Nordrassil is a keyboard layout designed for English that provides an elegant and balanced typing experience by its use of a thumb alpha, emphasis on middle fingers, deprioritisation of pinkies, and repeat key (or arcane keys).
Vanilla Nordrassil (likely preferable to most)
j y o u - q g n w x
h i e a . p d r s l z
k ' / , ; b c m f v
␣ * t
* denotes a repeat key. It isn't essential, but highly recommended.
Abyssal Nordrassil (my personal variant)
q y o u - j g n w k
h i e a . p d r s l z
x / ' , ; b c m f v
␣ ⟐ ⟐ t
⟐ denotes my arcane keys (see ARCANE ⟐ section for details)
- Take advantage of a thumb-alpha to alleviate other design restrictions (this became
t). - On the consonant hand, use the upper middle finger key to its utmost potential (this became
n). - Create a high-frequency middle->index roll on the top row (this became
ng). - Utilise a
repeatkey on a thumb (this alloweds,l, andtwhich repeat frequently, to sit on weaker fingers).- Eventually, a
magickey was added oppositerepeat, and this system matured intoarcanekeys in the end.
- Eventually, a
Note that Nordrassil assumes that the user is right-handed. If you are left-handed, I recommend mirroring the layout--with the exception of space and t, where personal preference should decide.
- The vowel hand has slightly higher usage if we include
space, but the consonant hand is given higher overall movement, which is more taxing (it's roughly a 40 / 60 split). iy,eo,auvowel block is used, flanked byhto maximise left-hand in-rolling and minimise redirects on the left hand. It also gives maximum workload to the middle finger.- Naturally, this hand also hosts punctuation, which is often not used during casual chats. This alleviates some responsibility of the left hand at those times, further minimising movement, and eliminating lateral index stretches entirely.
t, the most common consonant, was chosen on the for the thumb-alpha because it usually appears predictably at the beginning or end of words / syllables, which is easier to mentally parse than alternatives such aseorr, that would appear anywhere in a word.- This also answered the "
h-vowels orthroll?" question that plagued my mind in previous layouts.
- This also answered the "
- With the position of
n(andg) decided, thedrslhomerow grew its roots, and the mnemonic, titularndrslstring formed. - Digits are appropriately burdened, based on strength and dexterity, and pinkies are especially deprioritised.
- Extending fingers is preferred, except pinkies, which should curl.
- Redirects, lateral stretches, and pinky / ring scissors are avoided, especially on the left hand.
- The right hand does not attempt to optimise for inward or outward rolls, as the dominant hand can handle these just fine. Instead, redirects are minimised.
- Unrelated to Nordrassil specifically, I like to push
zinto a lateral pinky position in favour of another symbol key:/.zcan go on whichever pinky you prefer.
- Extremely low redirects and pinky / ring scissors, a near 3:1 in:out rolling ratio, a good balance between rolls and alternation, and
repeat/arcanekeys make typing feel effortless, elegant, and deeply satisfying. Of the layouts I've learned (Qwerty, Dvorak, Hands Down Neu (kinda), two iterations of Just Rhea (an old layout of mine; writeup is a wip)), Nordrassil is by far my favourite. - The 83:1 ratio for in:out-rolls of the
hieahomerow is such stuff as dreams are made on. - Having
ton the consonant hand's thumb is much nicer thanras I've had in the past. haandld(andquin the Abyssal variant) bigrams! I absolutely adore pinky->index rolls!could,would,have(queen), etc. are wonderful. I also have this pattern on my symbols layer, for<3.- Any words that include
ng,ndorrdgo extremely hard due to index->middle finger rolling. - Learning this layout forced me to use homerow mods (as
tdisplacedshift), which I had been intending to do for a long time. (This seems now to be my endgame mods system!) - And lastly, of course, I love
you, reader. <3
The nrm column seems at first to be a rather sore point of Nordrassil, as these letters combine with each other as SFBs moderately, and 2u skipgrams quite a lot. However, middle fingers are effectively invincible, and can tank anything you throw at them. One of Nordrassil's core goals is to take advantage of that fact.
