What’s with those funny letters?
All written Scandinavian languages employ extra letters beyond the 26 of our alphabet. When you start delving into Danish records, you’ll encounter two unfamiliar letters of the alphabet: Æ (æ) and Ø (ø). A third “extra” letter, Å (å), was introduced in 1953 to replace Aa (aa), so you won’t see it in older records. All three are filed after Z alphabetically (Æ, Ø, Å), although words and names when written beginning with Aa are filed at the beginning of the alphabet.
Swedish has three additional letters in its alphabet: Å (å), Ä (ä), and Ö (ö). All three are usually alphabetized after Z (Å, Ä, Ö)—so don’t despair if you can’t find a name or place beginning with Ä among the other As.
Norwegian also uses three characters—Æ (æ), Ø (ø), and Å (å)—unfamiliar in English. These are considered separate letters, again commonly alphabetized after Z (same order as Danish). Prior to 1915, Å (å) was usually written as Aa (aa) and filed at the beginning of the alphabet. So you may see names, for example, written both as Haakon and Håkon.
If you happen to have ancestors from Iceland, keep in mind that Icelandic is the only Scandinavian language with extra consonants, eth (ð) and thorn (þ). Iceland dropped the letter Z in 1973, however, for a total of 36 letters including accented vowels, as taught in schools up to 1980: a, á, b, c, d, ð, e, é, f, g, h, i, í, j, k, l, m, n, o, ó, p, q, r, s, t, u, ú, v, w, x, y, ý, z, þ, æ, ö.
(See our tips on typing these characters in Windows or on a Mac.)