Nordic ALT Codes

Nordic languages are closely related but use slightly different letters. Think of å as the core shared letter — Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish all have it. Swedish adds ä and ö (like German umlauts). Norwegian and Danish use æ (a-e ligature) and ø (o with slash) instead.

å (a with ring). Pronounced like the English "o" in "more" or "short." It's the same sound in all three languages, and it's a standalone letter — not "a with an accent." In Swedish, å is the 28th letter of the alphabet, coming after z. Åsa, Öresund, Århus.

ä and ö (Swedish). These are Swedish's versions of what German writes as umlauts. Ä sounds like English "eh" — äpple (apple). Ö sounds like a rounded "uh" — öl (beer), Göteborg. They're the 29th and 30th letters of the Swedish alphabet.

æ and ø (Norwegian/Danish). Where Swedish uses ä, Norwegian and Danish use æ — a ligature of a + e. Where Swedish uses ö, they use ø — a slashed o. Sounds are similar to the Swedish equivalents. Æble (apple, Danish), øre (ear), København (Copenhagen).

Transliteration rules differ. When the characters aren't available (old systems, ASCII-only contexts), each language uses different substitutions. Swedish: å → aa (sometimes a), ä → ae, ö → oe. Norwegian/Danish: æ → ae, ø → oe, å → aa. So København might appear as Koebenhavn or Kobenhavn. In modern usage these are unnecessary — Unicode supports the real characters.

Icelandic uses additional letters. This page focuses on the three most-used Nordic languages. Icelandic and Faroese add characters like ð (eth), þ (thorn), and accented vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý). For Icelandic, you'll need Unicode input for most of these.