The name Mjølnir is our very own take on the hammer of Thor, the divinity of thunder in Nordic mythology. We wanted a name that wasn't exactly the Norwegian and Danish spelling (i.e. Mjølner), nor the Swedish one (Mjölner), since we were going to cover all these three languages. So we settled with the spelling used in English (Mjölnir) but with the ø, which allowed us to stylise a hammer on it.

Mjølnir is a language learning app based on spaced repetition of flashcards covering the 3000+ notions of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar needed to achieve the B2 level of language fluency. Together with providing you these notions, Mjølnir will also train your reading and listening skills. Its written and audio content has been reviewed by teachers and translators, and has been put together bearing in mind the necessities of expatriates moving to Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Correct. Fluency at the B2 level in a Scandinavian language requires you to have knowledge of about 50-70 pronunciation notions, 80-100 grammar notions and the circa 3000 most frequently used words in the languages. There is no way around this. It’s the inconvenient truth about language learning. Sure, fluency is based on your mastery of the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. But the mastery of this skills is in turn based on the sheer knowledge of those 3000+ notions. And while skills have to be trained to become mastery, notions simply have to be memorised to become knowledge.

We are not surprised that you are surprised. From a survey we ran some time ago among students of Scandinavian languages…

• 69% admitted to being “absolutely clueless about the number of words required to be fluent”
• 24% provided an underestimate which had “1000 words” as the most popular answer
• Only 7% of students was aware that upper intermediate (B2) required around 3000 words

Again, there is no way around having at least 3000 of the most used words of vocabulary for the B2 level, a fact confirmed by reputable sources such as linguistic scholars Milton & Alexiou in their 2009 paper “Vocabulary Size and the CEFR” and by a leading language teaching institution such as EF. Also, when we say “word”, we actually mean “headword”, the type of word that forms an entry in a dictionary. Basically, something like a verb, a noun or an adjective in all their forms still count as just one “headword”. So the single words you have to memorise are much more than 3000.

Mjølnir can help you in two ways. Firstly, our content is carefully selected to be part of the high-frequency words that really belong to those 3000 most used words in the language. We have banned obscure body parts, exotic foods or animals to give you what, statistically, you are bound to encounter more often. Secondly, our study method is based on spaced repetition. Spaced repetition admits that it’s unlikely to remember a new notion by reading it or hearing it once. Especially if that notion is one of the many you have to learn on a given day. Exposing yourself to that notion again, in a few days, may not be enough in some cases, but it might in some others. If you have been trying to memorise vocabulary as part of language learning, you’ll find that your memory seems to work randomly. Some words or concepts you can remember easily, some others will escape you for a long time. Spaced repetition is the learning equivalent of training at the gym with increasingly heavier weights. Mjølnir’s spaced repetition will show you new content as a “question and answer” (e.g. a verb and its English translation, with an example). Then, it will ask you how difficult you feel it will be for you to remember the answer to that question. According to how difficult you thought recollecting that answer would be, Mjølnir will propose that question again in a short or long time. Once that interval has passed and the question is posed to you again, there comes the moment of truth: can you remember the answer? If your answer is the one that Mjølnir will unveil, then you can try with a longer interval (i.e. the heavier weight at your next gym session). If not, you should go back to a shorter interval (i.e. a lower weight for your next session). Basically, as long as you keep remembering a word, a grammar rule or a pronunciation notion, Mjølnir will ask you a question that makes you recollect that content at longer and longer intervals of time. However, if you were to have a lapse, Mjølnir will shorten the interval at which that certain question is asked to you. Spaced repetition is therefore a highly efficient and effective way to memorise significant amounts of notions. Anything you find easy, it will be shown to you less often and you can even decide not to see it anymore. No point in wasting time on the easy stuff. Anything you find difficult will be shown to you more often, until it becomes easy. And once everything is easy and you know you can remember it even after several days or weeks, then you know have learned it. Remembering things won’t be a shot in the dark or the roll of a die anymore. You will simply have complete confidence that you know them. It’s no coincidence that the Harvard Medical School has used spaced repetition for its students for several years now.

