Capitalisation and Handwriting Conventions | Norwegian Grammar

Norwegian uses far fewer capital letters than English, and the differences are systematic enough that a stray capital is one of the most reliable tells of an English writer. The good news: the rule is simple and, once internalised, almost free to apply. This page covers what Norwegian capitalises (much less than you think), the three extra letters æ, ø, å and how they look in handwriting and as capitals Æ Ø Å, and the small written conventions for ordinals and dates.

The core rule: capitalise only proper names and sentence starts

Norwegian capitalises a word in exactly two everyday situations: it begins a sentence, or it is a proper noun (the name of a specific person, place, organisation, brand, or title of a work). That's essentially it. Everything English habitually capitalises but Norwegian does not — days, months, languages, nationalities-as-adjectives, religions — flows from this single rule: those are not proper names, so they stay lowercase.

Oslo er hovedstaden i Norge.

Oslo is the capital of Norway. (proper nouns Oslo, Norge — capitalised; 'hovedstaden' is a common noun — lowercase)

Kari og jeg jobber i Statoil.

Kari and I work at Statoil. (personal name and company name capitalised; 'jeg' = 'I' is lowercase — see below)

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Norwegian does not capitalise the first-person pronoun. English writes "I"; Norwegian writes jeg — always lowercase unless it starts a sentence. This is the mirror image of the English habit and trips writers up constantly.

Lowercase: days, months, languages, nationalities, religions

This is the big cluster of differences, and the single most valuable thing on this page. English capitalises all of these; Norwegian capitalises none of them.

Days of the week — lowercase: mandag, tirsdag, onsdag, torsdag, fredag, lørdag, søndag.

Vi ses på mandag.

See you on Monday. ('mandag' lowercase — never 'Mandag')

Months — lowercase: januar, februar, mars, april, mai, juni, juli, august, september, oktober, november, desember.

Jeg har bursdag i januar.

My birthday is in January. ('januar' lowercase)

Languages — lowercase: norsk, engelsk, spansk, fransk, tysk.

Jeg snakker norsk og engelsk.

I speak Norwegian and English. (both language names lowercase — never 'Norsk', 'Engelsk')

Nationality adjectives — lowercase: norsk mat (Norwegian food), en fransk film (a French film).

Vi spiste på en italiensk restaurant.

We ate at an Italian restaurant. ('italiensk' lowercase as an adjective)

Nationality nouns — also lowercase: en nordmann (a Norwegian person), en franskmann (a Frenchman), en svenske (a Swede).

Han er franskmann, men kona er svensk.

He's a Frenchman, but his wife is Swedish. ('franskmann' the noun is lowercase; 'svensk' the adjective is lowercase too)

Religions and their adherents — lowercase: kristendom (Christianity), islam, en kristen (a Christian), en muslim (a Muslim).

Hun er kristen, og naboen er muslim.

She's a Christian, and the neighbour is a Muslim. (both lowercase)

The one important exception inside this cluster: the proper name of a country, people-as-a-nation, or place is capitalised, because it is a proper noun — Norge (Norway), Frankrike (France), Norden (the Nordics). The contrast is clean: Norge (the country, capital) vs. norsk (the adjective/language, lowercase) vs. en nordmann (a national, lowercase).

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One sentence captures the whole rule: in Norwegian, the country is a proper name (capital), but the language, the adjective and the national are not (lowercase) — Norge / norsk / en nordmann. English capitalises all three; Norwegian capitalises only the first.

Titles and headings

Norwegian uses sentence case for the titles of books, films, articles and headings: only the first word and any proper names are capitalised, not every major word. English "title case" — The Old Man and the Sea — becomes Norwegian sentence case — Den gamle mannen og havet.

Boka heter «Sult», og filmen heter «Kongens nei».

The book is called 'Hunger', and the film is called 'The King's No'. (only the first word + proper name capitalised in each title)

Job titles and roles before a name are lowercase: statsminister Jonas Gahr Støre (Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre), kong Harald (King Harald). The personal name is capitalised; the title is not.

I dag møtte kong Harald statsminister Støre.

Today King Harald met Prime Minister Støre. (titles 'kong', 'statsminister' lowercase; names capitalised)

The archaic capitalised De/Dem/Deres

Historically, the polite second-person pronoun De / Dem / Deres (the formal "you") was written with a capital D to distinguish it from de ("they"). You will see this in old letters, legal forms and very formal correspondence. In modern Norwegian it is archaic — everyday writing uses lowercase du / deg / dere for everyone (see register/polite-de). Recognise the capitalised De when you meet it in an old text, but do not produce it.

