Norway national anthem in English: Explaining 'Ja, vi elsker dette landet' translation, history and more

Norway face England in Saturday's World Cup quarterfinal in Miami, their first ever appearance at this stage of the tournament after Erling Haaland's brace knocked out Brazil in the last 16. Before kickoff, the stadium will hear "Ja, vi elsker dette landet," Norway's national anthem, a song that took more than 150 years to become official despite being sung at matches and ceremonies for generations.

Here's what the anthem says, who wrote it, and the history behind it.

Norway national anthem lyrics in English

The anthem has eight verses in total, but only the first is regularly sung in full at events like this. Translated into English, it reads:

Yes, we love this country
as it rises forth,
rugged, weathered, over the water,
with the thousands of homes, 
love, love it and think
of our father and mother
and the saga-night that lays
dreams upon our earth.

There's no single official English translation, since the anthem has only ever been formally adopted in Norwegian, but that first verse is the version most commonly used when it's rendered into English.

Who wrote Norway's national anthem?

The words came from Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, a Norwegian writer and poet who worked on the lyrics between 1859 and 1868. Bjørnson would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1903, becoming the first Norwegian to do so.

The melody was written separately by his cousin, Rikard Nordraak, during the winter of 1863 to 1864. Nordraak was only 21 at the time, and he died just two years later from tuberculosis, leaving the tune as one of his best-known works. The anthem was first performed publicly on 17 May 1864, timed to mark the 50th anniversary of Norway's constitution.

Norway's national anthem history

For a song so closely tied to Norwegian identity, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet" spent a remarkably long time as an unofficial anthem. It gradually overtook earlier patriotic songs, including "Sønner av Norge," which had been the de facto anthem after Norway's union with Denmark ended in 1814, and became the country's most widely recognised anthem by the early 1900s. Despite that, it wasn't formally written into law as Norway's official national anthem until 2019.

The song has carried political weight at several points in Norwegian history. It was reportedly sung by Swedish socialists in support of Norway's right to break away from its union with Sweden in 1905, and during the Second World War it was used by both the Norwegian resistance and, for propaganda purposes, by Nazi collaborators, before German occupiers banned it outright.

That long, informal path to becoming law is part of why it carries such weight now, before Norway's first ever World Cup quarterfinal on Saturday.