This article discusses the Norwegian language textbooks for foreigners Stein på stein and Her på berget, published from 1995 to 2015. These textbooks are analyzed as tools for promoting the official ideology and as sources of information showing how Norwegians would like to present their society and themselves to representatives of other nations. Such an interpretation is considered to be possible since these publications are primarily designed for immigrants who are planning to come to Norway for permanent residence. Norwegian language courses are expected to provide future citizens of Norway with the necessary knowledge about the society, culture and history of the country, and allow them to become acquainted with the values and lifestyle of Norwegians. The focus of the article is one of the most popular series of textbooks published by Cappelen Damm: Stein på stein and Her på berget. Over the course of twenty-five years, new editions of these textbooks have been published: for example, the first edition of the textbook Stein på stein was published in 1990, and the last one in 2015. The new editions show changes in the image of Norwegian society, shifts on emphasis, the themes that were important to discuss in different editions, and some new concepts and topics that the authors of the textbooks considered necessary to introduce in the new editions. When analyzing the texts, the authors single out several lexical ideologemes, the so-called “values” (verdier), which can be considered especially significant in the self-presentation of the Norwegian nation. Such ideologemes as “equality” (likestilling / likhetstanke), “democracy” (demokratiet) and “environmentally conscious” (miljøbevissthet) are analyzed. The article considers the political background for the actualization of these concepts in educational texts; the development of the semantic fields, the core of which are the mentioned ideologemes; the organization of these concepts in the text and model characters of the textbooks as bearers of these “values”.
