The Mystery of Nils. Part 1 - Norwegian Course for Beginners. Learn Norwegian - Enjoy the Story. Paperback – May 7, 2014

Werner Skalla’s The Mystery of Nils is a brilliant and engaging introduction to the study of the Norwegian language. The book assumes no prior knowledge of Norwegian. Essential vocabulary and grammar are carefully explained step by step, and the book makes extensive use of nicely-drawn illustrations and pictures to help the student understand the material more clearly. Exercises are also included, to reinforce the student’s comprehension of the lessons. A charming narrative about a nisse (a Norwegian doll that resembles an elf) called Nils, who is alive, and his relationship with a Norwegian family that has a difficult secret from its past, runs throughout the book and is one of the book’s most attractive features. Each chapter begins with a part of the Nils story, and as the narrative successively unfolds these parts become increasingly more complex Norwegian texts, corresponding to the student’s greater knowledge and understanding of Norwegian that builds from each of the chapter’s lessons.Learning Norwegian solely from a textbook presents a number of problems, chief of which is that the student has no real idea of what the language sounds like. However the publisher of The Mystery of Nils, Skapago Publishing, provides a number of ways to overcome this problem. For example free audio versions of the Nils stories are available at the publisher’s website, www.skapago.eu, together with other helpful free material such as Norwegian pronunciation guides.One word of warning. The friendly and engaging nature of The Mystery of Nils can give its readers, especially those who are just starting the book, the false and misleading impression that learning Norwegian is going to be easy. Unfortunately that is not the case. Underneath the surface of the delightful page-turning Nils story, the chatty and friendly grammar lessons, and the fun illustrations is a lot of hard work. Effective memorization of the book’s vocabulary and grammar for example requires often lengthy daily practice, and there is no practicable alternative to this essential but tedious work if a student really wants to learn the Norwegian language. Learning another language to a good level of proficiency is like running a marathon: hard and exhausting, but also an incredibly rewarding and exhilarating accomplishment when one reaches the end. Werner Skalla’s Mystery of Nils provides the student of Norwegian with a friendly, encouraging, and highly skillful and effective coach, one who does everything possible to get the student to the finishing line.

What I like most about this book is that it bucks the trend of language learning books being glorified phrase books that keep you in the dark when it comes to the mechanics and patterns of the language. This book does NOT do that. It explains the way Norwegian works and relevant grammar points are introduced throughout the book. There are exercises for practice. So it actually feels like a language course for adults rather than children. Having the story is nice. The recordings are great and I especially like the two sections that are recorded in three different Norwegian dialects (the Bergen dialect is gorgeous).On the down side (and this is just my opinion based on my own learning strengths and weaknesses), there is a bit of vocabulary overload. Lots of words are piled on very quickly and I found myself wanting to jump ahead to read about the grammar before I memorized words from previous sections. More repetition of vocab would be nice without slamming new words so quickly. But that is just me; I'm slow at memorizing vocab and very fast at absorbing grammar points and patterns.The one real complaint I have is that words are used quite frequently that are not in the vocab lists or back of the book. That was the one thing that was really annoying to me. I was flipping back and forth to the vocab in the back of the book all the time, and when a word was not there... well, irritating. Wastes a lot of time to have to grab a dictionary.Other than those couple of gripes, the book is fabulous! Overall probably the best choice out there. It's also nice that there is the "part 2" book, which I'm just starting now.

I cannot even begin to say how happy I am with this book! I initially ordered the second book because I *thought* I had enough knowledge of Norsk to get through it...Well, I didn't, so I ordered this one as soon as I realized that. There was so much I did not know, especially with grammar! Other books I've read do not have the grammar explanations and tips that this book has. I love how between each chapter the grammar is explained, it is very, very helpful - you are able to learn so much. I also love how vocabulary is repeated in each chapter so you are able to pick up new words easily. I'm nearly done with the first book and I can tell an IMMENSE difference with my fluency! It has improved drastically ever since I bought this. It is such an accomplishing and exciting feeling.I look forward to reading this every night. It's such an adorable and endearing story too, I absolutely love it! It's so much better and just REFRESHING to read something that is not like the standard and BORING "Hi, how are you? What is your name?" books and courses that I've spent several hundred dollars on, which never really helped my progress.After reading this every night, completing all of the exercises - both in the book and online, and utilizing the rest of the online tools, I can now understand the majority of the Norsk news and TV shows I watch online and can read many other books and news websites. Again, it's a very accomplishing and exciting feeling. I really want to take some of the live one-on-one courses the website has to offer soon.I've been searching for something like this for years to learn a new language with.This is by far the best money I've ever spent on learning Norwegian. In fact, I wish there were MORE books like this for other languages - especially French, Spanish, Italian, Finnish, etc... [Hint, hint!] ;-) I'm definitely going to be ordering the German book as soon as I'm done with this one and whenever the Swedish textbook releases, I'll be ordering that one as well!This book deserves well over 5 stars, I cannot say enough great things about it. I cannot wait to begin reading the second book soon. Note to the author: PLEASE write more books!! :-)