Because there was no other single location with all of this written:
usepackage{ucs} % Unicode support
usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc} % UCS’ UTF-8 driver is better than the LaTeX kernel’s
usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % The default font encoding only contains Latin characters
usepackage{ae,aecompl} % Almost European fonts/hyphenation do a better job than Computer Modern
There are a couple of characters I need (Latin letter yogh, Latin letter wynn + capitals) which aren’t known by UCS, and I don’t yet know how to add them. But this is a pretty good start.