Category Archives: Sweden

It seems that every time I log on to ArkivDigital–and I do so daily–there is great new material available.  Now the web version with the All-In-One subscription includes a quarter of a million portrait photographs, dating from the 1920s to the 1970s, from three professional photographers in Stockholm.  As you will imagine the majority of the photos are probably of individuals from the Stockholm area but I have found many photos of people living elsewhere.

You find the “Portrait Collection” among the other index options in the Index Search.

Note that you should plan on doing very broad searches as there may be very little information about the photos.

Well, ArkivDigital has done it again! Another great update to their service. They have added an Advanced Search option for the 1950 Census, 1960 Census, and 1880-1920 Population indexes. Much of the update merely makes the searching a little more clear by having separate fields for entering specific types of information, rather than the one field for all searching. They have various search options in the categories of Name, Birth, Census, and Household.  So now you can distinguish in your search between someone’s residence and place of birth. AND what I find incredibly useful, you can search for two people in the same household!! This can be an incredibly useful capability depending on the information you have.  I would highly recommend a quick read of the blog that describes this functionality.

Note: The Advanced Search functionality is only available on the web version of ArkivDigital.

Sveriges Släktforskarförbund (The National Swedish Genealogical Society) reports that the Royal Library continues to grow its online newspaper collection with the ultimate goal of having 2 million pages from over 60 historic newspapers online by the end of 2017. This is a tremendous collection for those researching Swedish ancestors. The newspapers have been digitized and OCRed but keep in mind the OCR technology is far from perfect so even if you do not find your ancestor using “Search” a page-by-page review of a local newspaper may be necessary.

While the site is in Swedish, it is easy to use even if you don’t read Swedish. There are essentially two options. First, put your search terms in the big empty field in the middle of the page and press Sök (Search).

This will return hits from all newspapers-historic and modern. And if there are not too many you can read them all or at that point you can adjust the time period to limit the search.

The second option is to use the browse function “Bläddra Bland Dagstidningar” to narrow down which newspapers will be returned. 

You can click on the “+ Se fler” button to see the full list of newspapers. You merely click on the newspaper from the location you are researching and it returns the entire set of that newspaper that has been digitized. Than you either review, page-by-page, or Search in the newspaper.

Note there are 400 available newspapers (some are not viewable online, but most of the historic ones are.) The historic newspaper collection comprises the following.

TITLE                                          FROM                  TO
Arbetet                                        1887-08-06            1901-12-31
Barometern                                     1841-10-02            1895-12-31
Blekingsposten                                 1852-12-04            1884-12-09
Bollnäs tidning                                1876-07-01            1880-05-01
Borås tidning                                  1838-12-07            1895-12-31
Carlscronas wekoblad                           1764-01-21            1878-08-31
Carlscronas wekoblad                           1753-12-29            1754-12-31
Carlscronas tidningar                          1755-01-11            1764-01-14
Dagligt allehanda                              1767-10-20            1849-02-12
Dalpilen                                       1854-01-02            1926-12-31
Eskilstunakuriren                              1890-12-08            1900-12-31
Fahlu weckoblad                                1786-09-16            1821-12-29
Falköpings tidning                             1857-02-07            1896-12-30
Faluposten                                     1869-09-01            1890-12-27
Folkets röst                                   1849-10-06            1861-03-16
Gotlands tidning                               1867-01-18            1888-01-07
Göteborgs handels- och sjöfartstidning         1832-03-22            1895-12-31
Göteborgs weckoblad                            1875-01-02            1892-12-29
Göteborgsposten                                1859-01-05            1895-12-31
Götheborgs allehanda                           1774-01-01            1843-02-10
Götheborgs weckolista                          1749-12-16            1758-12-20
Götheborgska nyheter                           1765-01-05            1848-12-30
Härnösandsposten                               1842-05-26            1895-12-31
Inrikes tidningar                              1760-11-26            1820-12-29
Jönköpingsbladet                               1843-11-25            1872-11-30
Jönköpingsposten                               1865-01-17            1895-12-31
Kalmar                                         1864-07-30            1918-06-22
Karlshamns allehanda                           1848-01-15            1895-12-31
Karlskrona weckoblad                           1879-01-02            1895-12-31
Kristianstadsbladet                            1856-09-20            1895-12-31
Lindesbergs allehanda                          1876-01-07            1880-12-01
Lunds weckoblad                                1775-01-05            1782-12-18
Lunds weckoblad                                1813-01-02            1895-12-31
Malmö allehanda                                1827-07-06            1893-01-31
Nerikes allehanda                              1843-03-04            1895-12-31
Norden                                         1856-08-02            1861-12-07
Norra Skåne                                    1881-01-04            1897-12-06
Norrbottenskuriren                             1861-12-14            1895-12-31
Norrbottensposten                              1847-01-09            1895-12-31
Norrköpings tidningar                          1787-01-03            1895-12-31
Norrköpings weckotidningar                     1758-10-14            1786-12-30
Norrköpingskuriren                             1858-10-02            1862-12-30
Norrlandsposten                                1880-05-03            1880-12-31
Norrländska korrespondenten                    1851-10-11            1873-12-16
Nya dagligt allehanda                          1859-11-17            1895-12-31
Nya Wermlandstidningen                         1851-01-02            1895-12-31
Nya Wexjöbladet                                1846-12-11            1895-12-31
Nytt allvar och skämt                          1843-01-19            1851-10-08
Nytt och gammalt                               1783-01-03            1812-12-15
Post- och inrikes tidningar                    1821-01-02            1895-12-31
Posttidningar                                  1645-01-02            1820-12-31
Reformatorn                                    1887-08-05            1965-03-28
Stockholms dagblad                             1824-01-02            1895-12-31
Stockholmsposten                               1778-10-29            1833-03-30
Sundsvalls tidning                             1880-01-03            1895-12-31
Sundsvalls tidning Norrländska korrespondenten 1873-12-18            1879-12-30
Tidning för Wenersborgs stad och län           1848-12-12            1898-12-29
Umebladet                                      1847-09-25            1895-12-31
Upsala                                         1845-10-03            1895-12-31
Wermlands läns tidning                         1871-12-27            1879-11-11
Wermlandstidningen                             1842-12-21            1850-12-24
Wernamo tidning                                1876-10-04            1884-12-19
Vestmanlands läns tidning                      1831-02-10            1895-12-31
Wexjöbladet                                    1810-01-30            1855-09-24
Östergötlands veckoblad                        1885-11-07            1895-11-08
Östgöta correspondenten                        1838-09-24            1895-12-31
Östgötaposten                                  1895-11-15            1917-12-28