Vi takker for Deres henvendelse. (archaic/very formal)

We thank you for your enquiry. (capitalised 'Deres' = formal 'your' — found in old or stiff business letters; now archaic)

Takk for henvendelsen din!

Thanks for your enquiry! (modern, normal — lowercase 'din')

Ordinals and dates: the point

Norwegian writes ordinal numbers with a following period (full stop): 1. = første (first), 2. = andre (second), 17. = syttende (seventeenth). The period is the ordinal marker — it does the job English does with the superscript letters in "1st, 2nd, 17th."

Vi feirer nasjonaldagen 17. mai.

We celebrate the national day on the 17th of May. ('17.' with a period = '17th'; 'mai' lowercase)

Han kom på 3. plass i løpet.

He came in 3rd place in the race. ('3.' = 'tredje', third)

Dates are normally written day-month-year, with the day as an ordinal-with-period and the month spelled out in lowercase: 17. mai 1814, 3. januar 2026. In all-numeric form Norwegian uses periods: 17.05.2026.

Frist for søknaden er 1. mars.

The deadline for the application is the 1st of March. ('1.' with period, 'mars' lowercase)

Writing æ, ø, å by hand — and their capitals

Norwegian adds three letters after z, in this order: æ, ø, å. By hand:

æ / Æ is an a and e fused into one glyph (a ligature). Lowercase æ looks like a joined ae; the capital Æ is a capital A and E run together.
ø / Ø is an o with a stroke through it. The stroke goes from lower-left to upper-right. The capital Ø is a capital O with the same diagonal stroke.
å / Å is an a (or o-like circle) with a small ring on top. The capital Å is a capital A with the ring above it.

Æ, Ø og Å er de tre siste bokstavene i alfabetet.

Æ, Ø and Å are the last three letters of the alphabet. (note their capital forms)

Ørnen fløy over øya i øst.

The eagle flew over the island in the east. (sentence-initial Ø; lowercase ø, ø, ø, ø inside words)

These are distinct letters, not accented vowels — they have their own dictionary positions and cannot be replaced by ae, oe, aa in modern writing (those substitutions are only an emergency fallback when the characters are unavailable, e.g. some old systems; see writing/alphabet and the typing page). Writing Aalesund for Ålesund is dated; the modern spelling uses Å. The one living trace is some surnames and old place-names that kept aa (e.g. Aas), where it is still pronounced like å.

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Æ, Ø, Å are full citizens of the alphabet, sorted after Z in this exact order. They are never optional accents on Latin vowels — leaving the ring off å or the stroke off ø is a spelling error, not a typographical shortcut.

Common Mistakes

❌ Vi ses på Mandag.

Incorrect — days of the week are lowercase in Norwegian.

✅ Vi ses på mandag.

See you on Monday.

❌ Jeg har bursdag i Januar.

Incorrect — months are lowercase.

✅ Jeg har bursdag i januar.

My birthday is in January.

❌ Jeg snakker Norsk.

Incorrect — language names are lowercase.

✅ Jeg snakker norsk.

I speak Norwegian.

❌ Vi elsker Norsk mat.

Incorrect — nationality adjectives are lowercase ('norsk'), even though 'Norge' the country is capitalised.

✅ Vi elsker norsk mat.

We love Norwegian food.

❌ Kari og Jeg drar i morgen.

Incorrect — 'jeg' ('I') is lowercase unless it starts the sentence.

✅ Kari og jeg drar i morgen.

Kari and I are leaving tomorrow.

Key Takeaways

Norwegian capitalises only proper names and sentence-initial words — and never jeg ("I") mid-sentence.
Lowercase everything English capitalises here: days (mandag), months (januar), languages (norsk), nationality adjectives/nouns (norsk, en franskmann), religions (kristen). Only the country name itself capitalises (Norge).
Titles use sentence case, not English title case; job titles before a name are lowercase (kong Harald).
Ordinals and dates take a period: mai
, plass
, 17.05.2026.
Æ, Ø, Å are distinct letters (sorted after Z), written by hand as ae-ligature, o-with-stroke, and a-with-ring; the capitalised polite De/Dem/Deres is archaic.

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