The frontier models know Norwegian just fine. They can also adapt to Norwegian dialects, and even ape old Norwegian fairly well.

E.g. I had Claude describe the novel "De knyttede næver" from 1911 in Norwegian orthography ca. 1911, as it's a novel I've read, and it does a good job.

What it lacks is an understanding of Norwegian literature, culture and history. It had to look up "De knyttede næver", which was one of the best-selling Norwegian novels around the time it was published before I'd get anything out of it (ChatGPT does better; in thinking mode in particular it gives a detailed summary).

While not exactly well known today, the author was a prominent newspaper journalist for decades, and the novel series is well enough known that e.g. there's a Norwegian singer that took his stage name after the protagonist, and it was covered in Norwegian papers and books for decades (partly because of controversy over the authors political views and how they coloured his novels), so it does feel like a reasonable test that reveals a quite significant knowledge gap.

I do agree with you that it'd be better if the data set from the national library was made more accessible, though it seems a major addition here is that they have a deal to train on copyrighted data locked away in their archives that they have limitations on the use of.

But even just making the out of copyright data in their collections would be a great start.