The Norwegian Alphabet

You might have encountered the infamous Norwegian letters æ, ø and å at some point. An example of this can be when you're learning how to conjugate Norwegian verbs and you find out that the infinitive marker in Norwegian is å. Another example is when you're learning the Norwegian colors and discover that several of the colors include these letters. What's the Norwegian alphabet really like and how many letters are there?

The Norwegian Alphabet

The Norwegian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet and has 29 letters in it. Before we go further, let's look at the Norwegian alphabet:

As you have probably noticed, the Norwegian alphabet is identical to the English alphabet (Latin alphabet) except for the addition of three letters æ, ø and å. This alphabet is used in Norwegian (both bokmål and nynorsk) and in Danish.

For readers interested in history, you might find it interesting to learn that aa was historically used the way å is used today (before 1917). The pronunciation of the Norwegian names Åse and Aase is in other words identical. After the orthography reform in 1917, the letter å was introduced into the Norwegian alphabet and replaced aa.

Here are three examples of Norwegian words that use æ, ø or å: