Räksmörgås

People have asked me what “räksmörgås” has to do with the MacJournal product.

The Swedish alphabet has 29 characters since spring of 2006:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö

Before that, ‘W’ was viewed as a variant of ‘V’.

We also have some variants:

• À : A
• É : E
• Ü : Y
• Ø : Ö
• Æ : Ä or the digraph AE

When testing whether software can handle Swedish characters it is common to use the word “Räksmörgås” that in English means “an open sandwich with shrimps”, but the word should not be interpreted litteraly. The good thing with “räksmörgås” is that it include all three Swedish characters, Å, Ä and Ö, that is not in ASCII.

In Norwegian they use the word “blåbærsyltetøj” (blueberry jam) for the same kind of tests. That was why the T-Shirt from the IETF in Oslo the green T-Shirt on these pictures have the request for blåbærsyltetøj on the back.