The Icelandic Alphabet | Icelandic Grammar

The Icelandic alphabet has 32 letters. It shares most of its core with the English alphabet, but adds four genuinely distinctive letters — ð, þ, æ, ö — and treats the six accented vowels á, é, í, ó, ú, ý as full letters in their own right, not as decorated versions of the plain ones. This page is about the letters as written symbols and their sort order; the sounds they make are covered in the Pronunciation group. Getting the order straight matters more than it sounds: it governs how you find words in a dictionary, how lists alphabetise, and where you look when something seems "missing."

The full alphabet in order

Here is the complete sequence. Read it left to right, top to bottom — this is the alphabetical order:

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

#	Letter	Name	#	Letter	Name
1	a	a	17	n	enn
2	á	á	18	o	o
3	b	bé	19	ó	ó
4	d	dé	20	p	pé
5	ð	eð	21	r	err
6	e	e	22	s	ess
7	é	é	23	t	té
8	f	eff	24	u	u
9	g	gé	25	ú	ú
10	h	há	26	v	vaff
11	i	i	27	x	ex
12	í	í	28	y	ufsilon y
13	j	joð	29	ý	ufsilon ý
14	k	ká	30	þ	þorn
15	l	ell	31	æ	æ
16	m	emm	32	ö	ö

Notice three structural facts you will rely on constantly:

Each accented vowel sorts immediately after its base letter: á right after a, é right after e, í after i, ó after o, ú after u, ý after y. They are not lumped in with the plain vowel — they have their own slot.
ð follows d (position 5), not anywhere near t.
þ, æ, and ö come at the very end, after y/ý. æ and ö are the last two letters of the alphabet.

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The accented vowels are not "a with an accent" the way English treats a café accent — they are separate letters with their own dictionary positions. Á is as distinct from a as b is from c.

Why sort order is a real skill, not trivia

Because these are full letters, alphabetising correctly changes which page a word lands on. A learner who alphabetises Icelandic with English habits will look in the wrong place and conclude the word "isn't in the dictionary."

Watch how á sorts after all the plain-a words, not interleaved with them:

að · af · al · ár · ás

The plain-a words (að, af, al) all come BEFORE the á-words (ár, ás), because á is a separate letter sorting after a.

And watch ð sit right after d, far from t:

dagur · dúkur · ðe- ...

Words in ð sort right after the d-block, not near t. (Note: native words don't begin with ð, so this slot is mostly for ranking medial forms.)

And the very end of the alphabet, where þ, æ, ö live:

ýmis · þú · þrír · æð · ös-

Order at the tail: y/ý words, then þ words, then æ, then ö last of all.

A concrete contrast that surprises everyone — öl (beer/ale) sorts after al (everything), because ö is the final letter:

al-, ál-, ... öl

al comes near the very start; öl comes at the very end, because ö is the last letter of the alphabet.

The letters that are missing: c, q, w, z

Four familiar English letters do not occur in native Icelandic words:

c, q, w — never used to write Icelandic words. Their jobs are done by k/s, kv, and v respectively. They appear only in unassimilated foreign names and a few international terms.
z — was actually used until 1973, when a spelling reform officially abolished it; the sound it represented had long since merged with s, so z was replaced by s. You will still see z in pre-1973 texts (and in the famous newspaper Morgunblaðið's older style, and the band name Sigur Rós uses ordinary letters — but a word like old íslenzkur is now íslenskur).

íslenskur

Icelandic (adjective) — modern spelling with s; before the 1973 reform it was written íslenzkur with z.

Kanada

Canada — the English 'C' is rendered with K; c itself doesn't appear in the Icelandic spelling.

kviga

heifer — the 'qu' sound English would write with q is spelled kv in Icelandic.

So if you are hunting for a word and reach for c, w, or z, stop: it will be spelled with k/s, v, or s instead.

The distinguishing insight: positions reflect distribution

Here is a subtlety competitors skip. The alphabet places ð near the front (right after d) and þ near the back (just before æ), which can feel arbitrary — they are, after all, related "th" sounds. But the positions quietly mirror how the letters behave in real words: ð never begins a word (it lives medially and finally), while þ never ends one (it only begins words and morphemes). The two letters are essentially in complementary distribution, and their separate, distant alphabet slots reflect that they are genuinely different letters doing different jobs — not a pair. (The pronunciation side of this is on þ and ð: The Two 'th' Sounds.)

þrír · maður

þ begins the word þrír (three); ð sits inside maður (man). Neither letter could swap places — and the alphabet keeps them far apart.

Common Mistakes

❌ Looking up 'ár' among the a-words, between 'að' and 'af'

Incorrect — á is a separate letter sorting AFTER all plain-a words; ár comes later, not interleaved.

✅ Find 'ár' after the whole a-block, in the á section.

á sorts after a, as its own letter.

❌ Hunting for þ or ð near 't' in the dictionary

Incorrect — ð sorts right after d (position 5), and þ sorts near the end (position 30), nowhere near t.

✅ ð follows d; þ is third from last, before æ and ö.

Know the real positions: ð after d, þ near the end.

❌ Expecting words spelled with c, w, or z

Incorrect — c, q, w don't occur in native words, and z was abolished in 1973 (replaced by s).

✅ íslenskur (not íslenzkur), Kanada (not Canada), kv- (not qu-)

Use s, k/v in place of z, c, q, w.

❌ Treating á, é, í, ó, ú, ý as the plain vowels 'with a stress mark'

Incorrect — they are full, independently-alphabetised letters, each sorting right after its base vowel.

✅ á is its own letter, sorting after a — like a separate slot in the alphabet.

The accented vowels are distinct letters.

Key Takeaways

The alphabet has 32 letters: 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.
The accented vowels á é í ó ú ý and the special letters ð þ æ ö are full letters, not variants — each accented vowel sorts immediately after its base.
ð follows d; þ, æ, ö come at the very end, with æ and ö last of all.
c, q, w never appear in native words; z was abolished in 1973 and replaced by s.
The odd-looking positions of ð (early) and þ (late) mirror their distribution: ð never begins a word, þ never ends one.

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