RLP 285: Scandinavian Research with Torhild Shirley Part 1

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 285, researching your Scandinavian Ancestors with Torhild Shirley, part one, Welcome to Research Like, a Pro a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited Genealogist professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at family Locket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a pro A Genealogist guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA, join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go the sponsor of today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is newspapers.com, the largest online newspaper archive. Hi, and merry Christmas everyone. Welcome to research Like a Pro.

Diana (55s):
Hi. Nicole. how are you today?

Nicole (58s):
Well, when this comes out it will be Christmas, so hopefully I’m having a good day today.

Diana (1m 4s):
I agree. It’s always fun to have Christmas after all the days and weeks of leading up to it. It’s fun to actually celebrate and enjoy being with family.

Nicole (1m 14s):
Right. And of course we’re recording this ahead of time and so as we’re now recording, we are just getting ready for the holidays and I finished getting all my decorations set up today, so that’s been nice.

Diana (1m 26s):
It’s so fun to get out the decorations and you know, putting a family history twist on that. I think it’s so fun to look at all the different things I’ve collected through the years. I have ornaments from grandmothers and my mother and growing up and things that I made years ago. So lots of memories with the holidays, which I love.

Nicole (1m 47s):
Oh yes, that reminds me that we put up some pictures as ornaments on our family tree of different grandparents and family members. So I found these cute little picture frame ornaments one year at Michael’s I think. And there were like Christmas trees with a photo inside and just different little designs and each of them had a like a circle or a square for a photograph to put inside of it.

Diana (2m 12s):
Oh, that’s neat. Ancestor ornaments.

Nicole (2m 16s):
Well our announcements for today are that next year, which is not too far away for 2024, we have our new Webinar series and the first Webinar from that series will be by Amanda Sherwin, who’s from our Research Like, a Pro online course And that will be January 20th at 11:00 AM that’s a Saturday. And her topic is who was Robert Stewart’s wife using DNA clusters and genealogical research and she’ll be talking about her Ancestor Robert Stewart who was born in 1785 in Virginia and one of his third great-granddaughters searched for 50 plus years for the name of his wife and there were no records of any kind marriage, land or wills.

Nicole (2m 58s):
But DNA shared clusters identified several DNA matches with similar last names that had never been a part of the family. And by building out the DNA matches and using traditional records, two cousins were able to put the stewards in the new family in the same place where Robert and his wife would’ve met and married. Further research helped identify which of the 10 men was likely the father-in-law. So that will be a fun Webinar and we hope that you will join us. To do so, you can purchase the Research Like, a Pro Webinar series for 2024 for $60 and then you’ll have access to all 12 of those monthly webinars. Also, registration is ongoing for our Research Like a Pro with DNA study group, which begins February.

Nicole (3m 38s):
And so if you’d like to join us, we hope that you’ll sign up soon and early bird registration is $50 off And that ends January 10th. If you would like to receive our weekly newsletter, you can sign up on our website and you’ll receive an email every Monday with our new blog posts, podcast episodes and any special deals.

Diana (3m 58s):
Let’s get to our subject. So today we have a guest, Torhild Shirley. Hi Torhild.

Torhild (4m 6s):
Hey, how are you?

Diana (4m 7s):
Very good. We’re so excited to have you on the podcast. And Torhild is an accredited Genealogist and she is also a native Norwegian. We are going to be talking about Scandinavian research because Torhild is an expert in this area. So just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Torhild (4m 28s):
Well first of all, everyone that’s Merry Christmas in Norwegian. I was like Diane said, born and raised in Norway. I’ve been in the US for just over 20 years. I caught the genealogy bug when I was in my early twenties and have gone crazy ever since. I really love what I do and just love helping other people with their research.

Diana (4m 54s):
So when you did your Accreditation, was there a specific Norwegian region or how did that work?

