Phone Numbers, Prices and Measurements | Norwegian Grammar

You can know every number word in Norwegian and still freeze when a Norwegian rattles off their phone number, because phone numbers are read in a way the textbooks rarely teach: eight digits, grouped in pairs, and very often read with the old two-digit counting (femogførti for 45, where the units come before the tens). This is the single most practical numbers skill for living in Norway — you will need it the first time someone says "ring meg" — and it doubles as your real-world introduction to the old counting system, which survives here even among young speakers. This page also covers reading prices (kroner and øre) and metric measurements aloud. (For the full story of why two counting systems coexist, see Old and New Counting; for the decimal comma behind prices, see Decimals, Fractions and Percentages.)

Norwegian phone numbers come in pairs

A Norwegian phone number is eight digits, with no area codes to dial separately — mobiles and landlines are both just eight digits. In speech and in writing the eight digits are grouped into four pairs: a 2-2-2-2 rhythm.

45 67 89 01

A typical mobile number, written in four pairs. You read it pair by pair, not digit by digit.

The English habit is to read a phone number one digit at a time ("four-five-six-seven…"). Norwegians do the opposite: they read each pair as a two-digit number.

45 67 89 01 = førtifem, sekstisju, åttini, null en

'forty-five, sixty-seven, eighty-nine, oh-one' — each pair becomes a single two-digit number.

Hva er nummeret ditt? — 99 88 77 66. → nittini, åttiåtte, syttisju, sekstiseks.

'What's your number?' — 99 88 77 66, read as four two-digit numbers.

Note the pair 01: a leading zero is read null plus the digit — null en ("oh-one"). A pair like 00 is null null; a pair like 07 is null sju.

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The rhythm is 2-2-2-2. Train your ear to chunk a Norwegian phone number into four beats. If you try to track eight separate digits you will fall behind; if you listen for four two-digit numbers you will keep up.

The old counting survives in phone numbers

Here is the distinguishing fact. Norway officially switched to new counting (tjueén, tjueto — tens first, like English "twenty-one") in 1951. But the old counting (énogtyve / modern enogtjue — units first, like German einundzwanzig and like English "four-and-twenty blackbirds") never fully died, and one place it is thoroughly alive is phone numbers. Even young Norwegians who count tjueén, tjueto in every other context will read the pair 21 in a phone number as enogtjue.

21 34 56 78 → enogtjue, fireogtretti, seksogfemti, åtteogsytti

Read with old counting: 'one-and-twenty, four-and-thirty, six-and-fifty, eight-and-seventy.' The units come first.

Mobilen min er 92 45 13 67. → toognitti, femogførti, tretten, sjuogseksti.

My mobile is 92 45 13 67 — pairs read old-style: two-and-ninety, five-and-forty, thirteen, seven-and-sixty.

So the practical reality is: to give and take phone numbers in Norway, you must be comfortable with the old units-first counting, at least for the two-digit numbers 21–99. The teens (13–19) are the same in both systems (tretten, fjorten…), and the round tens (20, 30…) are the same too — it is only the in-between numbers (21–29, 31–39, …) where old and new diverge.

Pair	New counting	Old counting (used in phone numbers)
21	tjueén	enogtjue
34	trettifire	fireogtretti
45	førtifem	femogførti
67	sekstisju	sjuogseksti
89	åttini	niogåtti

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You will hear both systems for phone numbers depending on the speaker's age and region — older speakers and many Oslo speakers lean old-style, others read new-style. You only have to understand both; for producing your own number, pick whichever you find easier and say it consistently across all four pairs.

Knowing the number is read in pairs also tells you how to ask someone to repeat it: you ask for the pair, not the digit. Kan du ta den siste igjen? ("Can you do the last one again?") means the last pair.

Prices: kroner and øre

The Norwegian currency is the krone (plural kroner), abbreviated kr (written after the amount, with a space: 250 kr) or shown as kr before on signs. One krone is divided into 100 øre, though øre coins no longer exist physically — prices like 19,90 still appear because card and digital payments use the decimal.

