Published in 1744, Musicaliske Elementer, eller Anleedning til Forstand paa De første Ting udi Musiquen (Musical Elements, or A Guide to Understanding the First Things about Music) is the first music textbook to have been published in Norway (then part of Denmark–Norway) and the first of its kind in the Danish language. It is an important document in the history of music theory in Scandinavia. Its author, Johan Daniel Berlin (1714–1787), was the ‘privileged town musician’ (stadsmusikant) in Trondheim and a central figure in the musical life of eighteenth-century Norway. Berlin was remarkably well-read on contemporary German music theory, owning an impressive collection of then-current theory texts. This article explores Berlin’s textbook through the theoretical-methodological perspective of intercultural transfer and positions its music-theoretical contents in relation to both contemporaneous continental European music theory and later Norwegian and Danish sources. In addition to highlighting possible paths of transfer from German sources to Norway, the article discusses points of local Norwegian difference, such as Berlin’s surprisingly positive attitude towards quintuple metre and the way of naming pitches in Norwegian sources from the eighteenth century.