Torhild (5m 1s):
Yes, so there is a region for Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. They all have their own records and our languages are fairly similar. Maybe not so much Finnish but a lot of the records are in Swedish and so that helps out. But yes, I’m accredited nor in Norway, but I also research Sweden Denmark and and Finland.

Diana (5m 23s):
Right, because you speak all the languages,

Torhild (5m 26s):
Not so well Finnish, but since the records are in Swedish I get by.

Diana (5m 32s):
Wow, that’s great. What are some of the challenges of the Scandinavian area when it comes to family history research?

Torhild (5m 41s):
When you talk to people, I think the very first thing that that people say is, I don’t understand the patronymic naming system. It’s really confusing. And when you combine the patronymic naming system with also a given name convention, what happens is that you get a lot of people in the same area that carries the exact same name and then the challenge becomes how do we separate these same name individuals and uniquely identify them when it comes to birth dates, marriage dates, places, and so on, just to ensure that we are adding the correct Ancestor to our tree. So in this Swedish case study that we’re gonna be doing today, we are gonna look at these naming conventions and Patronymics.

Torhild (6m 29s):
And though this is a Swedish case study, the principles and methodologies hold true also for Denmark Norway and Finland. So our research subject, which is Rasmus Goodmanson Rasmus Goodmanson was born around 1719 in Sweden. But before we do that, I think we need to understand more about how we put these names together.

Diana (6m 50s):
Yes, I think we all have those people in our family trees that have names like Peterson, Ann Sorenson, I’ve got a whole group from Denmark with, with those patronymic names. So I’m so excited to talk about this unlearn more

Nicole (7m 8s):
So am I, you know, that has been daunting to me as well looking at our Danish line and I actually have two Danish lines, one on my father’s side. And so it has been a little scary to try to dive into that. And the fear of conflating two individuals with the same name into one has kind of made me stay away from it. So I’m looking forward to learning more from you today. So let’s start with that. Let’s learn more about the patronymic naming system. And can you also tell us about farm names and naming patterns?

Torhild (7m 42s):
Sure. So instead of having a fixed name like in England, you know you would have Wilson and it would follow Wilson going back for generations. Sometimes for centuries you would have the exact same last name. Children in Scandinavia would receive their father’s first name followed by a son or daughter as a surname. So in our case with Rasmus, he’s the son of Goodman and would therefore be known as Rasmus Goodman’s son. So Rasmus son of Goodman. And if he, it was a daughter, she would be known as Goodman’s daughter. So this tradition is ancient, but it started slowly changing in the mid 18 hundreds in in urban areas.

Torhild (8m 28s):
And then some places it lasted us as long as into 1920s before they started having fixed surnames. And at that point, very many just took the last name, the patronymic that they had at the time that the rule came or the law came and kept that. But some people said that is too boring, there are too many Johnsons or Olsons or or Hansons. And so they chose to take the name of the farm that the family lived on as their surname instead. And these farm names as surnames can be awesome clues for the last farm that the family lived on if they moved into other areas. But it’s also important to know that substituting a farm name for a patronymic was not new.

Torhild (9m 12s):
Often the church books or land records probate records would refer to the first name of a person and then the farm they lived on by saying, for example, Lars of Burta or just Lars Burta. And this is was a way, there was only one Lars living on that farm. And so that in instantly identified this person with a first name and then also their their location and we would need to dig more into records than to find their Patronymics. And this was especially prevalent in the 16 and 1700 records as the population grew and there were more people than there was more need of using a patronymic in addition to the farm because you had more people with the same first name living on the same farm.

Torhild (10m 1s):
Additionally, they had just naming traditions or naming, I don’t know if you can really call it rules, but at least traditions where the oldest son usually was named for his paternal grandfather. Well the second oldest son was named for his maternal grandfather. And the girls were likewise, the oldest daughter was usually named for her maternal grandmother, well the second oldest for her, her paternal grandmother. But then you had all these other children because they usually had large families, it was not uncommon to have five, 10 even up to 15 children and all these kids needed names. And so usually then you would name rename aunts, uncles, great grandparents, especially those who had already passed away, but also close friends and neighbors could get renamed in some cases.

