SCANDINAVIA
The Scandinavian countries of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark have been closely linked for much of their history. Until
the 20th century the majority of their very comprehensive genealogical records were kept by the Lutheran Church. Anyone
looking for Scandinavian ancestors online will find lots of data, but beware – until the middle of the 19th century most of the
Scandinavian countries were still using the patronymic naming system where Jon Eriksson’s son Thomas would be called
Thomas Johnsson and his daughter Maria Johnsson (or even Maria Johnsdottir). While some of the sites for individual
countries have English versions, many do not so you will need to use an online translator.
ONLINE TRANSLATOR – http://translate.google.co.uk
There’s a lot of useful advice about Scandinavian research on the US-based ProGenealogists website.
http://www.progenealogists.com/namingpatterns.htm#Scandinavia
Danish research
http://www.progenealogists.com/denmark
Swedish research
http://www.progenealogists.com/sweden
The Scandinavian countries are also well-represented on GenWeb:
Finland: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~finwgw/index.html
Norway: http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wgnorway
Sweden: http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~swewgw
The Finnish Institute of Migration was founded in 1974 to collect and store material in relation to migrants and to carry out research into migration. Currently there are almost a million
entries covering passport records (1890-1922), passenger records of the Finnish Steamship Company (1892-1950) and information about Finns who died abroad 1918-1950). Searching is free but to view the results you need to pay an annual fee.
http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/emreg/index_e.php
The National Archives Service of Finland has an introductory page in English.
http://www.arkisto.fi/en/etusivu
The rest of the site is in Finnish so you will need to use an online translator to read their digital archives at http://www.arkisto.fi/fi/alneistot
It also has a digital archive online at http://digi.narc.fi/digi
Once again, only the front page has an English version.http://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/index.html?language=en
The National Library of Finland has digitised all the newspapers published in Finland from 1771 to 1900 and put them online.
The Genealogical Society of Finland has a Finnish language website here.
http://www.genealogia.fi
Finland’s Family History Association has an English language page here.
http://www.digiarkisto.org/sshy/index_eng.htm
The Norwegian National Archives’ Digital Archives service contains digitised versions of parish registers, probate records, land and property records and census records for 1801, 1865, 1875 and 1900.
http://digitalarkivet.no/cgi-win/Webfront.exe?slag=vis&tekst=nybyrjar.htm&spraak=e
DIS-Norway is Norway’s largest genealogical society. As well as links
to regional branches, the website is also home to the Gravestones in Norway project which aims to photograph and transcribe
all Norwegian monumental inscriptions and church burial registers. At the moment it has more than two million records and
over 900,000 photographs.
http://www.disnorge.no/cms/en/eng/about-dis-norge
Sweden and Denmark site will be listed soon...