Danish Alphabet: æ ø å at the End, and Why Aa Sorts as Å

What did the 1948 Danish spelling reform change besides å?

The 1948 reform gave the Danish alphabet its å, but that was only one of three changes. The Ministry of Education signed order no. 128 (opens in a new tab) on 22 March 1948, and Dansk Sprognævn keeps a copy online. The new letter is its second section. The first section took the capitals off Danish nouns.

Section	What it ordered	Examples from the text
§ 1	nouns lose their capital; small letters become the rule	names of months and weekdays too
§ 2	Å and å replace Aa and aa in ordinary words	år, stå, påanke
§ 2	the same for Nordic place names	Århus, Grenå, Umeå, Åbo, Ålesund
§ 2	no change for foreign names rendered in Danish	Saar, Maastricht
§ 2	no change for personal names	the order leaves them alone
§ 3	kunne, skulle, ville in place of kunde, skulde, vilde	three common verbs
§ 4	in force on 1 April 1948	exams demand the new rules from 1950

The two exceptions in § 2 explain most aa spellings you still meet. A family name kept its aa by law. A foreign name such as Maastricht kept it because the order covered only ordinary words and Nordic place names. Schools got a choice of old or new spelling until the school year 1949–50, and old textbooks stayed in use.

Why does å come last in the Danish alphabet?

Because a second order put it there in 1955. The 1948 reform swapped aa for å, but it did not say where the new letter belonged. Dansk Sprognævn told the town of Aabenraa so in a 1995 letter, printed in Nyt fra Sprognævnet 1997/4 (opens in a new tab). For some years nobody knew whether å stood first, where the old aa had stood, or last.

A short order of 8 February 1955 settled it: å takes "its place last in the alphabet". The Council's own spelling dictionary of 1955 then filed names with å and names with aa together, at the end. The 1997 spelling act repealed both orders, the one from 1948 and the one from 1955, but kept their rules. The act is printed in Nyt fra Sprognævnet 1997/3 (opens in a new tab).

So the end of the Danish alphabet runs z, æ, ø, å. How the letter itself sounds, and why the Ångström sign is the same Å to software, is on the a with circle page. The same Council letter notes that Norwegian also puts å last. Swedish puts it last too, but in a different order: å, ä, ö.

Where does Aabenraa go in a Danish list?

Aabenraa goes at the end of a Danish list, among the å words, because the Danish alphabet order counts aa as å. The rule, as Dansk Sprognævn quoted it in 1997, has three parts:

1. When aa is said as one vowel, it sorts as å, whether it sounds like a or like å.
2. If two words differ only in å against aa, the form with å comes first: krål before kraal, Nygård before Nygaard.
3. When aa is two vowels in two syllables, as in ekstraarbejde, it sorts as two a's.

Aabenraa fought the first part. A business director there wrote to the Council in July 1995, saying foreigners could not find the town at the end of a list. The Council replied that this was not a mistake but the rule. On 18 September 1997, townspeople and four circus elephants marched on Christiansborg Palace Square. The Culture Minister declined to change it.

His written answer to the Folketing gave the reason. Philipsen sorts under P and Oehlenschläger under O, by their spelling. Aa sorts by its sound, because Danish counts Aa and Å as one letter written two ways, as it does for æ and ä, and for ø and ö.

We tried the rule on software on 2026-10-10: Node.js v26.0.0, whose ICU 78.3 carries CLDR 48 data, set to Danish.

Pair	The Danish rule	Software set to Danish
Aabenraa, Zahle	Zahle first	Zahle first
Nygård, Nygaard	Nygård first	Nygård first
krål, kraal	krål first	krål first
ekstraarbejde, ekstrabetaling	ekstraarbejde first, two a's	ekstrabetaling first
Andersen, Bruun	Andersen first	Andersen first

The last row is the control. The fourth row is where code and rule part ways. Software cannot hear the syllable break in ekstra-arbejde, so it files the word among the å words. The CLDR Danish chart (opens in a new tab) shows why: it lists aa as a form of å, with no exception.

Is Aarhus or Århus the correct Danish spelling?

Aarhus and Århus are both correct Danish spellings. Since 1984, a Danish place name may be spelled with å or with aa, says the University of Copenhagen's name research page on Aarhus (opens in a new tab). Dansk Sprognævn and the Place-Name Committee still recommend å. Many towns prefer aa, such as Aabenraa, Aalborg and Grenaa. Aarhus chose aa from 1 January 2011.

The same page adds that it will always be correct to write Århus, Ålborg, Åbenrå or Fåborg. The spelling dictionary keeps å in the headword and notes the local form beside it.

The two spellings behave differently in a search box. We compared them at the strength that ignores case and accents, with the same Node.js build.

Typed	Matches Århus under Danish rules	Under English rules
Aarhus	yes, aa counts as å	no
Arhus	no, a and å are different letters	yes, the ring is ignored
aarhus	yes	no

So on a Danish site, Aarhus finds Århus and Arhus does not. On an English one it is the other way round. If your audience is mixed, store the name in both forms.

Do Danish and Norwegian sort their alphabets the same way?

Almost. The Danish letters and the Norwegian ones are the same, and so is their order: æ, ø, å after z. The CLDR Norwegian chart (opens in a new tab) also files aa with å, as the Danish one does. One detail differs. The Danish chart sorts a capital before its small letter, while the Norwegian chart puts the small letter first. The Swedish chart (opens in a new tab) differs more.

We sorted the same pairs under each language's rules on 2026-10-10, in Node.js v26.0.0.

Pair	Danish	Norwegian Bokmål	Swedish	English
Bo, bo	Bo first	bo first	bo first	bo first
Ålborg, Ærø	Ærø first	Ærø first	Ålborg first	Ærø first
Aabenraa, Abildgaard	Abildgaard first	Abildgaard first	Aabenraa first	Aabenraa first
Mylius, Müller	Mylius first	Mylius first	Mylius first	Müller first
Andersen, Bruun	Andersen first	Andersen first	Andersen first	Andersen first

The capital-first row is the only one where Danish and Norwegian disagree. In a Danish list, Bo comes before bo, and Aase before aase. The Swedish column shows two other habits. Swedish ends with å, ä, ö, so Ålborg comes before Ærø. And it reads aa as two plain a's, so Aabenraa jumps to the top.

The Müller row shows how Danish sorts a German ü: as y, after Mylius. The letters at the top of this page close every list sorted by the Danish alphabet. The letters further down are the ones Danish files under them. The two keyboards disagree more than the two sorting rules: the Norwegian keyboard has ø and æ the other way round.