Torhild (10m 52s):
It was also common if a child died that the next child of the same gender would receive that sibling’s name. So if they had an a child named Rasmus and Rasmus died, then the next boy born after the death of Rasmus would be renamed after Rasmus. Additionally, if a spouse passed away and the living spouse remarried, their first child of the right gender would be renamed after the deceased spouse. So lot of rules, lot of traditions to keep track of and most families did follow this tradition though at times people chose to to deviate from it.

Torhild (11m 36s):
So in in this case study, we have Rasmus Goodmanson who is the son of Goodman’s Rasmussen and we actually have two Rasmus sons of Goodman Rasmussen that we’re gonna try to place. So it’s gonna be a lot of fun names to deal with here. Wow,

Nicole (11m 53s):
That really makes it complicated when everyone is taking their, you know, grandfather’s name and those names are then repeated over and over.

Diana (12m 3s):
Yes, names can be challenging in any location, but the patronymic makes it doubly so. But I have heard that it also makes it really great for research, which I’m sure we’ll we’ll see because you get some good connections and some good clues there. Well let’s take a minute and do a word from our sponsor newspapers.com. newspapers.com is your ultimate resource for discovering your family’s history. Explore more than 800 million newspaper pages in their vast collection spanning three centuries. newspapers.com is your gateway to exploring the past with papers from the us, uk, Canada, Australia and beyond.

Diana (12m 42s):
Trace your family’s journey and uncover the extraordinary tells of your Ancestors through news, newspapers, stories, birth and marriage announcements, obituaries, photos, and much more. For listeners of today’s show, newspapers.com is extending a discount of 20% off on a Publisher extra subscription Just use the code, FamilyLocket it at checkout. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. Well Torhild, let’s talk about the research process and the first thing that we do is to set an objective. So what did you do with this case study that we are going to look at?

Torhild (13m 19s):
So we were lucky and had some great background information that we could use to glean identifying factors for this case. So we had found that Rasmus Goodmon died on seventh February, 1773 in Malus Sweden. And his death record wasn’t just his name and his date, it was amazing. It said that Rasmus was born in Raam around 1719 and this is where he still lived when he married Hannah Anders daughter in 1744. He later moved to URA and this was where Hannah, his first wife passed away and he remarried Hannah David’s daughter in 1767.

Torhild (14m 9s):
And this is also where Rasmus died in Olga in 1773. So we have not only his name and a potential birthdate, but we also have both of his wives when they married and then we have his death date. In addition to it also listed some information about his children. So previous research had already uncovered two potential candidates for Rasmus Goodmanson. One was Rasmus who was Christian on 23 March 17, 18 in Kura to Goodman, Rasmussen and Elsa to his daughter. The other Rasmus was Christian on six March, 1720 in rum to Goodman Rasmussen and Car daughter.

Torhild (14m 57s):
So we have the same name of the child, we have the same name of the fathers. At this point it might seem obvious that Rasmus who was born in 1720 was the correct person given that he was born in Roam, which is the same birth location that was mentioned in the death record. But we also know that the information in the death record might have been provided by Rems spouse or one of his children and they could easily have confused his birthplace for his marriage location because that’s where he had his first marriage. It would also have been really uncommon for a couple to leave both their burns birth farms. So if both Hannah and Rasmus were born in Raam, it would be uncommon for them to leave Raam to move to Ter where they had no connections.

Torhild (15m 47s):
And so it seems possible that Rasmus maybe was born in Koru, he went to Ream Ana married and then brought her back to his birth farm in Koru. But we don’t know yet. So with this back from information about Rasmus death in Koru, his marriages, it seems clear that we had two objectives here. First of all, we know that both fathers were named Goodman Rasmussen. So the question is, is this two different people? Did Rasmus Goodmon marry twice? Did he first marry Elsa to his daughter and had the first son in 1718 with her and then later he married car Lars daughter or are these two separate families?

