Old Norse is the language of the Viking Era Scandinavian period, particularly the Icelandic Sagas. It's spelling system uses characters such as thorn (þ) and eth (ð) which are still used in Icelandic and Faeroese, but no longer in the other Mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish).
For other related languages see: Mainland Scandinavian | Germanic Languages | Celtic Languages
All modern browsers support this script. Click link in list to view configuration instructions. In some cases, you will be asked to match a script with a font.
For the modern languages (Icelandic and Faeroese), recent versions of many fonts including Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Palatino and so forth should be sufficient. Many fonts also contain the Old Norse ǫ (o-ogonek) character.
For the more exotic Old Norse manusciript characters (not all of which are listed here), you may need a specialized font such as the ones listed below.
In Windows, combinations of the ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a non-English character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application. More detailed instructions about typing accents with ALT keys are available. Additional options for entering accents in Windows are also listed in the Accents section of this Web site.
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If you are using a recent version of Microsoft Word (2003/2007/2010), you can use the following ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a Latin character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application.
| Character Code | |
| Ǫ | ALT+0490 Cap O Ogonek |
|---|---|
| ǫ | ALT+0491 Cap O Ogonek |
| Ę | ALT+0280 Cap E Ogonek |
| ę | ALT+0281 Cap E Ogonek |
| Ƿ | ALT+0503 Cap Wynn |
| ƿ | ALT+0447 Lower Wynn |
| Ꝩ | ALT+42856 Cap Vend |
| ꝩ | ALT+42857 Lower Vend |
In order to use these codes you must activate the international keyboard. Instructions are listed in the Keyboards section of this Web site.
| Character | Code |
|---|---|
| æ, Æ | RightAlt+Z, Shift+RightAlt+Z (You must use the Alt key on the right) |
| ð,Ð | RightAlt+D, Shift+RightAlt+D |
| þ, Þ | RightAlt+T, Shift+RightAlt+T |
| å, Å | RightAlt+W, Shift+RightAlt+W |
| ø, Ø | RightAlt+L, Shift+RightAlt+L |
| Acute Accent | ('+V) - Type single quote, then the vowel. |
| Umlaut Accent | ("+V) - Type double quote, then the vowel. |
| Sym | Code |
|---|---|
| Ç | Shift+RightAlt + < |
| ç | RightAlt + < |
| « | RightAlt+[ |
| » | RightAlt+] |
| € | Control+RightAlt+5 |
Most of the Scandinavian languages are well supported with accent codes, but the Icelandic eth and thorn requires users to either switch to the Icelandic Keyboard or use Unicode Hex codes.
| Accent | Code |
|---|---|
| æ, Æ | Option+' (single quote) |
| å, Å | Option+A |
| ø, Ø | Option+O |
| Acute Accent | Type Option+E, then the vowel. For instance, to type á hold down Option+E, then type A. To type Á, hold down Option+E, then type capital A. Activate the OS X Extended Keyboard for ý, Ý |
| Umlaut Accent | Type Option+U, then the vowel. |
| Ogonek Accent | Type Option+M, then the vowel. |
| «, » | Option+\ |
| € | Shift+Option+2 |
If you are working with a Unicode aware application such as Microsoft Office 2004, Text Edit (free with OS X ), Dreamweaver or Netscape 7 Composer /Mozilla Composer you can activate the Extended Roman keyboard (10.2) or the U.S. Extended keyboard (10.3) and use the following codes:
| ACCENT | SAMPLE | TEMPLATE |
|---|---|---|
| Thorn | þ,Þ | Option+T (lower) Shift+Option+T (cap) |
| Eth | ð,Ð | Option+D Shift+Option+D |
You would need to obtain an Icelandic Language Kit from Apple Iceland. This would include an Icelandic keyboard with all the accented letters including thorn and eth.
You can switch to the Unicode Hex Input keyboard and use these Option numeric codes. Once entered, these letters can be cut and pasted as needed.
| Character Code | |
| Ǫ | Option+01EA Cap O Ogonek |
|---|---|
| ǫ | Option+01EB Cap O Ogonek |
| Ę | Option+0118 Cap E Ogonek |
| ę | Option+0119 Cap E Ogonek |
| Ƿ | Option+01F7 Cap Wynn |
| ƿ | Option+01BF Lower Wynn |
| Ꝩ | Option+A768 Cap Vend |
| ꝩ | Option+A769 Lower Vend |
These are the codes which allow browsers and screen readers to process data as the appropriate language. All letters in codes are lower case.
Note: All the Scandinavian languages are related to each other, except for Finnish.
See Using Encoding and Language Codes for more information on the meaning and implementation of these codes.
Use these codes to input accented letters in HTML. For instance, if you want to type Þórr (Thor) you would type Þórr.
The numbers in parentheses are the numeric codes assigned in Unicode encoding. For instance, because Þ is number 222 and ó is number 243, Þórr can also be used to input Þórr. These numbers are also used with the Windows Alt codes listed above.
NOTES: For letters marked with *, Macintosh OS9 users must install the Language Kits in order to see eth, thorn.
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| Character Code | |
| Ǫ | Ǫ Cap O Ogonek |
|---|---|
| ǫ | ǫ Cap O Ogonek |
| Ę | Ę Cap E Ogonek |
| ę | ę Cap E Ogonek |
| Ƿ | Ƿ Cap Wynn |
| ƿ | ƿ Lower Wynn |
| Ꝩ | Ꝩ Cap Vend |
| ꝩ | ꝩ Lower Vend |
Many modern texts use American style quotes, but if you wish to include European style quote marks, here are the codes. Note that these codes may not work in older browsers.
| Sym | HTMl Entity Code/th> |
|---|---|
| « | « (left angle) |
| » | » (right angle) | ‹ | ‹ (left single angle) |
| › | › (right single angle) | „ | „(bottom quote) | ‚ | ‚(single bottom quote) | “ | “(left curly quote) | ‘ | ‘(left single curly quote) | ” | ”(right curly quote) | ’ | ’(right single curly quote) | – | – (en dash) |
| — | — (em dash) |
Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to U.S. settings and not display the text properly.
To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file, then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8 as the encoding.
Generic Encoding Template
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=??? ">
...
<head>Declare Unicode
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>
The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag if you are using XHTML
Declare Unicode in XHTML
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>
If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also, older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly without the "utf-8" declaration.
Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are metadata tags which indicate the language of a page, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
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Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.