A four-term virial equation of state was combined with isotropic potential models to predict accurate volumetric and caloric thermodynamic properties of nitrogen in the gas phase. The parameters of the model potentials were determined from a fit to acoustic data alone; no other data was used. For nitrogen, it was only necessary to approximate the fourth virial coefficient at the level of interactions that contained no more than one triplet potential; higher order approximations offered no further advantage. It was shown that the four-term virial equation was more accurate than the three-term analogue. It was found that predicted virial coefficients became consistent with experimental values when temperature was >150 +/- 30 K; conversely, below this range virial coefficients predicted by the model did not agree with experiment. It was believed that predicted fourth virial coefficient was reliable and accurate only above about 150 K. Predicted compressibility factors deviated by <0.05% at pressures of up to 10-12 MPa, or densities up to 4 mol/dm(3) (approximate to 0.4 rho(c)), only when temperature was >220 K. Values of enthalpy predicted from the equation of state showed good agreement with experimental data.