Symbols
80Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Norwegian alphabet
The 29 letters in Norwegian order, capital and small: A to Z, then Æ, Ø and Å after Z. The accented forms are not separate letters; they sort with a, e and o and sit in their columns here.
Quotation marks and dialogue dash
«Guillemets» are the recommended Norwegian quotation marks, with ‘single’ marks for a quote inside a quote; “English” marks are accepted. In fiction, dialogue often opens with an en dash: – Hei, sa hun. ’ is also the apostrophe.
Where it's spoken
Norway first; then Svalbard and Jan Mayen, where Norwegian is the language of Longyearbyen and the Jan Mayen station, and uninhabited Bouvet Island. The Norwegian krone has no sign of its own: write kr 49,90 or NOK.
Norwegian in emoji
Ski is a Norwegian word that English borrowed, and God tur! (have a good trip) sends Norwegians off into the mountains on them.
On the map
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The Norwegian alphabet: 29 letters from A to Å
The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Ø Å. The last three are letters in their own right, not A and O with decorations, and they come after Z in exactly this order. A Norwegian dictionary ends with ære (honour), øy (island) and år (year), and in a phone book Øvrebø is listed after Zahl.
C, Q, W, X and Z appear mostly in names and borrowed words (sjokolade is the native spelling of chocolate, but cola, quiz, wifi, taxi and zoo keep theirs). Danish uses the same 29 letters in the same order; Swedish has Å, Ä, Ö in a different order and writes ä and ö where Norwegian has æ and ø; Icelandic adds Þ and Ð. Their collections, Danish, Swedish and Icelandic, sit beside this one.
Norwegian has two official written standards, Bokmål and Nynorsk, and both use exactly this alphabet. Bokmål grew out of the Danish that was written in Norway for centuries; Nynorsk was built in the 1800s by Ivar Aasen from the rural dialects. Most Norwegians write Bokmål, around one in ten writes Nynorsk, strongest in the west, and every pupil learns to read both. The two have their own collections, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk.
Æ, Ø and Å: what each Norwegian letter does
Æ æ began as a joined a and e. It writes an open vowel close to the a of English cat, often long: være (to be), lære (to learn), bær (berries), vær (weather). In Trøndelag and much of northern Norway æ on its own is the dialect word for I.
Ø ø, the o with a slash, is the rounded vowel German writes ö and French writes eu: øl (beer), brød (bread), høst (autumn), Tromsø. Norwegian calls an island øy, which is why so many island names end in -øy or -øya.
Å å, the a with a ring, sounds roughly like the o of English more: gå (walk), blå (blue), på (on). It is one of the most common words in the language, because å is the infinitive marker, the English to: å være, to be. The letters keep words apart: far is father and får sheep; lar lets, lær leather and lår thigh. Norway wrote this sound aa until the spelling reform of 1917; many names kept it, like Aasen, Aase and Haakon, and they are still sorted as å, at the end.
Norwegian accents on letters: é, à, ó, ò and ô
Accents are optional helpers in Norwegian, and only a few are in real use. é is by far the most common: it marks a stressed final e in words from French, kafé, idé, allé, armé, and it marks én, the number one, apart from en, the word a: Jeg har bare én bil (I have only one car).
à means at a price of, as in fem billetter à 100 kroner (five tickets at 100 kroner each). ò is written in the Nynorsk word òg (also), so it is not confused with og (and). In Nynorsk, ó can mark the past tense fór (rushed off), distinguishing it from for (for), and ô shows a lost consonant in fôr (animal feed, and the lining of a coat), which Old Norse wrote with ð.
Norwegian also has pitch accent, a rise or fall in the voice that tells words apart in speech, such as tanken (the tank) and tanken (the thought). It is never written, so you will not find it in the letters above.
How to type Norwegian letters on an English keyboard
On Windows, hold Alt and type the code on the number pad: Alt0198 Æ, Alt0230 æ, Alt0216 Ø, Alt0248 ø, Alt0197 Å, Alt0229 å, Alt0233 é, Alt0224 à, Alt0243 ó, Alt0242 ò, Alt0244 ô, Alt0171 « and Alt0187 ». With the US-International layout it is quicker: right AltZ gives æ, right AltL gives ø and right AltW gives å (add Shift for the capitals), and the accents are dead keys: ' then e gives é, then a gives à, then o gives ô. In Microsoft Word, CtrlShift& then a gives æ, Ctrl/ then o gives ø, and CtrlShift@ then a gives å.
