This study provides detailed descriptions of the reading impairments in four 10-year-old Norwegian children with dyslexia. In all four cases reading comprehension was well in advance of the children's slow and inaccurate word-recognition skills. Phonological decoding (as assessed by pseudohomophone and nonword reading) appeared relatively unimpaired in three of the dyslexic cases, both in terms of speed and accuracy. However, reading errors showed that these children had particular difficulties with both phoneme length and phoneme quality awareness in reading. A "phonemic identification deficit" account for developmental dyslexia in Norwegian children is suggested. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)