belte (girdle) and a sjal (shawl). The sølje – a silver ornament worn on the chest – is also an important part of many of the costumes. Additionally, there may be some ”gadgets”, like a purse, a hodeplagg (headgear) or a kniv (for the male costumes). I always thought broderiene (the embroideries) that adorn a lot of bunader looked a bit like rosemaling (Norwegian ”rose painting”)…

Making a bunad takes a lot of time and money. The embroideries, the sølje, the folds – everything has to be correct. The silver for the sølje may cost thousands of Norwegian kroner. So, in some families, the daughters are given parts of the ornaments ”in advance”. For example, the year the girl has her 4th birthday, she’s given a piece of silver, and then another one next year, and so on until she celebrates her konfirmasjon and is given the full bunad.

Of course, only (grand)parents (usually (grand)mothers) with a lot of time on their hands can make a bunad for their (grand)daughter. It is more common to pay a systue (dressmaker’s workroom) to do the work.

A sunnmørebunad for men.

If you’d like to have a Norwegian bunad yourself, it’s totally possible! But you should be prepared to pay something between 15.000 and 30.000 Norwegian kroner (2.500-5.000 US dollars).

There are various places to go bunad-shopping, one of them is the web site http://www.norskebunader.no

When you want to tell the world where you are, prepositions come handy: I’m in the garage; we’re on the mountain. (And so it is in Norwegian: Jeg er i garasjen; vi er på fjellet.) However, very often some kind of adverb can do the job as well: I’m home; we’re out. Jeg er hjemme; vi er ute.

You’ll notice that a lot of these locational adverbs end in -e in Norwegian. In addition to hjemme [YEMMeh] and ute [OOteh], you’ve got:

- inne (in, inside), as in Hun sitter inne i stua (she’s sitting in the living-room)

- oppe (up), as in Vi var oppe hele natta (We stayed up all night)

- nede (down), as in De traff hverandre nede i dalen (They met/hit each other down in the valley)

- borte (away), as in Hvorfor er du alltid borte når jeg er hjemme? (Why’re you always gone when I’m at home?)

- fremme (in front), as in Det er jeg som skal sitte fremme i bilen (It is I who’s supposed to sit in the front of the car) [this word can also be spelt framme]

But what if you wanted to say you were going home rather than being home? In Norwegian there’s a really nice trick you can use to tweak the meaning of the above words into something more directional: You just remove the final -e:

- Gå hjem! (Go home!)

- Nå må dere komme ut! (Now you must come out(side)!)

- Hun går inn i stua (She’s going into the living-room)

- Han står opp (He gets up)

- De går lenger ned i dalen (They go further down the valley)

- Han løp bort så fort han kunne (He ran away as fast as he could)

- Kom frem! (Come forth!)

Neat, huh?