To look at the Icelandic alphabet on the page is to glimpse a chapter of Europe’s linguistic history that has mostly faded elsewhere. The version taught in Icelandic schools today comprises 32 living letters, shaped over centuries by tradition and reform, and it remains one of the most distinctive Latin-script alphabets in the world.
A closer look at unique Icelandic letters
Unlike English, Icelandic does not include the letters C, Q, W or Z in daily usage. Instead, it introduces a quartet rarely seen in modern alphabets: Ð (eth), Þ (thorn), Æ (æ), and Ö (ö). These are not just decorative, each has a function and a place in alphabetical sorting. Þ and ð are both pronounced as the ‘th’ sounds in English (as in ‘thin’ and ‘that’). While thorn can appear at the start of a word, eth never leads; a word only begins with Ð if every letter is capitalised. The letter æ, once a ligature in some languages, and ö, a vowel with a diacritical mark, are both considered separate and essential letters, used frequently in Icelandic vocabulary.
Diacritics also play a key part. Six letters, Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý, use acute accents to indicate a different sound from their unaccented partners. The result is a system that distinguishes subtle vowel sounds and preserves meaning and pronunciation.
Letters lost and found: the story of Z
Historically, the Icelandic alphabet could also boast the letter Z, which was inherited from older traditions for etymological rather than phonetic reasons. By modern times, Z did nothing a simple S could not, and so the letter was formally retired from native Icelandic writing in 1973. Remnants of Z persist in family names, in some proper names such as Zakarías and Zoëga, in a famous Reykjavík hot-dog chain’s name and in the old spelling of verzlun (now verslun, ‘shop’). Some older Icelanders, educated before 1973, still occasionally use it by habit. The letter Z, like C, Q, and W, also appears on Icelandic keyboards and in road signs (to indicate the city centre, by European convention) and scientific abbreviations.
Despite occasional appearances from the English-speaking world, C, Q and W have no native use in Iceland. Where needed in foreign names, these letters are used as is, but Icelandic adapts loanwords by substituting K, S, or V. Sometimes, a combination such as ‘hv’ (in hvað, meaning ‘what’) stands in for the Latin ‘qu’ or English ‘wh’, showing an underlying link to their Indo-European roots.
From a wider historical perspective, the Icelandic alphabet has deep roots. The core features, thorn, eth, and the accent marks, can be traced back to a 12th-century linguistic treatise aiming to fit the Old Norse language to written form. The 19th-century Danish linguist Rasmus Rask revived these characteristics, laying the foundation for the alphabet in use today. The continued care for orthographic tradition allows Icelandic to remain close in grammar, spelling and pronunciation to its medieval past.