Almost half of all SFBs, and three-quarters of 2u skipgrams are given to the middle fingers. They brush these blows off, granting the rest of the party the space they need to cast their own spells.
I will admit that I had an initial scepticism of nrm's viability, but real experience dispelled it entirely, and I no longer believe that this column is problematic. Earlier, pre-release iterations of Nordrassil did attempt to solve the anticipated pain, but the results were considerable downgrades and always skewed workload to more more fragile fingers.
n is a better candidate for the upper middle-finger position than I initially realised when Nordrassil was a sapling. Creating a layout with a deliberate priority for the upper middle-finger key was an experiment in creativity, and the resulting choice to give that place to n was initially based on intuition. Moons later, I managed to find the words to explain it:
- I consider the verticality of rolls to be important, and 'downward' rolls are comfier than 'upward' ones. I'd suppose this is because our fingers have more strength in curling than extending (like a crocolisk's maw!).
nrolls predominantly asn-to-consonant, so in this position, it rolls downwards fairly consistently.rrolls both ways with any letter without much overall bias which would cause many and various 'upward' rolls if placed on the top row.
From Nordrassil's conceptual stage, I included a repeat key, and about a month into learning it, I added a magic key as well. Eventually, I hybridised these to create my arcane ⟐ keys, which have superseded repeat and magic entirely for me!
A repeat key is a wonderful addition to any layout, providing you have a spare thumb key at your disposal! Double-letter SFBs make up a total of ~2.5% of all bigrams, and are only slightly better than most other SFBs; a repeat key solves this, by turning every double-letter SFB into an inward roll or alternate. If KLAs included double-letter SFBs in their SFB calculations, most modern layouts would have their total SFBs tripled, or worse! A repeat key offers an excellent enhancement to a layout at the cost of very little cognitive load--it is very easy to recommend.
A magic key on the other hand is less clear with what it offers, as the 'library' you use is self-set and deeply personal, and the cognitive load can be quite noticeable compared to repeat.
Personally, I treat the magic similarly to combos, where for them to feel worthwhile, they must save time by sending a multi-character string, or preventing chording / hand contortions. I didn't find the usual SFB-reducing possibilities of magic to work for me.
For a more detailed look at magic and its uses, see Ikcelaks' write-up of Magic Sturdy here!
More recently, I wound up creating a hybridised version of repeat and magic keys, which I call arcane keys, represented by ⟐. arcane's output is dynamically changed based on the preceding key, as expected, but it crucially also factors in which hand pressed the preceding key.
Here is my original reddit post where my arcane keys debuted, which contains some discussion! The body of the post is more or less just the text written in the sections below, though.
If the preceding key is on the same hand as the arcane key, it acts as a repeat key. This creates an inward roll for any letter that must repeat: finger->thumb. Double letters make up ~2.5% of all bigrams, which is a significant increase to inward rolling for any layout.
If the preceding key is on the opposite hand to the arcane key, it acts as magic, which, as mentioned in above, will provide varied benefits completely decided by the individual.
Here is a video showcasing the way arcane works in practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8a-Mzgbl8c
The innermost thumb keys are the arcane keys, and each use of them in this video is for the repeat functionality only. This hopefully shows that the rhythm gained by this implementation is quite nice and flows smoothly. I found that having my left hand be responsible for repeat entirely was noticeably taxing, and splitting it between both hands like this solved that in addition to improving in-rolling stats.
As an aside, my key labelled j is set to backspace in this showcase, because I'm currently on an arduous quest to figure out where I like it to lay. As of 2024-07-28, I have two backspace keys, which flank the thumbs (they are also layer-taps, and give delete when used with shift).
My simple implementation is to define two custom alternate repeat keys (one for each hand) and manually curate a library of outputs. This is very human-readable and easy to understand and configure, but the initial setup could be a bother. I haven't set up a repository for my keymap on Github, but here's a pastebin copy of my keymap.c, which contains everything you'll need: https://pastebin.com/j0pfKzBR
I will also gladly help anyone with this implementation if they run into issues! <3 You can message me on reddit; /u/empressabyss.