Torhild (16m 34s):
We talked earlier about how deceased children were renamed. Is it possible that Goodman had a son Rasmus with Elsa in 1718 and then maybe Elsa and Rasmus died? Goodman moved to Kolter, married carna, they had a son in 1720 and then he would’ve been renamed for his deceased half-brother and and also called Rasmus. And so we need, first thing we need to find out is are we really dealing with two separate families or is this one family with two separate mothers? But if these are two separate families, which two of the two Rasmus, the one born in 1718 or the one born in 1720 is the one who married the two different Hannahs and died in Corto in 1773.

Diana (17m 27s):
Okay, so now it makes perfect sense why this is such a conundrum because of those naming patterns And, that idea of renaming a child. Because when I first looked at this I thought well it seems obvious that there are two separate Goodman rasmussens, but I can see now how they could be conflated and combined into one identity. So that is great to talk it through and it just points to the fact that different customs and different localities, you have to take a different approach to the researcher. You have to think about it differently. So thanks for walking us through that.

Diana (18m 7s):
All right, so we’ve talked about getting the background information and creating an objective, but before we can start researching, we really need to do some locality research. So tell us a little bit about unique records or just how we go about locality research in Scandinavia.

Torhild (18m 29s):
So a great place to learn more about localities is on the family search research wiki. They gave some really valuable background information about the parishes and also the records. So I started with a map of Ma Mauss County And that showed me that the two parishes that we’re talking about Ram and Koru are located right next to each other. And so that shows it would’ve been really easy for Rasmus and and his father Goodman to travel back and forth across the boundary if needed or as the family grew and and they moved around.

Torhild (19m 8s):
In addition, when we look at information about Koga and also Rum Parish, both of them are old parishes. They have been in existence from the 1600 before 1658. This area belonged to Denmark because Sweden and Denmark were in union with each other. But bet between 1669 and 1996. So not that long ago, both Kru and Rum were part of Mar Mauss county. In 1997, things changed a little bit in Sweden and both of these parishes became a part of the modern county of school now.

Torhild (19m 50s):
And when you look at these, you also need to look at what records do these different parishes have and which records would be the most common records to use in a research case like this. And the records that I would prefer use are household examinations, church records, probate records, tax records, and also moving records.

Diana (20m 16s):
Okay, great. And we will dive into each of those, but first I just wanted to ask another question about locality. So in all of these regions we have a state religion, is that correct? And so parishes are the thing for the the dividing. Is that a religious division? Is it a civil division? Just kind of explain more about the parishes.

Torhild (20m 41s):
That’s a good question and I, I guess you can say they are both because the Lutheran church kind of governed, I mean you would have the king on top, which we still do today. We still have kings in Queens in Scandinavia. But the church was kind of the one in charge and they were were the ones who would record all the records. They were the ones who kept track of people coming and going and they really had a lot of power. And so the boundaries that you had between the parishes were the boundaries that were in function. But then you would also have larger areas which were still religious areas but where you would have upper clergy that took care of of those areas.

Torhild (21m 25s):
So as we move into time and closer to our time and the church reduced its power and the state took over more power in the beginning they would still follow these parish boundaries, but slowly they went into municipalities instead of parishes. And then the state kind of took care of of a lot of the civil registration which would take place instead of necessarily church registration.

Diana (21m 53s):
Well it sounds much like other locations, especially I’m thinking in England and Ireland, some of those British isle countries where you’ve got the parishes and then you’ve got civil records that come into play. so it really just, you have to do your homework and understand the jurisdictions and the localities and how things worked for the exact timeframe you are researching. So let’s talk about these records. So let’s start with household examinations. That sounds unique. That’s nothing that I have in the us.

