How does Swedish sort order differ from English?

Swedish has a 29-letter alphabet that ends with å, ä and ö after z. So in a Swedish sort, Älvsjö and Örebro come after every word starting with a–z, not near the start with the other a and o words.

Is this different from German?

Yes, and it is a common bug. German treats ä, ö, ü roughly like a, o, u (or ae, oe, ue), so they sort near their base vowels. Swedish keeps å, ä, ö as separate letters at the end, so the two languages order the same words differently.

How does the tool achieve the correct order?

It uses the browser's built-in Intl.Collator with the Swedish (sv) locale, which implements the official collation. If that is unavailable it falls back to a hand-built weight table that places å, ä, ö after z.

Does the sort ignore case and accents?

It uses base sensitivity, so A and a are treated as equal and only letter identity matters for ordering. The å, ä, ö letters keep their distinct end-of-alphabet positions.

No. Sorting happens entirely in your browser, so the list never leaves your device and is safe for confidential data.

Swedish Alphabetical Sort

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The Swedish Alphabetical Sort orders a list the way Swedish actually does, with å, ä and ö placed after z at the very end of the 29-letter alphabet. Getting this wrong is one of the most common localisation bugs, because a default byte sort or a German-style sort puts those letters in the wrong place.

How it works

Split into items. Your input is divided into lines, and blank lines are dropped.
Swedish collation. Each pair of items is compared with the browser’s Intl.Collator set to the sv locale. This implements the official Swedish ordering, where the base alphabet runs a–z and then continues å, ä, ö.
Direction. The result is shown ascending by default; ticking descending reverses it so the å/ä/ö words appear first.

Why this matters

Consider sorting these cities: Örebro, Åmål, Stockholm, Älvsjö, Zinkgruvan. In Swedish the correct order is:

Stockholm
Uppsala
Zinkgruvan
Åmål
Älvsjö
Örebro

A naive sort would scatter Åmål, Älvsjö and Örebro near the A and O entries, which is wrong for Swedish readers and indexes. German would do the same. Only Swedish collation pushes them to the end.

Notes

The sort uses base sensitivity, so it ignores letter case while preserving the distinct end-of-alphabet positions of å, ä and ö. Numbers and punctuation sort before letters.