The Icelandic Alphabet

Icelandic uses the Latin alphabet with four letters English does not have, and every road sign, map and menu in the country uses them. The language has changed so little in a thousand years that Icelanders read the medieval sagas without translation - which is charming, and also why the place names are long.

You do not need to speak Icelandic to travel here. You do need to read a place name well enough to ask about it, and to recognise a handful of words on a sign.

Þ and Ð, the two letters English gave up

Þ, þ - thorn. The th of thing, unvoiced. Þingvellir is roughly THING-vet-lir. Icelandic is the only living language still using it; English used it until printers importing type from Germany substituted y, which is where the fake-archaic "ye olde" comes from.

Ð, ð - eth. The th of father, voiced. It never starts a word, which is why you meet it in the middle of Siglufjörður and never at the front.

Æ, æ - pronounced like the English word eye. A single letter, not an a-e ligature.

Ö, ö - the vowel of German schön, close to the u in fur. Höfn comes out near HUPN.

The accented vowels are separate letters

Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú and Ý are not stressed versions of their plain counterparts. They are distinct letters with distinct sounds:

• Á - ow, as in how. Ásbyrgi.
• É - ye, as in yes. Rare.
• Í and Ý - ee. Ísafjörður starts ee, not iss.
• Ó - oh. Þórsmörk.
• Ú - oo. Húsavík.

Getting this wrong is the commonest way a place name becomes unrecognisable to the person you are asking.

The full alphabet, in Icelandic order

Thirty-two letters. The order matters for indexes, phone books and timetables, because the extra letters do not sit where an English speaker expects - Þ and Æ come after Y:

A, Á, B, D, Ð, E, É, F, G, H, I, Í, J, K, L, M, N, O, Ó, P, R, S, T, U, Ú, V, X, Y, Ý, Þ, Æ, Ö

C, Q, W and Z are absent, appearing only in foreign words and names. Z was abolished from Icelandic spelling in 1973, so a Z on a sign means the word is borrowed or the sign is old.

Typing Icelandic on a keyboard that has none of it

On a phone, press and hold the nearest Latin key: t for þ, d for ð, a for æ and á, o for ö and ó, u for ú.

When you cannot type them, the standard substitutions are th for þ, d for ð, ae for æ and o for ö. Icelandic sites and search engines expect this, and it is how the names appear in URLs - so Þórsmörk becomes thorsmork.

Where to go next

The letters are only the first step. Three companion guides cover what you do with them:

• Reading Icelandic place names - the compound system, and the twenty word-parts that decode most of the map. Why Jökulsárlón means what it looks like.
• Icelandic road signs - einbreið brú, blindhæð, malbik endar and the rest of the vocabulary a driver needs before collecting the car.
• Icelandic phrases - what to say, and an honest note on how little you need to.