Nordstjernen Web Browser - small, steady, independent. Written in C.
nordstjernen.org
small, steady, independent · written from scratch in C · no JIT, no telemetry
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nordstjernen
Nordstjernen is an independent, lightweight web browser built entirely from scratch in C. A hardened, zero-JIT HTML5 / CSS / JavaScript rendering engine with a clean-room engine — not Blink, not WebKit, not Gecko.
Cold-starts in milliseconds, idles at a few tens of MB, and ships no telemetry of any kind — no phone-home, no update pinger, no crash reports, no “studies”. Privacy is on by default: partitioned cookies, third-party cookies off, HSTS, CSP and mixed-content blocking. Built in Norway.
Nordstjernen rendering the about:nordstjernen page on Linux / GTK 4.
news
28 MAY 2026 ·<br>Nordstjernen 0.8.0 released.<br>Release notes "
24 MAY 2026 ·<br>Nordstjernen 0.7.0 released.<br>Release notes "
specifications
languageC · ~50 kLOC, fully auditable<br>html / csslexbor 3.0.0 (parser, WHATWG URL, selectors)<br>javascriptquickjs-ng v0.14.0 — bytecode interpreter, no JIT (W^X holds process-wide)<br>imagesWuffs v0.4 (PNG / GIF / BMP / JPEG)<br>uiGTK 4 · one window per page, no tab strip<br>networklibcurl · HTTP/2 · gzip + brotli + zstd<br>hardeningLandlock + seccomp sandbox · PIE · full RELRO · Intel CET · no JIT<br>privacyno telemetry · partitioned cookies · HSTS / CSP / mixed-content blocking<br>platformslinux · windows · macos<br>licenseNSL-1.0 → MIT after 10 years
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Nordstjernen 0.8.0 — released 28 May 2026.<br>full release notes "
Windows<br>nordstjernen-0.8.0-win64-setup.exe
Source (tar.gz)<br>nordstjernen-0.8.0.tar.gz
Source (zip)<br>nordstjernen-0.8.0.zip
All downloads<br>github.com/nordstjernen-web/nordstjernen/releases/tag/0.8.0
Copyright © 2026 the Nordstjernen project ·<br>NSL-1.0 ·<br>andreas.rosdal@hotmail.com