Torhild (22m 29s):
Those are really unique and Sweden and Finland are actually, as far as I know, the only ones that have these records, the fins haven’t because they were under Swedish government for so long. And these are church books that contain information about all the people who lived in a specific parish and you can kind of compare them to annual census records. So every parish was subject to a legal requirement of maintaining a household examination. And these began as early as 1686 though many of the earlier books are missing unfortunately. So the purpose of the household examination records, and they might also be known as clerical surveys, they were to help the Lutheran State Church in its responsibility to keep track of people.

Torhild (23m 21s):
Each family in the books is listed together with names and relationships. In addition, the records may contain birth information, marriage and death dates and places often they also contain relocations. And so this is just a amazing record to get an overview of the family and to follow them from year to year in the parishes.

Diana (23m 43s):
So in the image that we have in the blog posts, because you wrote wonderful blog posts based on this case study, they do look a lot like a census with the columns, the pre-printed form and then the columns where you were to write in the answers to the different questions. So if you were doing research and using those, I would imagine that it would be pretty easy to track a family because you can figure out what they’re asking for in each column and because it’s printed it’s easier to to understand. Is that correct?

Torhild (24m 17s):
Yes. If you go in the earlier records they, they’re not gonna be printed and the headings are gonna be, or everything is gonna be handwritten, but it still is listed in columns. And so once you figure out those headings, you can figure out what it says about the family. And because this was done annually, they really kept track of the entire family. They wrote down when the different children married when they moved out, maybe moved to other farms because it’s listed by farm. If somebody passed away it would be noted in there when the new child was born. It’s noted in there. And so they are just really detailed and really help follow that family and everything that goes on in the family throughout the years.

Torhild (25m 5s):
And so I just, I love household examination records.

Diana (25m 9s):
That sounds so fun. It’s making me want to go research one of my Danish families. Oh wait, do they have these in Denmark?

Torhild (25m 15s):
They don’t. This is sweet. Sweet. So you’re gonna have to move your family to Sweden if you wanna use this

Diana (25m 20s):
Records, I need a Swedish Ancestor, darn it. Okay, well let’s go to church records then, because I’m pretty sure they have church records in Denmark that I can find. Yes,

Torhild (25m 30s):
Yes they do. And these church records are a lot like what you would find both here in the US and also like England and and Ireland and other countries throughout Europe in that they contain a birth or a christening date, a marriage death or burial information and also other entries often or usually they include exact dates in places for each event. They include the names of the children, parents, spouses, witnesses and other different kind of useful information depending on the priests. Some were really happy to write and wrote a lot of details and others stuck, stuck to the basics and and didn’t add a lot of of extra.

Torhild (26m 12s):
But since these records were created at the time of the event, they are usually very reliable and they are valuable proof of a, of a parent-child relationship.

Diana (26m 25s):
Okay, those sound great. Now we also have some that seem a little bit more unusual maybe in using, I know a lot of people just rely on church records for their Scandinavian Ancestors, but why don’t you tell us about these others. We’ve got probate tax and moving records that maybe people haven’t used as much.

Torhild (26m 46s):
Yeah, those can also be be really great records. So probate records are also known as estate inventories. Those were created when somebody passed away and is a common legal process of administrating this estate after their death. And so in Sweden it was required by law. So the records that they have describe the distribution of a person’s estate among heirs and also creditors ’cause unfortunately a lot of them had also a lot of debt. so it will give you information about the deceased but in addition it also contains names of heirs, sometimes their ages and usually their relationship to this deceased at times.

Torhild (27m 32s):
Also spouses and children of the heirs are included and when you move back in time and there are no church records because the church records usually don’t go much beyond 1700 and in some cases not even down to 1700. So when you’re moving into the early 17 and and late 16 hundreds, sometimes the only place where you can find a connection between parent and child will be through the probate records because the children are listed as heirs and it will specify that there are the sons and daughters of the person that is deceased might not give you all the information you want concerning birth of these children, how old they are.

