--- In norse_course@..., longgren@... wrote:

> Please forgive me for going a little bit off topic.
> I can now do ð, þ, æ, and ø. I know there is no umlaut a
> in Old Norse, but maybe there is an umlaut o. How do you do those?

Well, manuscript spellings did not use any umlaut symbol (diaresis
above vowel symbol), actually; the vowels ý, y; oe, ø; æ, e are three
pairs of umlaut vowels, distinct by length. German does not make such
a length distinction, which makes it easier for German orthography to
utilize the umlaut symbol systematically; the German umlaut vowels
corresponding to the three pairs above are ü, ö, ä.
Anyway, we generally use, in our course, the character ö to
represent the so-called 'o-tail'. The o-tail was an umlaut character,
representing the an u-umlaut of a. In MI, the descendant sound of the
o-tail sound is spelled with an ö; in many ON texts, even ones that
use the old ON spelling, the o-tail is likewise represented by ö.
So now I've had a long talk about the whole thing without answering
your question :) You will probably want to write the ö character
somehow; on my keyboard, there's a button in the top row, farthest
left, next to 1/!, above <tab>, and below <esc>; that button produces
the symbols ° and (with shift) ¨; if I use shift + that button, and
follow with a vowel symbol, I get "umlauted vowels": ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ.
But that will probably not work on your keyboard, if that board
even has that button... I'm not the man to ask, I guess :)

> My second question is about the "Icelandic" pop star "Bjoerk".
> About 20 years ago I subscribed to the Icelandic newspaper
> Morgunblaðið. I read there that many Icelanders were adopting
> Korean orphans. My question is this: Is Bjoern a Korean?

No, Björk is actually just a normal Icelander, though I see what
you're thinking. She does look unusually oriental for an Icelander. I
think it's mere coincidence, though her family line may (wild guess)
have had a few Greenlanders (Eskimos) in it... Icelanders and
Greenlanders have had extremely little contact, however.

Basically, Björk looks quite unusual for an Icelander. We look like
other Scandinavians: fair skin, blue eyes dominating (perhaps 70-80%
of the population, just my guess), and blonde hair very common. Such
as me, except I've got dark hair... (btw! :þ )

Óskar