The magnetic properties of Ni nanoparticles synthesized using a soft chemical method followed by heat treatment in H 2 atmosphere have been studied in detail. The powder consists of pure Ni with no additional phase and the average crystallite size is 30± 5 nm, determined using the modified Scherer relation. The crystallites tend to agglomerate into large particles of sizes 50-100 nm, as observed by transmission electron microscopy. The saturation magnetization is found to be 46.42 emu g −1 at 5 K, about 80% of the bulk magnetization value. The temperature dependence of saturation magnetization for T Ͻ 0.5T C is found to deviate from the linear Bloch's T 3/2 law indicating that spin wave interactions needs to be considered to understand the behavior. The spin wave stiffness constant obtained by fitting the saturation magnetization decay to a nonlinear spin wave model is lower by an order of magnitude compared to that of bulk Ni. The coercivity on the other hand decreases from 67 Oe at 5 K to 36 Oe at 300 K with a temperature dependence slower than the T 1/2 behavior predicted for noninteracting superparamagnetic particles.