I have a 10-day trip to Norway planned for September; we’ll be staying at an Air BnB near the Urnes stavkyrkje. I’d like to be as fluent as possible in the language before I go, so here’s my plan:
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Listen to an audiobook of the Gospel of Mark until I get the flow of the language. The Jehovah’s Witnesses make a full audio book of the Bible in Norsk (likely Bokmål, but I can’t tell) available for free. I can’t find much else in the way of audio resources.
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After I get the flow of the language down, I’ll graduate to reading a PDF copy of the text in Norsk while listening.
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After a couple of weeks, I’ll start working on some sort of funny story that I plan to tell to everybody that I meet in Norway.
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I might skim through a grammar if I can find something succinct.
Thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.
I have some slight experience in learning a bit of a language before going on a trip: I went to Italy when I was 14 and beforehand the family and I took a good deal of an Italian course. We did it with an independent (native Italian) tutor who came over and conducted lessons at the dining-room table for however long however often, and I’d recommend something like this before a reading course. You live in the Bay area so there should be plenty.
I’m not sure that a reading-based course would be all that useful for attaining any kind of conversational fluency in only four months, but you seem to have had considerable success with several methods I wouldn’t recommend or use. Maybe use Skype to work on your “living” usage and accent?
Its difficult to see how Mark will help ordering coffee or buying groceries. A good phrase book and some lessons seem like a better bet. Getting a native tutor as swtwentyman suggests sounds like a good idea. Urnes stavkyrkje looks very beautiful, I am sure you will have a great time. Dont all scandinavians speak English anyway? 
Dont all scandinavians speak English anyway?
Better than we do here in the US.
By the way, there are several spoken and written dialects of Norwegian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk
If you find a way to learn to speak Norwegian before actually going to Norway, tell me as well!
For a short period of time in my life, I could read and even write Swedish pretty well (it’s almost the same as Norwegian). It was at the end of high school; I made a very intense but short effort to learn the language for the final exam, read the paper in Swedish every day for 3 months, that kind of thing. My Swedish level got from near zero to pretty good in half a year, and I got the best possible grade in the matriculation examination — actually better than some guys who had a Swedish speaking parent, which greatly amused me (Finland has a Swedish-speaking minority). I never learnt to speak Swedish though, and in the intervening 16 years my my knowledge of the written language is almost gone too due to lack of use.
Anyway, a couple of months after the exam when my Swedish was still fresh, I was cycling with my friend in a Swedish-speaking little town 90 km from Helsinki where I live. I noticed I needed a toothbrush. The young Swedish-speaking guy I tried to buy it from was unable to comprehend my Swedish, and didn’t know Finnish either (at 90 km from Helsinki, you imagine!). It was only when I changed to English that he finally understood what I was saying. Later I learnt I should have asked for a tandborste and not a tandbrost…
At least I recommend to check the word for toothbrush beforehand.
Well, I’ll see how it goes. The useful thing for me with listening to audiobooks is that after some practice, I can make out words and sentences aurally when someone is talking. I imagine that I’ll move on from Mark quickly enough, but the trick may be finding other audio resources.
As far as traveling to a foreign land just to speak to everyone in English – I can do that here at home at less expense.
Bokmål vs Nynorsk – I looked for resources in Nynorsk first, since that would be better for the area that I’m traveling to. Bokmål is more standard though, and it’s already hard enough to find audio resources in any Norwegian dialect. So for now, I’ll be working with Bokmål. I am hopeful that I can find some way to get a hold of this: http://www.bibel.no/Bibelselskapet/English/Bible-Translations/Bible-on-CD
As several people have suggested, I will try to add some conversation practice in, perhaps through Skype.
As far as traveling to a foreign land just to speak to everyone in English – I can do that here at home at less expense.
That’s not quite what I meant. I have just returned from a short trip to Italy and whilst it was possible to speak Italian in say Arezzo, in Florence and other more tourist orientated cities my hesitancy usually provoked replies in English. I guess this happens even to non native English speakers.
A couple of suggestions:
Duolingo, whatever its flaws, has a Norwegian option.
iTalki I am sure also has a number of Norwegians, either for classes or for language partnerships.