On a Mac with a US or British layout, Option' types æ, OptionO types ø and OptionA types å; hold Shift as well for Æ, Ø and Å. OptionE then e gives é, Option then a gives à, OptionI then o gives ô, Option\ gives « and OptionShift\ gives ». On an iPhone or Android phone, hold down A for å and æ, O for ø, ó, ò and ô, and E for é. In HTML, write æ, ø and å (capitals Æ, Ø, Å).
A Norwegian keyboard has its own keys: Å to the right of P, Ø to the right of L and Æ to the right of Ø. When there is truly no way to type them, the accepted fallbacks are ae, oe and aa: Tromsoe, paa. Do not use a look-alike for Ø: (empty set) and (diameter sign) are different characters, and search engines and spell-checkers will not read them as the letter.
Norwegian quotation marks and punctuation
The Language Council of Norway recommends the guillemets « » as the main quotation marks, pointing outward like French but written tight against the words, «like this», and Norwegians call them gåseøyne, goose eyes. A quote inside a quote takes single marks, «Hun sa ‘nei’», and plain “English” marks are accepted, especially online.
In novels and newspapers, dialogue often starts with a dash, the en dash –, instead of quotation marks: – Kommer du? – Ja, nå. Numbers use a comma for decimals and a space between thousands, so 1 234,50 is a price, and dates are written 17.05.2026.
Norway pays in kroner, written kr or NOK, with no special sign: kr 49,90 or 49,90 kr. The same krone is used on Svalbard and Jan Mayen and on the uninhabited Bouvet Island.
Where Norwegian is spoken
CLDR estimates about 5.5 million people speak Norwegian, almost all of them in Norway , where it is the national language beside Sámi in the north. Spoken Norwegian has no single standard: people speak their own dialects on television, in parliament and at work, and write Bokmål or Nynorsk.
Norwegian is also the language of Svalbard , the Arctic archipelago whose town Longyearbyen is run by Norway, and of the weather station on Jan Mayen. Bouvet Island , a Norwegian island in the South Atlantic, has no residents at all. Both flags show the Norwegian cross on most phones. The collection for Norway gathers its flag, food and national emoji.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyNorwegian Letters Æ Ø Å combos
15Worth knowing
- Norway has a village called Å, at the tip of the Lofoten islands, one of the shortest place names in the world. Its road signs are a favourite target of souvenir hunters.
- Å replaced aa in Norway in the spelling reform of 1917, 31 years before Denmark made the same change. Ivar Aasen, who created the written language that became Nynorsk, spelled his own name with the old aa.
- English took the words ski and slalom from Norwegian; slalom is Norwegian slalåm, a gently sloping ski track.
- Norwegian and Danish keyboards carry the same three letters but swap two of them: Norwegian has Ø then Æ to the right of L, Danish Æ then Ø.
- Blåbærsyltetøy (blueberry jam) is the word Norwegians hand to learners who want to practise all three special letters at once.
Questions people ask
8How many letters are in the Norwegian alphabet?
29: the 26 letters A to Z, then Æ, Ø and Å, always in that order at the end. Accented letters such as é and ô are not separate letters; they sort with e and o.
What are the Norwegian special characters?
Æ æ, Ø ø and Å å, plus the accented é (kafé, én), à (à 100 kroner), ò (Nynorsk òg), ó (Nynorsk fór) and ô (fôr). Norwegian also uses the quotation marks « » and the dialogue dash –.
How do you type ø on an English keyboard?
On Windows hold Alt and type 0248 on the number pad (0216 for Ø), or use right AltL with the US-International layout. On a Mac press OptionO (OptionShiftO for Ø). On a phone, hold down the O key.
What is the Norwegian o with a slash called?
It is the letter ø, in English often called 'o with stroke' or 'slashed o'; Norwegians just call it ø. It sounds like German ö and is its own letter in Norwegian and Danish, sorted after æ and before å.
What are the Norwegian letters alt codes?
Alt0198 Æ, Alt0230 æ, Alt0216 Ø, Alt0248 ø, Alt0197 Å, Alt0229 å and Alt0233 é, typed on the number pad while holding Alt.
Do Bokmål and Nynorsk use different letters?
No. Both written standards use the same 29 letters. They differ in spelling and grammar, for example Bokmål jeg, ikke, også and Nynorsk eg, ikkje, òg.
What is the difference between Norwegian ø and Swedish ö?
They write the same sound. Norwegian and Danish use ø; Swedish, Finnish, German and Icelandic use ö. Norwegian æ likewise matches Swedish ä.
What quotation marks are used in Norwegian?
The guillemets « », written «like this», are the recommended main form, with single ‘ ’ for a quote inside a quote. In fiction, dialogue often opens with an en dash: – Hei, sa hun.
