I am Swedish. That means that i have been forced to use the terrible "Nordic QWERTY layout". At first glance it might not look that much different from normal QWERTY. But for anyone using special symbols (programmers, *nixers) it is the worst layout ever.

The nordic layout is shared with denmark and norway, since all three countries have three letters that aren't used in many other languages, but are very common in ours: åäö (in norway and denmark they look a bit different, but are more or less the same letter/sound).

I don't know who or when, but to make room for these characters on the keyboard, Ö and Ä are placed to the right of L on the home row, and Å is placed to the right of P. The characters that are normally there are more or less randomly scattered across the keyboard.

I lived in Greece for a year, the Greek language have over 20 unique chartacters, but their keyboard layout is more or less exactly like ANSI with an extra layer. This is when i really understood how much better ANSI is compared to the nordic layout, and it took me just a a month or so to get faster with it then the nordic one.

The only drawback for me, as a Swede, is of course that with ANSI layout it is difficult to type the swedish letters.

But a while back ago i found a repo on github, where a dude had created a custom layout, that is ANSI with an extra layer:
hold Alt Gr and press the keys where öäå (;'[) is, to type the swedish chars. (shift + Alt Gr to type them capitalized).
https://github.com/sebastiw/keyboard-layout

And this is the layout I have been using for over two years now. I can't take people defending the nordic layout serious.

My WPM is ~80 right now. (i use klavaro, gtypist and 10fastfingers to practice)