Torhild (28m 13s):
If they were above the majority age, then it won’t give you an age but at least give you that generational linkage between the child and and the parent tax records, I mean who hasn’t paid tax? We all pay tax and these tax records date as far back as 1620 in some of the counties and not all household examinations go, I mean they don’t go that far back because they started in in the 1680s. But for some count counties they don’t even go that far back. And so tax records can be great because they place a family on a farm farm.

Torhild (28m 54s):
Unfortunately they don’t include every individual in the family. They only include taxable people above the age of 15 or between 15 and 63 or after 1841 it was from 18 to 63. So they don’t include all the children but at least they can help us find the farm, find the head of household, maybe find some of the older children as they’re, they’re still living at home and help us establish this family on a specific farm. The head of household is always listed by name in the tax records. Other taxable family members might be listed by names but at times they’re only also only listed with a slash mark, which we know from early US census records where where they didn’t bother put their names in.

Torhild (29m 47s):
So that’s kind of sad but that’s how it is. But tax records can be great if we don’t have household examinations. The last record that I like to use is what’s called moving records or relocation records. These are often overlooked in genealogical research, but they can be really helpful in establishing when a family or a person where they came from, when they moved, where they went, the rule was that a new parish shouldn’t have to take on a burden of a family or a person that couldn’t provide for themselves. So to avoid becoming a burden on their new parish, each person or family was required to meet with their priest in their current parish to get a moving certificate.

Torhild (30m 33s):
These moving certificates usually state where they came from, their names, where they were going very often specifically to the farm that they were going and would help ensure that these people had not only a place to go but also that they had some work or a way to provide for themselves or that they had family members that they were going to that would help provide for them. In addition, these moving certificates may include many personal details like names of all the family members, their birth dates, occupation, et cetera. So moving records can be very, very helpful. Keeping track of the family and making sure that all family members are still available.

Diana (31m 13s):
Wow, Thank you for taking us through those. Those are some fabulous records and I am guessing that those are pretty available. Is there a record loss like in every other location for some of these?

Torhild (31m 29s):
Unfortunately yes. There were records that went, whatever happened to them, you know they, it can be different weather conditions, it can be different things fires that that could happen. Also, they often found, especially with like moving records, they didn’t keep us well track of those as they did regular church records because they didn’t see the, they didn’t look into the future and see how much we would love to use them and so often they, they didn’t keep So moving records is is a lot more of a hit and miss whether we are able to find people in there. But when we do they are amazing.

Diana (32m 5s):
Okay, well that is good to know. That’s really fun that there are so many things that are really similar but then very unique to Scandinavia.

Nicole (32m 16s):
That’s what I was thinking too, that you know with probate records and tax records and the household records, those are very similar to what we have in the US but then there’s some unique record types too that it’s just helpful to be aware of and to understand who kind of are the custodians of those records. You know, learning about the church and and how they were the ones keeping the church records and the parishes. That’s really helpful. So to access these records, what Repositories do we use?

Torhild (32m 45s):
So there might be more than five, but at least five that I know of that are, are pretty good Repositories. The first two that I’m gonna talk about are in Sweden. They’re located in Sweden and they only contain Swedish records and so if you wanna find records for other areas, you would need to go to other companies. So the first one is archival, which is probably the most known of the Swedish databases. This is a payable site so you do need a membership. But they have amazing records of all kinds, not just church records or household examinations. They have court records, they have land records and they work really, really hard to index and make all these records searchable and they add thousands of records every single month.

Torhild (33m 37s):
All the records that they have are browsable and they’re also linked directly to the original document. When you go in and and look through the index and and you search, which makes it really easy to find these, these documents if you don’t wanna pay and you rather use a free source. Dix Archiva, which is the state Archives of Sweden, they also have records of all kinds. They actually have more records than IV the guitar have, but they have less records that are indexed and in that way searchable. But you can always go in, if you know the area that you’re searching for, you can go in and find that area, you can find all the types of records that are in there and then you can browse those records.

