Fonts and Characters in svg

["Lars Eirik Rønning"]

Hi.
I need to be able to use the &oslash and other scandinavian characters in my svg.
When i try to add these to my illustrator -> svg file, they are correctly exported, thus i get no error when using the batik-rasterizer to pdf.
However if i do not include these characters i get an exception

Enclosed Exception:
Invalid byte 1 of 1-byte UTF-8 sequence.
        at org.apache.batik.transcoder.XMLAbstractTranscoder.transcode(XMLAbstractTranscoder.java:136)
        at org.apache.batik.transcoder.SVGAbstractTranscoder.transcode(SVGAbstractTranscoder.java:156)
        at org.apache.batik.apps.rasterizer.SVGConverter.transcode(SVGConverter.java:1001)
        at org.apache.batik.apps.rasterizer.SVGConverter.execute(SVGConverter.java:717)
        at org.apache.batik.apps.rasterizer.Main.execute(Main.java:938)
        at org.apache.batik.apps.rasterizer.Main.main(Main.java:992)
... error (SVGConverter.error.while.rasterizing.file)

The thing is I need to be able to replace my "static" text in the svg with dynamic text from users.
Typically the placeholder will only say : Add text.
This will then when used runtime be replaced with &oslash and other non english/us charachters.

I have tried to export as svg fonts with both all glyphs and none in illustrator.

Hope someone is able to help me with this.
Could it be that i need to convert the oslash to a unicode character or something similar?

Lars