Version 1.0 — Last updated: 7 September 2026
This guide covers the reconstructed pronunciation of classical Old Icelandic (roughly 13th-century), the variety of Old Norse most Old Norse teaching materials and dictionaries are built around, and the one our Dictionary and Translator use. We don’t yet have recorded audio on this page — see the note under Limitations below.
Vowels
Old Norse distinguishes short and long vowels (marked with an acute accent), and this length is meaningful — it can change a word’s meaning, not just its emphasis.
| Letter | IPA | Approximate sound |
|---|---|---|
| a | /a/ | short, like “a” in “father” but shorter |
| á | /aː/ | long version of a, like “a” in “father” |
| e | /ɛ/ | like “e” in “bet” |
| é | /ɛː/ | long version of e |
| i | /ɪ/ | like “i” in “bit” |
| í | /iː/ | like “ee” in “see” |
| o | /ɔ/ | like “o” in “hot” (British) |
| ó | /oː/ | like “o” in “go” |
| u | /ʏ/ | like German ü, no close English equivalent |
| ú | /uː/ | like “oo” in “food” |
| y | /y/ | like French u / German ü, short |
| ý | /yː/ | long version of y |
| æ | /ai̯/ or /ɛː/ | varies by period — see caveats below |
| ø / ǫ | /ø/ | like German ö, or “u” in French “sur” |
Consonants worth learning specifically
Most Old Norse consonants sound close to their English equivalents. These are the ones that regularly trip up new learners:
| Letter(s) | IPA | Approximate sound |
|---|---|---|
| þ | /θ/ | like “th” in “thin” (voiceless) |
| ð | /ð/ | like “th” in “this” (voiced) |
| hv | /ʍ/ or /xw/ | like “wh” in older English “what” |
| ll | /tl/ or /dl/ | not a simple doubled “l” — see caveats |
| rl | /rtl/ | similarly affected before l |
| f (between vowels) | /v/ | sounds like English “v” when medial |
| g (between vowels) | /ɣ/ | a softer, voiced sound than English “g” |
| j | /j/ | like “y” in “yes” |
Stress
Word stress in Old Norse almost always falls on the first syllable of a word, including in most compounds and after most prefixes. This is a helpful, reliable rule with very few exceptions.
Reconstruction caveats
No audio recordings of Old Norse speakers exist — this pronunciation is a scholarly reconstruction built from spelling patterns, poetic meter and rhyme, loanwords into and from other languages, and comparison with related languages and their modern descendants (particularly Icelandic, which preserves Old Norse spelling closely, though its modern pronunciation has since shifted). Reconstructions are well-supported by this evidence but are not a certainty, and pronunciation additionally varied by region (Old West Norse versus Old East Norse — see our Dialects page) and across the several centuries the language was spoken. The æ vowel in particular is reconstructed differently by different scholars depending on the time period being represented.
Limitations
This page currently gives IPA and written approximations only — we don’t yet have human-reviewed audio recordings, which is a planned future addition (see our Changelog for updates). Written approximations to English sounds are necessarily imprecise; where we give one, treat the IPA as the more reliable reference. For where this data comes from, see Sources & Corpora; found something you think is wrong, use our Corrections Policy.