Old Danish spelling: Aa, Å and capitalised nouns

When you read old Danish documents, you quickly come across spellings that look wrong to modern eyes: »Aar« instead of »år«, and nouns such as »Manden« and »Huset« written with a capital letter. These are not mistakes – it is the correct spelling of the time. This article explains the most important differences and helps you understand old Danish spelling, so that you can read letters, parish registers and deeds with greater confidence.

»Aa« instead of »Å«

The letter Å was only officially introduced into Danish with the spelling reform of 1948. Before that, the sound was written with a double a: »Aar« (year), »Maal« (goal), »paa« (on). So when you decipher a text from before 1948, you should expect »Aa« – and a good transcription preserves it, so that the text remains faithful to the original.

You encounter the double a everywhere in older texts, and it appears especially in the names of places and farms, where the spelling often lingers well into more recent times. Here are some of the most frequent words you will recognise, with the modern form in parentheses:

»Aar« (year) – e.g. »i Aaret 1872« (in the year 1872)
»Maal« (goal) and »Maaned« (month)
»Gaard« (farm) – e.g. »Bondegaarden« (the farmstead) or the place name »Nørregaard«
»paa« (on) – one of the very most frequent words in old letters
»Kjøbenhavn« (Copenhagen) – with both »Kj« and »øb« spelled the old way

Note that many surnames and place names preserve the old »Aa« to this day – think of »Aabenraa« and »Aalborg«. This is a deliberate tradition, and therefore »Aa« on its own is not sure proof that the whole text is old. It is the totality of the signs that counts.

Nouns with a capital initial letter

Until the reform of 1948, all nouns were written with a capital initial letter – just like in German today. »Manden gik over Marken til Kirken« (The man walked across the field to the church) would thus appear with three capital letters. This is one of the clearest markers that a text is old, and it is important to know, so that one does not misread it as random spelling.

To the untrained reader this may seem confusing, but the rule is actually a help: when you see »Huset«, »Kjole« or »Barnet« capitalised in the middle of a sentence, you know that it is a noun and that the text follows the old norm. This makes it easier to tell words apart in a densely written hand, where the letters can otherwise flow together.

Older features of the writing before the reform

The further back you go, the more peculiarities you encounter. Before 1948 – and especially in texts from the 18th and 19th centuries – Danish spelling was marked by a number of patterns that are good to know when you work with genealogy in Gothic script.

Double consonants and »kj«/»gj«

Older Danish often used more double consonants than we do today, and certain consonant combinations looked different. Especially »kj« and »gj« before soft vowels are characteristic: one wrote »Kjøbenhavn«, »Kjole«, »Kjærlighed« and »gjøre«, »gjemme«. The silent »j« gradually disappeared during the 20th century, but lingered longest in names.

German loanwords and chancery language

Danish administration and church language were for centuries strongly influenced by German, and that leaves traces in the vocabulary. In parish registers and official documents you come across loanwords and phrases from German, and that is one of the reasons why nouns were written with a capital letter – a convention that came directly from the German writing tradition.

The long »ſ«

In the oldest printed and handwritten texts you may encounter the long s – the character »ſ«, which resembles an f without a crossbar. It was used at the beginning and in the middle of words, while the round »s« stood at the end. For the unaccustomed reader it can easily be confused with an f, so it is worth being attentive to when you decipher an older page.

Spelling was often individual

An important point to remember is that spelling was not fixed and uniform in the same way as today. Especially before the first official spelling rules, the spelling could vary from scribe to scribe – indeed, even within the same document. A sexton or priest could spell the same word in two ways on the same page, and personal names often appear in several variants: »Anne« and »Ane«, »Jens« and »Jæns«. This is not carelessness, but an expression of the fact that a common norm had not yet taken hold. When you are looking for a particular ancestor, it can therefore pay off to search broadly and accept several spellings of the same name.

The reform of 1948

The spelling reform of 1 October 1948 changed the Danish written language considerably. It introduced three major changes, which together explain why texts from before and after look so different:

Nouns got a lowercase initial letter. The German tradition of capitalised nouns was abandoned, so that »Manden« and »Huset« became »manden« and »huset«.
»Aa« became »Å«. The new letter replaced the double a, so that »Aar« became »år« and »paa« became »på« – although many proper names were allowed to keep the old spelling.
The verb forms »kunde«, »skulde« and »vilde« were modernised to »kunne«, »skulle« and »ville«.

Texts from before and after therefore look strikingly different – a useful point of reference when you need to date an undated document.

How to use the spelling to date a document

Many old letters and papers bear no date. Here the spelling itself becomes a tool: by looking at which old Danish spelling the text follows, you can narrow down an approximate period. Keep an eye out in particular for these signs of age:

Capitalised nouns in the middle of the sentence point to a text from before 1948.
»Aa« in ordinary words such as »paa« and »Aar« (not only in names) indicates the time before the spelling reform of 1948.
»kunde«, »skulde«, »vilde« instead of »kunne«, »skulle«, »ville« likewise point to before 1948.
»kj« and »gj« as in »Kjøbenhavn« and »gjøre« indicate the 19th century or earlier.
The long »ſ« and many German loanwords point to the oldest layers, typically the 18th century and before.

None of the signs stands alone, but together they form a picture. If you combine them with the type of paper, the ink and the style of the handwriting itself, you can often get close to a year – a method that is worth its weight in gold when you work with parish registers and censuses without clear dates.

How to take it further

Knowing the old spelling makes a big difference, but the Gothic handwriting itself is often the greatest challenge. If you want to practise reading the letters yourself, you may benefit from our guide to deciphering Gothic script, which goes through the alphabet step by step. And when you want to try out a specific page, you can upload a photo and have the text deciphered straight away.

Would you like an old text made readable without having to keep track of the rules yourself? MormorsBreve deciphers the Gothic script and preserves the historical spelling – upload a photo and see the first pages for free.