I'm sure the magi among you can find a way to base their function on matrix positions and actually call the repeat or magic functions case-by-case, and I will leave that possibility in your very capable hands. I'm just a girl in a world.
- Layouts with a thumb-alpha (like Nordrassil lol xd) will unfortunately have to have said alpha as an alternate instead of an in-roll to avoid it being an SFB. I've had no issues with this in practice (muscle memory is doing its job), but mentally its a bother due to inconsistency. Alas, to live is to suffer.
- My
arcanekeys are set are on opposite thumb keys. They're symmetrically placed and intuitive to read as sisters or equivalents.arcane's concept may not work so cleanly if your implementation looks more like Magic Sturdy, wheremagicis part of the alphas' 10x3.
q y o u - j g n w k
h i e a . p d r s l z
x / ' , ; b c m f v
␣ ⟐ ⟐ t
⟐ are my arcane keys.
This is the variant that I personally use (as of 2024-07-28), which is much closer to Nordrassil's original release, as that was designed specifically for my keyboard, hands, and taste (whereas Vanilla is designed to be better for the general audience).
Key changes:
xswapped withkto lower redirects and skew workload away from my weak left pinky.qswapped withjfor a pinky->index roll when typingqu. I also love it mnemonically:qyou!!'swapped with/because it distributes workload more appealingly, and it feels 'wrong' to me (in practice and theory) to place such a rare character on the very stronk middle finger. Punctuation also often takes a back seat when chatting casually, so'doesn't result in nearly as many SFBs as corpora suggest!
For a little more context for my decision-making, I thought the key comfort matrix that I used while designing Nordrassil would be useful to see.
Each position considers the assigned finger's strength and dexterity, and the effort required to move from the home position during regular typing. Everyone will have a different opinion about this, but this should help to contextualise some decisions I made.
A lower value is better~
9 7 1 3 9 9 3 1 4 7
9 2 1 0 0 6 6 0 0 1 2 9
5 6 3 4 8 8 4 3 6 5
0 0
Notice the keys in the upper pinky positions: for my hands, the left pinky is notably worse than the right pinky. This is reflected in the Abyssal variant of Nordrassil, which displaces k in favour of the lower-frequency q.
Nordrassil is a mnemonic expansion of the defining features of the layout: its middle finger, top-row n, and unique drsl homerow.
In Warcraft, Nordrassil is the sacred World Tree of the night elves, which grew over the Well of Eternity atop the summit of Mount Hyjal. Standing thousands of kilometers tall, its roots grow deep in the earth, spreading life-giving energy across the Azeroth.
As an extra branch of fun (something I realised months after creating Nordrassil), when read bottom-to-top, Nordrassil could become Teldrassil. Teldrassil is the second World Tree--that sprouted from an acorn of the first--and became home to the night elves. Given that both t and n were the most important letter-placement decisions through the design process, the fact that it turned out so mnemonically perfect like this is deliciously satisfying. An Emerald dream come true.
In its early stages, this layout was almost called Yggdrassil, before I realised that Nordrassil was even more perfect.
arcane was a name chosen for several reasons:
General:
- The word "arcane" is intuitively understood as analogous to "magic", yet it remains distinct.
- Categorically, all
arcaneis (partly)magic, but not allmagicisarcane.
Warcraft lore:
- In Warcraft, arcane is the most versatile and most powerful school of magic, but it depends entirely on the student to utilise it effectively.
arcanekeys share these traits perfectly. - Also, the night elves have a rather complicated relationship and history with arcane magic. Many
magic/arcaneusers are likely to feel the same (I know I do!).
Naturally, Nordrassil sits atop Hyjal; you can find the write-up for my keymap here: [to-do]
I also have some related thoughts on keyboards that I didn't want to burden Nordrassil or Hyjal's pages with, so I've collected them here instead: [to-do]