Handwriting, Fonts, and Letter Shapes | Icelandic Grammar

Most pronunciation guides will tell you what þ, ð, æ and ö sound like, but almost none tell you what they look like when an Icelander writes them by hand, or how their shapes shift across fonts. That gap matters, because these are genuinely unfamiliar shapes, not just unfamiliar sounds. You can know that þ is a voiceless 'th' and still freeze when you see it scrawled on a café chalkboard, or accidentally draw something that reads as a p. This page is the visual half of the special letters: how to recognise them in the wild and how to form them yourself.

The four special letters at a glance

Icelandic adds four letters to the Latin alphabet you already know. Two of them, æ and ö, are familiar in shape from other European languages; two of them, þ and ð, are not — they are survivors of the old Germanic runic and insular alphabets that English itself once used and then dropped.

Letter	Name	Upper / lower	Sound	Where it occurs
þ	þorn (thorn)	Þ / þ	voiceless 'th' (thin)	word-initial / start of a stressed syllable only
ð	eð (eth)	Ð / ð	voiced 'th' (this)	middle or end of a word — never word-initial
æ	æ	Æ / æ	diphthong [ai] (eye)	anywhere
ö	ö	Ö / ö	rounded vowel [œ]	anywhere

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The distribution is a free recognition aid. Because ð is never word-initial and þ is essentially always word-initial, the position of the letter on the page tells you which 'th' you are looking at before you have even parsed the shape. A 'th'-letter at the front of a word is þ; one buried in the middle or end is ð.

þ (thorn): a tall stem with a bowl in the middle

The single most important thing to internalise about þ is where the bowl sits. In a p, the bowl hangs off the bottom of the stem and the stem descends below the line. In a b, the bowl sits at the bottom and the stem rises above. In þ, the bowl sits in the middle of a tall stem — the stem both rises above and descends below the bowl, so it looks like a p and a b fused together, or like an old-fashioned wynn.

þú

you — the þ has a stem that rises high and drops low, with the rounded bowl floating in the middle, not at the bottom like p.

þakka

thank — same tall central-bowl þ at the start; compare its full height to the short p in an English 'pakka'.

When you write þ by hand, the reliable method is: draw a tall vertical stroke from above the x-height line down to below the baseline (like the stem of an f or a long p), then add the bowl on the right, centred on the line — roughly where the bowl of a lowercase b or p would be, but with stem showing both above and below it.

The uppercase Þ is essentially a capital with a vertical stem and a bowl in the upper-to-middle region — it looks like a P whose bowl has been pushed slightly down, or a D with a flat left side and a gap. You will see it at the start of sentences and in names.

Þetta er Þóra.

This is Þóra. — both the sentence-initial Þ and the name Þóra use the uppercase thorn.

Þingvellir

Thingvellir (a place name) — capital Þ; you will meet this on road signs and maps.

ð (eth): a rounded d with a stroke through the riser

ð is the one that trips English eyes, because at a glance it can read as a d or even an o. The shape is: take a lowercase d, round off the ascender so it curls back to the left, and cross that curved riser with a short horizontal stroke. That little crossbar is the whole identity of the letter — without it you have a d; with it you have ð.

maður

man — the ð sits between the vowels; spot the crossbar on its curved top to tell it from a plain d ('madur').

góða

good (f., weak) — the ð after the long ó; the curl-and-stroke top is the giveaway.

Ísland og Grænland

Iceland and Greenland — no ð here, but a useful reminder that 'land' uses plain d, while many words you expect to end in -d actually end in -ð.

By hand, write ð as you would a d but, instead of a straight ascender, curve the top of the riser back to the left like a little flag or hook, and then draw a short bar across that hook. Keep the bowl clearly closed so it does not read as an o with a tail.

The uppercase Ð looks like a capital D with a horizontal bar crossing its left stem (much like the Croatian/Vietnamese Đ). It is genuinely rare in normal text — because ð never begins a word, the only time you need a capital Ð is when an all-caps heading or sign forces every letter into uppercase.

SUÐURLAND

South Iceland (a region name as it appears on road signs) — only in full-caps settings like signage do you see the uppercase Ð form.

