Historien var magisk.

Historie is the indefinite form: a story or history.

Historien is the definite form: the story or the history.

In Norwegian, the definite article is often attached to the end of the noun, so:

• historie = a story
• historien = the story

So in this sentence, historien means the story.

Because Norwegian usually puts the at the end of the noun as a suffix.

So instead of a separate word like in English, you often get:

• en historie = a story
• historien = the story

A separate word like den is used when there is an adjective before the noun:

• den magiske historien = the magical story

But in Historien var magisk, there is no adjective before historien, so the ending -en is enough.

Var is the past tense of å være, which means to be.

So:

• er = is / am / are
• var = was / were

In this sentence, Historien var magisk, var means was.

Because the sentence is talking about the past.

• Historien er magisk = The story is magical
• Historien var magisk = The story was magical

So var shows that the speaker is describing the story as magical at some past time.

Here magisk is a predicate adjective, meaning it comes after the verb var and describes the subject.

In Norwegian, predicate adjectives usually agree with gender and number, but not with definiteness in the same way adjectives before nouns do.

Compare:

• en magisk historie = a magical story
• historien var magisk = the story was magical

Also, adjectives ending in -sk often do not add -t in the neuter singular, so magisk stays magisk.

For the plural, you would usually get:

• Historiene var magiske = The stories were magical

It can mean either, depending on context.

• historie can mean story
• historie can also mean history

In this sentence, Historien var magisk, the most natural meaning is The story was magical, because magical fits story much better than history in most contexts.

The dictionary form is historie.

When you look words up, you usually look for the indefinite singular form, so:

• dictionary form: historie
• definite singular: historien

That is similar to how English dictionaries list story, not the story.

Yes, in some varieties of Bokmål and in many dialects, feminine nouns can take the feminine definite ending -a.

So you may see:

• historien
• historia

Both can mean the story.

In standard Bokmål, historien is very common and completely correct. A learner will see it often.

Historie is a noun that can be treated as feminine, but in Bokmål it is very common to use the common-gender-style forms with en and -en.

So you may encounter:

• en historie / historien
• sometimes also ei historie / historia

For a learner, en historie and historien are very safe and common forms to use.

A simple learner-friendly approximation is:

his-TO-ree-en var ma-GI-sk

A few notes:

• Historien has four syllables: his-to-ri-en
• var is pronounced with a Norwegian r, not exactly like English r
• magisk has stress on the second syllable: ma-GI-sk

The exact pronunciation depends a bit on dialect, but that approximation will help you recognize it and say it understandably.