Language lessons with a teacher can help you gain confidence about your foreign language production skills (i.e. speaking and writing) but they can only partially address your need to learn in smart ways the vast number of notions required by B2 (or higher) fluency. Going back to the numbers, a language class cannot address what you now know is the continuous and systematic need for notion memorisation, especially when it comes to vocabulary. Reading something once or twice off your notes or hearing it a few times from your teacher is no guarantee of remembering it. But whenever a grammar rule or a word enters your Mjølnir study routine, you know you are going to know it in a matter of few days of smart spaced repetition. In more detail, the advantages of language lessons are:

• the fact that attending a class makes self-discipline easy: you are unlikely to be distracted by other things, unlike when you study alone
• you have a qualified teacher following a syllabus that is somehow proven
• to a certain extent, the teacher can follow you closely and answer your specific questions
• they cost more than any other method, so most people take them seriously

The disadvantages are:

• they are expensive: two weeks of class can easily cost you up to few hundred euros / US dollars / British pounds
• they require time: getting to school, attending, getting back from school takes more time than some people can afford
• although teachers are presumably qualified, some teachers won’t be as good as others and you have no control over the teacher you get
• likewise, you have no control over your classmates. Remember that if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room: you’d be learning more if you were in a class where many students are at least a bit better than you are
• by its nature, class-based tuition cannot address the necessary memorisation effort that is one of the biggest obstacles of learning a foreign language in the timeframes adults require.

Conclusively, if you are motivated and disciplined enough, Mjølnir can definitely cut down on the amount of tuition you are going to need and, in any case, our app is the best way to take care of improving your vocabulary and memorising the different forms of nouns, verbs and adjectives (a major difficulty for people who have English as a first language).

Mjølnir offers a free trial of 5 days, which we know is enough to appreciate our quality content and the effectiveness & efficiency of spaced repetition. After the free trial expires, you can buy a monthly subscription for about 12 USD a month, or a yearly subscription for about 80 USD a year (less than 7 USD a month). Prices vary slightly with different currencies (e.g. EUR, GBP, NOK etc).

Ideally, yes. In practice, studying on most days (i.e. skipping one day every ten or so) should be enough. And even studying even just half of the days is better than nothing. Each study session of Mjølnir will consist first of brand new flashcards and then of cards you have to review from previous sessions and that are due on the day. While the “Rest Days” option allows you to select up to two days a week in which no new cards are introduced, most days will require you to review cards due from previous days. Studying every day is unluckily necessary because your brain forgets every day, so to speak. But again, even an 80% or 90% adherence to your schedule should yield far greater results than any other memorisation method.

The number of previous days reviews will grow for a while, but then should remain stable, because you won’t be studying a certain card forever. Some cards, in fact, will leave your study routine and be “ticked” because 1) you decide to manually tick that card or because 2) you’ll have remembered it correctly a certain number of times in a row once the card has reached its longest possible interval, so it’s safe to assume you just know it. Remember that the 3000+ vocabulary items of Mjølnir represent about 95% of everyday’s language, so by just using your Scandinavian language every day you will retain your knowledge. Also, the first few hundreds of items (i.e. Mjølnir’s blue and green decks) are so fundamental to the language that the intermediate and advanced examples will necessarily use them, helping you to keep them fresh.

Nothing, except your own honesty and self-respect. By cheating on the app and telling it you felt that something was easy while it wasn’t, you are effectively sabotaging your own learning. This is also why we didn’t create a point system that turns the app into some kind of videogame. First, we don’t want to force you to understand anything other than the language itself and the minimum functionality of the spaced repetition mechanism, which is essential to our app. Secondly, we didn’t want to create a competition that is potentially based on a system reliant on trust and honesty.

Although writing is one of the four elements you measure language skills by (the other ones being reading, listening and speaking), we believe that the actual, mechanical act of writing/typing something is the least important, especially in our age. The reasons are:

• intuitive writing, spellcheckers and such technologies are more and more common
• writing is most likely to be used in off-set, non-simultaneous communication, which means you will always have the time to check other resources, including the technologies of the first point
• writing down something would slow down your daily going through your flashcards and we believe that it’s just not an efficient use of your time
• if you have learned something by reading it, and you remember it, the mere transcription of it should not be a problem