Torhild (34m 23s):
Some of them are linked to the original documents but a lot less of them are than, than what they are for a kid dig guitar. But it’s a free site and that’s always a bonus and so, so that can be a good place to start and if you find that you really enjoy doing Swedish research, it might be worth paying for archival. They’re also really good having several categories of, of memberships. So you can pay for a month, you can pay for three months so you can pay for a year, which makes it easy when you use Ziv the guitar. But R Ziv is great too. Then we have three more international databases that contain Swedish records.

Torhild (35m 3s):
The first one is Family Search, which is also a free database. Currently they have 30 collections Swedish collections. Most of these are church records, but they’re also household examinations and some EM immigration records. Some of these are indexed and and searchable in that way. Other ones are just browseable and you can go and browse page by page but it’s free of charge. Ancestry has twice as many collections as family search does. They have 76 collections. They also have church records, household examinations and immigrations. But then they also have some cool collections that include letters, Jewish sources, war records and Swedish American records.

Torhild (35m 50s):
And those Swedish American records can be a great way to start if you’re trying to trace your family starting here in the US and try to get back into Sweden. Some of these records are indexed and searchable, they also have Browsable records, but you do need to have a membership with Ancestry to, to access these records. The last one is My Heritage. They don’t have as wide a collection. They only have 15 collections that are Swedish. They also include church records, household examinations, and immigration records. Again, some of them are indexed, some are not. They’re all browsable, some Links to original documents and you do need a membership to use My Heritage.

Torhild (36m 35s):
So if you wanna start off free, I would recommend starting either with D Sarva in Sweden or with Family Search, then you can always go from there into a paid subscription.

Nicole (36m 48s):
Wow, that’s so interesting about the one that I can’t pronounce, but VE having more records just not indexed.

Torhild (36m 57s):
So the difference you have between iv, IV is that ve everything is done by volunteers and so it takes a lot longer. They’re working on indexing and getting everything searchable. It just takes a lot longer because it’s based on volunteer work or donations. While IV de guitar being a paid database can hire people. So they have professional people that sit and work doing indexing and doing this all the time, which helps their records being, you know, be indexed a lot faster.

Nicole (37m 30s):
That’s a good distinction to help us remember the difference between those two. Well great Thank, you, there’s so many great Repositories out there.

Diana (37m 38s):
So Torhild, we’ve been talking about Swedish records because that’s where our case study is located. Correct. So I would assume that for Norwegian Danish and Finnish research there would be similar Archives that we would have to learn about for the records.

Torhild (37m 58s):
Yes. So for Norway probably the best database you have is Digital. Digital Archives, just like Sarve in in Sweden it is volunteer work. I mean they do have people that are hired. I work there all the time. But as far as indexing and getting genealogical records available, it’s a lot of volunteer work, which means it’s free. But you do have to browse a lot and and just go page by page on those. The same goes for Denmark. They don’t really have a paid site that is nearly as good as archival, but they also have Archiva which have a lot of records and again some are indexed and searchable and other ones you have to browse.

Torhild (38m 48s):
So there are some pros and cons to having paid sites. It’s not fun to pay but there are some benefits that come with it.

Diana (38m 55s):
Well it’s a lot cheaper to pay for subscription site than to travel and research on on site unless you live there, but

Torhild (39m 3s):
It’s a lot funner to travel.

Diana (39m 5s):
Yes, it’s so, you know we, we have a balance there. Well Thank you so much for walking us through that and I’m excited for our next podcast where we are going to tackle the research about Goodman Rasmussen and whether he married twice or there are two separate families and then if there are two, which of the two Rasmus married, the two Hannahs. So we have some fun things we’re going to dive into for our next podcast. So Thank you so much for being here. Torah Hill, it’s been a pleasure.

Torhild (39m 38s):
My pleasure, Thank. you

Diana (39m 40s):
All right everyone, we will talk to you next time.

Nicole (39m 44s):
Have a great week. Bye

Diana (39m 45s):
Bye-Bye

Nicole (39m 48s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro at DA on amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.