Novikov algebras were introduced in connection with the Poisson brackets of hydrodynamic type and Hamiltonian operators in formal variational calculus. They are a class of left-symmetric algebras with commutative right multiplication operators, which can be viewed as bosonic. Fermionic Novikov algebras are a class of left-symmetric algebras with anti-commutative right multiplication operators. They correspond to a certain Hamiltonian superoperator in a supervariable. In this paper, we commence a study on fermionic Novikov algebras from the algebraic point of view. We will show that any fermionic Novikov algebra in dimension 3 must be bosonic. Moreover,we give the classification of real fermionicNovikov algebras on fourdimensional nilpotent Lie algebras and some examples in higher dimensions. As a corollary, we obtain kinds of four-dimensional real fermionic Novikov algebras which are not bosonic. All of these examples will serve as a guide for further development including the application in physics.