 The Swedish alphabet is a 29 @-@ letter alphabet , using the 26 @-@ letter ISO basic Latin alphabet plus the three additional letters Å / å , Ä / ä , and Ö / ö constructed in the 16th century by writing " o " and " e " on top of an " a " , and an " e " on top of an " o " . Though these combinations are historically modified versions of A and O according to the English range of usage for the term diacritic , these three characters are not considered to be diacritics within the Swedish application , but rather separate letters , and are independent letters following z . Before the release of the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in April 2006 , w was treated as merely a variant of v used only in names ( such as " Wallenberg " ) and foreign words ( " bowling " ) , and so was both sorted and pronounced as a v. Other diacritics ( to use the broader English term usage referenced here ) are unusual in Swedish ; é is sometimes used to indicate that the stress falls on a terminal syllable containing e , especially when the stress changes the meaning ( ide vs. idé , " winter lair " vs. " idea " ) as well as in some names , like Kastrén ; occasionally other acute accents and , less often , grave accents can be seen in names and some foreign words . The letter à is used to refer to unit cost ( a loan from the French ) , equivalent to the at sign ( @ ) in English . 