One of the great, but often overlooked, resources for Swedish-American research are the ethnic newspapers that were available to most Swedish immigrants. They read these papers, usually published in Swedish, for news from home or news about other friends who had migrated to the U.S. It is estimated that there were around 600 published titles of Swedish-American newspapers, albeit some had for short runs. Many of these newspapers still exist, but you may need to do a bit of searching. The newspapers exist as hard copies in archives, some have been microfilmed, and a few have been digitized.

One of the most significant online collections can be found on the Minnesota Historical Society Website. The collection consists of 300,000 pages, from 28 newspapers published across the U.S. The publications were made available through a partnership of the Minnesota Historical Society, the National Library of Sweden (Kungliga Biblioteket), the American Swedish Institute, and the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College, in Rock Island, Illinois.Most Swedish American papers will have lists of immigrants, emigrants (many Swedes returned to Sweden after living in the U.S. for a while), visitors from the Old Country, births and marriages and deaths both in the U.S. and in Sweden.  I have found many of my Sweden-living cousins’ death notices in U.S. papers.

Most Swedish American papers will have lists of immigrants, emigrants (many Swedes returned to Sweden after living in the U.S. for a while), visitors from the Old Country, births and marriages and deaths both in the U.S. and in Sweden.  I have found many of my Swedish cousins death notices in U.S. papers.The Swenson Center has a large number of microfilmed newspapers that have not been digitized yet, a list of these can be found here: often these microfilms can be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan.

The Minnesota Historical Society has some newspapers that have not been digitized, onsite research will be needed to use these resources. You can search for these newspapers in the Society’s catalog.

I cannot overemphasize how important is the work of digitizing, and indexing of the records through OCR capabilities. And I especially cannot overemphasize the importance of using these records for your research!

For those working in more recent Swedish records there is a very helpful resource Sveriges Dödbook the most recent version–number 6–covers the time-period 1901-2013.  It’s a list of all (or almost all, over 99%) of all deaths in Sweden transcribed and available on this CD.

The next iteration, version 7, is currently being developed and will cover 1860-2017! Apparently the plan is to publish a “pre-release” version in November 2017 that covers about 2/3 of the new material, and the final Sveriges Dödbook 7 will be released in November 2018. The price for version 6 is about $70 dollars, no notice yet on the price of version 7.  I have found this resource to be indispensable for my research and I am sure I will be early in line to get version 7.