250 kr = to hundre og femti kroner

250 kr — 'two hundred and fifty kroner'. The unit kr follows the number.

Det koster 19,90. → nitten nitti / nitten kroner og nitti øre

It costs 19.90. — colloquially 'nitten nitti'; the full form is nitten kroner og nitti øre.

Bussbilletten kostet 42 kroner.

The bus ticket cost 42 kroner. — kroner spelled out in the noun, abbreviated kr in figures.

Notice the colloquial price-reading shortcut in the second example: 19,90 is commonly said simply as nitten nitti — the whole-kroner part, then the øre part as a bare two-digit number, dropping the words kroner and øre entirely, exactly as an English speaker says "nineteen ninety". Decimal-comma rules from the decimals page apply: the comma is the separator, and a price like 1 500,- kr means fifteen hundred kroner (the dash standing in for "no øre").

Metric measurements read aloud

Norway is fully metric, and the units are read with the decimal comma and no period after the unit abbreviation (kg, km, cm, l — not kg.). A few high-frequency ones:

3,5 kg = tre komma fem kilo

3.5 kg — 'three comma five kilos'. Kilo is the everyday word; the decimal is read with komma.

Det er 100 km til Oslo.

It's 100 km to Oslo. — 'hundre kilometer'.

Fartsgrensen er 100 km/t.

The speed limit is 100 km/h. — read 'hundre kilometer i timen' (km/t = kilometer per hour).

Kan jeg få et halvt kilo kjøttdeig?

Can I get half a kilo of mince? — et halvt kilo (kilo is neuter here, so halvt); shopping by weight is everyday Norwegian.

The speed abbreviation km/t ("kilometer i timen") is read in full as kilometer i timen — literally "kilometres in the hour" — not as a spelled-out "km slash t". Temperatures use grader (tjue grader), and where precision matters the decimal comma returns: 36,8 grader.

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Unit abbreviations take no period in Norwegian: it is 5 kg, 10 km, 2 l, 3 m. The space between the number and the unit is standard. And kr goes after the amount (250 kr), unlike the English "$250".

Common Mistakes

The signature English-speaker error is reading phone digits one at a time instead of in pairs:

❌ 45 67 89 01 read as 'four five six seven eight nine zero one'.

Unnatural — Norwegians group in pairs. Reading single digits marks you as a foreigner and is hard for the listener to take down.

✅ 45 67 89 01 = førtifem, sekstisju, åttini, null en.

Correct — four two-digit numbers, the 2-2-2-2 rhythm.

Closely related: expecting new-style counting and being thrown when a Norwegian uses the old units-first form for a pair:

❌ Hearing 'enogtjue' and parsing it as some number other than 21.

Wrong parse — enogtjue is old counting for 21 (units before tens), standard in phone numbers.

✅ enogtjue = 21; fireogførti = 44; niognitti = 99.

Old counting: read the units, then 'og', then the tens.

Then the price/decimal confusion carried over from English punctuation:

❌ Reading 1.500 kr as one and a half kroner.

Wrong — the period groups thousands here; it's fifteen hundred kroner. The comma, not the dot, marks øre.

✅ 1 500,50 kr = ett tusen fem hundre kroner og femti øre.

Correct — space/dot groups thousands, comma marks the øre.

Putting the currency or unit in the wrong place, English-style:

❌ Det koster kr250 / $250-style ordering.

Incorrect spacing/order — write 250 kr (unit after, with a space).

✅ Det koster 250 kr.

It costs 250 kr. — number, space, then kr.

And finally adding a period to metric units or pluralising them oddly:

❌ Jeg kjøpte 2 kg. poteter.

Incorrect — no period after kg; abbreviations stand bare.

✅ Jeg kjøpte 2 kg poteter.

I bought 2 kg of potatoes. — kg with no period, and note no 'of': just 2 kg poteter.

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