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Three quick discriminators on the page: þ has its bowl in the middle of a tall stem (p has it at the bottom); ð is a d whose riser curls and is crossed (a plain d is not); and the position rule means a word-initial 'th'-letter is always þ, never ð.

æ: the a–e ligature

æ is the two letters a and e literally joined into one — and it is treated as a single letter of the alphabet, not as 'ae'. Visually it is simply an a fused to an e sharing a stroke. English speakers recognise it from old spellings (encyclopædia, Cæsar), so the shape is rarely a problem; the trap is reading it as two sounds. It is one sound, the diphthong [ai] (English 'eye').

læra

to learn — the æ is one ligature, pronounced 'eye': 'LY-ra'.

Æsa

(a woman's name) — the uppercase Æ is an A and E joined; it is a normal capital letter at the start of names and sentences.

By hand, the easiest reliable form is to write the a and then attach a small e to its right side, the two sharing the middle stroke. The uppercase Æ is a capital A whose right side flows into a capital E.

ö: o with two dots

ö is an o with an umlaut — two dots above. Anyone who has seen German or Swedish will know the shape. It is a rounded front vowel [œ], roughly the vowel in English 'bird' said with rounded lips. The only handwriting caution: keep the two dots clearly separate and above, so the letter does not get mistaken for a plain o or for the accented vowels (which take a single rising stroke, not two dots).

köttur

cat — ö with its two dots; 'KUHT-tur'.

Ölver

(a man's name) — uppercase Ö is a capital O with two dots above.

This is also the place to flag the accented vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý). In handwriting and most fonts they take a single stroke rising to the right (an acute accent), which must not be confused with ö's two dots or with a German-style umlaut. The accent is part of the letter's identity — a and á are different letters with different sounds — so a dropped or doubled mark is a spelling error, not a stylistic flourish.

á — ó — ú

a-acute, o-acute, u-acute — one rising stroke each, distinct from ö's two dots.

How fonts vary

In print you will meet a few harmless variations. In some serif faces the bowl of þ is more pointed; in others nearly circular. The crossbar of ð can be thin or thick, and in italic faces the whole letter slants so the curled riser is even more pronounced. æ is sometimes drawn with the a and e barely touching, sometimes fully merged. None of this changes the letter's identity. The practical takeaway: anchor on the defining feature (central bowl for þ, curl-and-crossbar for ð, the join for æ, the two dots for ö) rather than on any one font's exact curves.

Common Mistakes

❌ Writing þ with the bowl at the bottom, so it reads as a p

Incorrect — the bowl of þ sits in the MIDDLE of a tall stem; a bottom bowl is a p.

✅ þ — tall stem, bowl centred, ascending and descending

thorn, correctly formed

❌ Reading or writing ð as a plain d (maður → 'madur')

Incorrect — ð is a d whose riser curls and is crossed by a short bar; without the bar it is a different letter.

✅ maður — clear crossbar on the curled riser of ð

man

❌ Putting a ð at the start of a word, e.g. spelling 'this/that' as ðetta

Incorrect — ð never begins a word; the word-initial 'th' is always þ: þetta.

✅ þetta

this

❌ Treating æ as two letters/sounds 'a-e'

Incorrect — æ is one letter, one sound, the diphthong [ai] ('eye').

✅ læra — 'LY-ra'

to learn

❌ Replacing ö's two dots with a single acute accent, writing ó for ö

Incorrect — ö (two dots) and ó (one rising stroke) are different letters with different sounds.

✅ köttur, not 'kóttur'

cat

Key Takeaways

þ = tall stem with the bowl in the middle (distinguish from p/b); essentially always word-initial.
ð = a d with a curled, crossed riser; never word-initial, so its capital Ð is rare (only in all-caps).
æ is one letter (an a–e ligature), one sound [ai]; ö is o with two dots, the rounded vowel [œ].
The accented vowels take a single rising stroke — do not confuse with ö's two dots; the mark is part of the letter.
Across fonts the curves vary, but the defining feature of each letter is constant — anchor your recognition on that.

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