Norse Key

Your Norse Key is the username and password that you'll use to sign into almost every Luther service, including Norse Apps, KATIE, Norse Hub, lab computers, and more.

Students get their Norse Key with their welcome packet after they’ve deposited, and employees receive theirs on their first day of work. Look for a red sheet of paper. If you lost or didn’t receive your credentials, call the Technology Help Desk.

Parents aren’t issued Norse Keys—They receive a different kind of credential when they’re granted access to Norse Hub.

Norse Key usernames

Modern Norse Key usernames are made of the first four characters of your last name, the first two characters of your first name, and a number. Martin Luther’s Norse Key might be “luthma01”, for example. Because your Norse Key is used in so many intertwined systems, Norse Key usernames are fixed and can’t be changed, even if you change your name.

Your Norse Key username also forms the basis for your Luther email—Just stick “@luther.edu” on the end. While we can’t change your Norse Key username, you can request an email alias so that you can send and receive email with a more personalized address. Martin Luther might request an email alias like “martin@luther.edu”, for example.

Norse Key passwords

You can change your Norse Key password at norsekey.luther.edu. Norse Keys expire after 180 days. When your password expires, you’ll be required to pick one the next time you sign in.

If you can’t sign in, start with our guide for people who can’t sign in. If none of those options work, you can choose “Forgot my password” or “Can’t access your account” during the common login process. You’ll need one of your MFA methods.

Required
12 or more characters
Three or more of these character types: Lower, upper, number, special character

Prohibited
Small variations on your old passwords
Part or all of your name or username
Variants of “Luther”, “College”, “Norse”, “Decorah”, “Iowa”
Common weak combinations, e.g. “123”,”111″,”abc”,”qwerty”
Known-compromised passwords and their variants

Picking a strong password

Your Norse Key protects a lot, so the password needs to be strong. In fact, you won’t be able to choose things like “LutherRules123″—not because it’s untrue, but because “Luther” and “123” are so overused that they’ve become weak. Variations on old passwords won’t cut it either—changing a 1 to a 2 is like not changing your password at all, and that’s unsafe.

Picking genuinely strong passwords is hard for many people, so we recommend the passphrase method: choose three or four random words, the longer and more unusual the better. It’s important that the words be random: don’t use your initials, your birthday, your passions, your pets, your family—nothing that can be learned about you from social media. Free-associating around a minor aspect of your recent day-to-day life is good fodder—the sort of thing you talk about when an acquaintance asks “What have you been up to lately”. If you’re still having trouble, this passphrase generator can help.

We also recommend simply typing words as you’d normally type them, instead of doing things like swapping E’s for 3’s, or A’s for @. Your password will be easier to type and remember. If you need to meet character requirements, choose a passphrase that naturally meets requirements, using things like: proper nouns to satisfy and upper character requirement; something you can count to meet a number requirement; and words that deserve punctuation to meet a special character requirement. Something like Peter’s2favoriteOlympians is strong, easy to type, easy to generate, and easy to remember.

Your Norse Key is a password you’ll use so often that it’s best if you can remember and type it by hand. While we strongly recommend auto-generated randomized passwords in general, this is an exception.

You can learn more about making and storing strong, unique passwords on our Safe Computing Guide