This is a good question, and was indeed the first problem I encountered as a zues player when I first started as well. I was able to overcome my norse weakness by watching a recorded game by kamrantu. I felt sneaky following his build order, but keep in mind, most norse rushers are just doing the same (following a build order). After you win a few, you'll be able to adapt the defense to your own strategy and you'll have alot more fun. A couple of things to keep in mind:
-if they are rushing, they will have a weaker economy than you in the long run, so when you push them back, you will have a big advantage if you haven't lost too many villies.
-Build your building defensively, around towers and close enough to get the assistance of the town center.
-make sure you have enough wood during the classical transition to immediately upgrade your towers and build a few military buildings (500 wood by 6 min).
-hit classical by 5:45-6 min. Use ceasefire even if you don't like that god route, you might need to go that route against norse until you get the hang of it.
-don't spawn your units into combat if they have you outnumber, spawn them towards your tc so you can build a retaliation force.
-Hippokons and archers are excellent defenders, once you push back his initial rush, advance into his forward build so that you can kill his newly spawning units (with archers) while your hippokons tear down his buildings and houses there.
-Keep your economy going. Keep creating villagers and sneaking them out the back to do what you need. Don't sweat the loss of a military building or two. 100 wood isn't that big a deal if your towers/tc can kill two of his units as they take it down, your still coming out ahead in terms of resources, as long as you make more buildings.
Remember, if he has forward built, it is his gamble to win the game, if you can beat it back, you've won the game. If you have relatively equivilent economies, and he raids, your towers and town center will turn the tide of battle making him lose an unequal number of forces which will cost him the game. I now love to be raided as he's losing units to my town defenses. THose fixed defenses are very powerful.
I feel your pain now, but there is good reason norse rarely forward builds once you get up around 1700 and higher (namely, it doesn't work if you know how to defend against it).