This page covers utilities and codes for the modern languages of Scandinavia including Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Faeroese, Old Norse (partial) and others. Information on Old English has been moved to the Old English and Page.
Windows - Most recent browsers can view pages with Nordic characters .
Macintosh - If using System 9 or an older version, Language Kits should be installed in order to view Icelandic eth and thorn. Other characters are well-supported.
Because Icelandic is one of the few modern languages which uses the Old English characters ð (eth), þ (thorn) and æ (ash) many scholars recommend using Icelandic keyboards to type these characters. However, the Icelandic keyboards do not support macrons (long marks), yogh or wynn - see the Old English page if you need to work with these additional characters.
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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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. |
| Consonants/Punctuation | |
| 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. |
| «, » | 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.
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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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.
| European Quote Marks | |
| « | « (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 meta data tags which indicate the page of a language, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
