This has been a different year for everyone, even for us at ArkivDigital. However, genealogy is a hobby that one can engage in even in a pandemic. We have continued to work to simplify and improve our services for all of you researching your family history. Following are some of the highlights for the year 2020.

88 million images in the database
During the past year, we published 2 million images of historical documents or 4 million pages of historical records. Due to the Corona pandemic, the publication rate was unfortunately lower than in previous years, as we did not have access to the archives in the same manner as before the pandemic.

Continued development of the family tree
During 2020, we continued to develop ArkivDigital’s family tree and several new functions have been added. Among these is the function, where you can invite up 25 persons to view your tree. There are new views, for example the popular fan view along with a function where you can get an overview where in Sweden your ancestors lived.

Digital presentations in Swedish
When Genealogy Days and other conferences were canceled this year, we have instead invested in holding lectures digitally. We participated in the genealogy conference, Finding Family Together Live, and gave lectures via Zoom during Archive Day. In December, we broke participant records when more than 1,000 people connected to listen to Niklas Hertzman’s lecture on the basics of ArkivDigital. We will continue with lectures online also in 2021.

Digital conferences in English
In October and December, the McPherson County Old Mill Museum in Lindsborg, Kansas, hosted two ArkivDigital online workshops. In October, Kathy Meade from ArkivDigital and Geoffrey Morris from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City gave a day-long workshop on the Swedish church books. In December, Kathy Meade gave presentations on estate inventories and Swedish military research.

ArkivDigital one of the best 101 best family history sites in 2020
During 2020, Family Tree Magazine again named ArkivDigital as one of the 101 best web sites for genealogy. Family Tree Magazine is North America’s leading family history magazine which inspires their readers to discover and preserve their family history.

Updating of the estate inventory index
During the fall, we updated our estate inventory index with searchable posts for estate inventories from Södermanland, Gävleborg, Jämtland, Norrbotten, Uppsala, VVasterbotten and Västernorrland counties. This index now includes a total of 1,864,795 searchable name posts.

RootsTech
At the end of February 2020, we were at RootsTech in Salt Lake City in the United States. RootsTech is the largest genealogy conference in North America and we will again participate in RootsTech Live 2021 virtual conference.

Additions to the birth, marriage and death indexes
During 2020, we have made many updates to our birth, marriage and death indexes. There are now 10.1 million searchable name entries in the three indexes. This is an increase of 6.3 million from the previous year. We have received several indexes thanks to partnerships with genealogical societies and private individuals. We would like more partnerships, so do not hesitate to contact us if you have an index you would like to share.

Many million new posts in BiS (Population of Sweden)
In the beginning of the year, we updated the index, BiS (Population of Sweden) which is ArkivDigital’s largest name index and even the largest name index in Sweden. We added about 21 million searchable name posts for the year 1840-1859 and there are now more than 133 million posts in the index.

Land registration index for the Northern Gotland district archive
In February, we published a land registration index for Northern Gotland’s district archive. The index covers the years 1800-1870 and is searchable by farm name, parish and year. The index includes about 35,000 posts.

Engelholm’s farm archive
During the year, we have digitalized Engelholm’s farm archive. The farm archive comes from the Engelholm manor which is a property located in the St. Anna archipelago in Östergötland. The material consists of 41 volumes including land records, account books, journals, settlement books, poor accounts, farm accounts and much more.

Military rolls (1620-1723) completed in 2020
The Rullor 1620-1723 are earlier military records to the general muster rolls and contain about 550,000 images and about 1800 volumes. During the past year, we completed the photographing of this material from the War Archives and it is now available in our archive.

Material from Riddarhuset (House of Nobility)
During 2020 we have also photographed some interesting material from The House of Nobility (Riddarhuset). If you have some nobility among your ancestors, you may find it rewarding to search within this collection

Updating of Index – Mantals tax records
We have also updated our table of contents or Quick find index to the mantals tax records. The newly photographed tax register volumes are from Blekinge, Halland and Skåne which are searchable in the Quick find: mantals tax records index. There are now approximately 444,000 posts in this Quick Find index.

A big warm thanks to all our customers for a fantastic 2020, now we look forward to an exciting 2021! Happy New Year!

ArkivDigital