Once you can count past a hundred, two new questions appear: how do you glue the big building blocks together, and how do you write the result? Norwegian answers both differently from English. It inserts og ("and") before the final element of a number, it writes large numbers solid as a single word in careful style, and — the trap that catches every English speaker — its milliard is your "billion," while Norwegian billion is a thousand times bigger. This page covers the round magnitudes, the assembly rules, and the punctuation conventions that keep your figures readable.
The building blocks
Above the tens, Norwegian uses these round words. Note that hundre and tusen need no preceding en in their bare form — "a hundred kroner" is simply hundre kroner — though you can add ett to stress exactly one.
| Numeral | Norwegian | English |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | hundre (ett hundre) | one hundred |
| 1 000 | tusen (ett tusen) | one thousand |
| 1 000 000 | en million | one million |
| 1 000 000 000 | en milliard | one billion (US) |
| 1 000 000 000 000 | en billion | one trillion (US) |
Unlike hundre and tusen, the words million, milliard, and billion are nouns: they take en and pluralise — to millioner, tre milliarder. So "two million" is to millioner and "five billion" is fem milliarder.
Det bor over fem millioner mennesker i Norge.
More than five million people live in Norway.
Huset kostet halvannen million kroner.
The house cost one and a half million kroner.
The milliard false friend
This deserves its own warning. The long-scale system Norwegian uses splits exactly where English (in its modern short-scale sense) does not:
- Norwegian milliard = 10⁹ = English billion (a thousand million)
- Norwegian billion = 10¹² = English trillion (a million million)
So a news report saying statsbudsjettet er på 1 800 milliarder kroner means 1,800 billion kroner — translate milliard as "billion," never "million." And the cognate billion is a genuine false friend: it looks like English "billion" but is a thousand times larger. Misreading either one shifts the figure by three orders of magnitude.
Selskapet tjente to milliarder kroner i fjor.
The company earned two billion kroner last year (milliard = billion).
Det finnes flere milliarder stjerner i galaksen.
There are several billion stars in the galaxy.
Building complex numbers: og before the last element
Norwegian assembles a large number from biggest to smallest — thousands, then hundreds, then the tens-and-units — and inserts og ("and") before the final element. English drops "and" in formal style ("two hundred fifty-three"); Norwegian keeps it.
- 102 = hundre og to — "a hundred and two"
- 253 = tohundreogfemtitre — "two hundred and fifty-three"
- 221 = tohundreogtjueén — "two hundred and twenty-one"
- 1 305 = ettusen trehundreogfem — "one thousand three hundred and five"
The og sits before whatever the last chunk is. If the number ends in a tens-and-units pair, og precedes that pair (hundreogtjueén). If it ends in a round hundred, og precedes that (tusen og fem hundre).
Det var tohundreogfemti gjester i salen.
There were two hundred and fifty guests in the hall.
Bilen gikk for hundre og to tusen kroner.
The car sold for a hundred and two thousand kroner.
Vi løp ettusen femhundre meter på gym.
We ran fifteen hundred metres (1 500 m) in PE.
Written solid as one word
In careful and formal Norwegian, a spelled-out number is written as a single unbroken word, no hyphens — tohundreogtjueén (221), femtusentrehundre (5 300). This is the same one-word principle you met with the compound tens (tjueén), extended to the larger magnitudes. In practice, writers often loosen this for very long numbers and insert spaces at the magnitude boundaries (to hundre og tjueén) for readability; both the solid and the spaced forms are accepted, but the solid form is the strictly "correct" written style and the one to recognise on cheques and in formal documents.
The element hundre and tusen stay singular when multiplied: "three hundred" is tre hundre / trehundre, never "tre hundrer." Only million, milliard, billion pluralise.
Sjekken var på tjuetusen kroner — skrevet i ett ord.
The cheque was for twenty thousand kroner — written as one word.
Punctuation: space for thousands, comma for decimals
This is the reverse of American convention and a frequent slip for English speakers. Norwegian:
- separates thousands with a space (or, in older typography, a period): 1 000, 1 000 000, sometimes 1.000
- uses a comma for the decimal point: 3,5 = "three point five," read tre komma fem
So 1,5 in Norwegian is one and a half, not fifteen hundred — the comma is a decimal separator. And 1 000 with a space (or 1.000 with a period) is one thousand, never "one point zero zero zero." This single swap — space where English puts a comma, comma where English puts a point — is the heart of reading Norwegian figures correctly.
| Figure | Norwegian reads | Means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 000 | ett tusen | 1,000 (one thousand) |
| 1,5 | en komma fem | 1.5 (one and a half) |
| 2 500 | to tusen fem hundre | 2,500 |
| 3,75 | tre komma syttifem | 3.75 |
Lønna er 38 000 kroner i måneden.
The salary is 38,000 kroner a month (space, not comma, for thousands).
Literen koster 22,90 — altså tjueto komma nitti.
A litre costs 22.90 — that is, twenty-two point ninety (comma = decimal).
Common Mistakes
Translating milliard as "million." A milliard is a billion (10⁹); calling it a million understates it a thousand-fold.
❌ 'to milliarder' = two million
Incorrect — milliard is billion: 'to milliarder' = two billion.
✅ 'to milliarder' = two billion
Two billion (10⁹ × 2).
Using a comma as a thousands separator. A Norwegian comma is a decimal point; for thousands, use a space.
❌ 1,000 kroner
Incorrect — '1,000' reads as 'one point zero zero zero'; thousands take a space: 1 000.
✅ 1 000 kroner
One thousand kroner.
Reading 3,5 as 'three thousand five hundred'. The comma is a decimal separator: 3,5 = three point five.
❌ 3,5 = 3 500
Incorrect — the comma is decimal: 3,5 = 3.5 (tre komma fem).
✅ 3,5 = 3.5
Three point five.
Dropping og before the final element. Norwegian keeps "and" where formal English omits it.
❌ to hundre femtitre
Incorrect — insert og before the last part: tohundreogfemtitre.
✅ tohundreogfemtitre
Two hundred and fifty-three.
Key Takeaways
- Magnitudes: hundre (100), tusen (1 000), million (10⁶), milliard (10⁹), billion (10¹²).
- Milliard = English billion; Norwegian billion = English trillion. Never say "million" for milliard.
- Insert og before the last element: hundre og to, tohundreogfemtitre.
- Write large numbers solid, no hyphen, in careful style; only million/milliard/billion pluralise.
- Punctuation flips: space for thousands (1 000), comma for the decimal (3,5).
Now practice Norwegian
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Decimals, Fractions and PercentagesB1 — How Norwegian writes and says decimals with a comma (3,5 = 'tre komma fem'), builds fractions with the regular -del/-deler suffix (en halv, en tredjedel, to tredjedeler, tre kvart), and handles percentages (prosent, no plural) — plus the genuine hazard that the decimal comma and the thousands space are the exact reverse of English, so 1 500,50 means one thousand five hundred kroner and fifty øre.
- PunctuationA2 — Norwegian punctuation where it differs from English: the decimal comma (3,5), the comma before a fronted clause and between main clauses, the guillemet quotation marks «...», and what is NOT capitalised — mandag, mars, norsk.
- Cardinal NumbersA1 — Count from 0 to 100 in Norwegian — the units, the irregular teens, the tens, and how modern Bokmål builds 21–99 in the same tens-then-units order as English (tjueén, nittini).