The magic Google search term is “Lydbok.” I now have a copy of the Hobbit and am waiting for Nynorsk audio Bible to arrive (I have the feeling that most resources that I find will be Bokmål, but I would like some Nynorsk experience).
It’s lazy to expect everyone to speak English for my benefit. I want to have friends that I communicate in their language with.
No educated person would disagree with this and it is not what I said. I simply made the point that it has been my experience of travelling in Europe that my attempts to speak the local language have often been met with exasperated replies in English. I wish it were not so, although for reasons of historical enmity I do enjoy the sight of the French having to swallow their “gloire” and speak English too.
I think all language learning is to be applauded and if Joel got the impression that I was telling him not to bother, nothing could be further from the truth. I think his ambition his truly admirable and I wish him well. I have no idea where he finds all the time and energy to pursue his multiple interests.
Skype sounds like a very good idea if you manage to find someone to train with. There must be Norwegians around who want to improve their oral English.
However, I wonder how much help listening to the Bible will be, given that the vocabulary is so distant from our every day. Unless of course you’re going to spend a significant portion of your time at a Christian camp meeting…
Christian camp meeting…
Maybe elsewhere this means something other than I think it does in the uk. 
I think that the most important thing that I’m doing is listening to lots of audio. Audiobooks give me far more input than I would get through reading or television or even conversations. And I think they do improve my speaking ability because they teach me to pick out words and hear the flow of sentences.
It has been almost three days of listening to Norwegian audiobooks now, mostly The Hobbit, and a fair amount of the Gospel of Mark. The first day was tough, but my understanding has begun ramping up. I have gotten to the point where I can hear individual words fairly easily. I can now follow along in Mark easily while I listen and read the Norwegian text together. I don’t have a text of the Hobbit, so I can’t do the same there. But I can understand each section after a few listens.
While my lydbok of Hobbiten is clear, the reader doesn’t do different voices for characters, or even differentiate between dialogue and narration. Same for the Markus lydbok. This makes things tougher than the German audiobooks that I have.
I plan to memorize Mark 1:16-20 tomorrow.
Of course one does as one finds meaningful, and if it is meaningful for one, one evidently takes it all in much more easily. It all depends on how one wishes to use the language and what are one’s interests. If one acts in accordance with what feels right, one cannot go badly awry.
If one’s aim is to learn a language for everyday usage, I’m sure there are better and more efficacious options than the Bible. The words that Mark Antony enumerated actually contain only a few words practical for this »everyday» usage. For instance, one would rarely use words like deny, confess, flesh and darkness in this context. Even words like law, answer, blood and beginning aren’t that common in everyday situations. The list is starting to become quite short.
But I reiterate emphatically: what I wrote in the previous chapter is not meant for discouragement and invoking despondency. I was solely musing on the aspect of learning a language for practical use. Verily, I think the method of Joel’s choice may well be functional for him.
Norwegian is a nice pick. I only know Swedish, and not as well as I should like to, I’m ashamed to acknowledge (then again: how often do we truly feel satisfied with our language skills?). If classical literature is your cup of tea, I would commend Henrik Ibsen (Peer Gynt, Et dukkehjem etc.) and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. No, they’re not much for everyday purposes, either…
By the way: congratulations on one thousand!
Probably it doesn’t mean what I thought. I google translated the word without really verifying it. Apparently “camp meetings” are something that happened in the 19th century? What I meant was large gatherings of Christians (which in Scandinavia means Protestants) where they assemble in large numbers to preach and sing and do the sort thing Christians do. Perhaps revival meeting is the right word? As you might notice, I’m not very well acquainted with this. 
But I know that in Finland at least there can be tens of thousands people attending, so in some circles these are pretty popular…
Joel, btw: The word you’re going to need most is tannbørste. 
I am sorry Paul you used it in an entirely appropriate way. I was trying to slip in as it were a double entendre worthy of the old “carry on films”. Oh matron! It’s a peculiar sort of English humour. Camp can mean something other than a space for tents.
It reminded me of the warning of cousin Jasper to Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.