Writing Æ Ø Å Without the Keys

Sooner or later you will need to write Danish on a keyboard that has no æ, ø or å — a borrowed laptop, an English phone layout, a web form that strips them. Danes solved this long ago with a set of accepted substitutions: æ → ae, ø → oe, å → aa. This page tells you exactly when those fallbacks are acceptable, when they are not, and why aa is a special, slightly dangerous case bound up with names and history. The headline rule, which this page establishes for the whole guide: in finished Danish writing you should always use the real letters æ ø å — the substitutions are an emergency measure, not a preferred spelling.

The three substitutions

When the proper letters are genuinely unavailable, these are the standard replacements:

These are understood by every Dane. If you write Jeg vil gerne bestille en oel in a pinch, you will be understood to mean Jeg vil gerne bestille en øl ("I'd like to order a beer"). But notice that even the example looks slightly off to a native eye — because it is a workaround.

Always use the real letters in finished text

This is the rule that governs every other page in this guide. When you write properly — an email, a message, a form, anything that will be read — use æ ø å. Substitutions in finished text look careless or foreign, and they can create genuine ambiguity, because some words differ only by these letters. A few illustrations of why the real letter matters:

• år (year) vs ar (scar) — drop the å-shape and you get a different word.
• læse (to read) vs lase — only the æ makes it Danish.
• gøre (to do) needs its ø; goere is just a fallback spelling of the same word.

So treat the fallbacks as a last resort and switch back to the proper letters the moment you can.

Why aa is the special case

Of the three fallbacks, aa is the one to watch, because it is not only a stand-in for å — it is also the historical spelling of the å sound, and that spelling still lives on.

Until the 1948 spelling reform, the å sound was written aa everywhere: aar (year), gaa (to go), blaa (blue). The reform introduced the single letter å and respelled ordinary words: aar → år, gaa → gå, blaa → blå. But aa was deliberately kept in proper names, where people's and places' spellings are conservative and legally fixed:

• Aabenraa — a town in southern Jutland
• Aarhus — Denmark's second city (more on this below)
• Kierkegaard — the philosopher's surname
• Aagaard, Skaarup, Kjærgaard — common surnames

In all of these, aa is pronounced as å and, importantly, sorted as å — at the very end of the alphabet, after z, with the other å-words. So the bidirectional rule is:

When you lack the å key, aa is your fallback for å. But not every aa you see is a fallback — in a name, aa may be the genuine, correct, permanent spelling.

The Aarhus / Århus question

The city of Aarhus is the classic trap. For decades it was officially spelled Århus (post-reform), and you will still see that form in older signs and texts. But in 2011 the city council officially readopted the spelling Aarhus — partly for international recognition (foreigners and search engines handle Aa better than Å) and partly out of historical attachment.

So today both spellings exist, and the important practical points are:

• The city's official name is now Aarhus, with aa.
• Århus is not "wrong" — it is the older official form and remains widely understood.
• You should not "correct" Aarhus to Århus, or vice versa, as if one were a typo. It is a name; follow the form the bearer uses.
• Either way, it is pronounced and alphabetised as å.

How to type æ ø å properly

The real fix is to stop needing the fallback. A few ways to get the actual letters:

• Switch to a Danish keyboard layout. On the physical Danish keyboard, æ, ø and å each have their own dedicated keys (to the right of the letter block). Most operating systems let you add "Danish" as an input language and toggle to it.
• macOS: with a US layout, hold Option and a base key for related characters, or add the Danish input source in System Settings → Keyboard. Many Mac users add Danish and switch with a hotkey.
• Windows alt-codes (numeric keypad): Alt+0230 = æ, Alt+0248 = ø, Alt+0229 = å; uppercase Alt+0198 = Æ, Alt+0216 = Ø, Alt+0197 = Å.
• Phones: long-press a for æ and å, and long-press o for ø, on most keyboards — or add the Danish keyboard, which puts them in the bottom row.

Once any of these is set up, the substitutions become unnecessary for everyday writing.

Common Mistakes

These are the real errors English speakers (and rushed natives) make with the fallbacks.

Key Takeaways

• The accepted fallbacks are æ→ae, ø→oe, å→aa, for when the real letters are unavailable.
• In any finished writing, use æ ø å — substitutions look careless and can be ambiguous.
• aa is special: it's both the fallback for å and the historical spelling of å, preserved in names (Aabenraa, Kierkegaard) where it sorts and sounds as å.
• Aarhus is officially spelled with aa since 2011; don't "correct" it — the aa↔å link is bidirectional and name-sensitive.
• Set up a Danish layout, alt-codes, or long-press keys so you rarely need the fallback at all.