Scandinavian Folk Festival

The annual Scandinavian Folk Festival Jamestown New York is held at the Gerry Rodeo Ground, Gerry NY this coming weekend beginning July 15 - 17, 2011. The festival provides enterainment, education, and all around fun for the family.  According to The Post Journal , this year a special guest, Kare Livsey from the Fenton History Center and Arne Johannson From Vimmerby Sweden will bet here to help people with Swedish genealogical research. The combination of these two individuals could help provide great insight to those research in Sweden and/or need help with the Swedish language. Also you will have the opportunity to hear the wonderful music of Peter Puma Hedlund playing the Nyckelharpa. He will be providing music twice a day all three days.  I have enclosed below a little video of him playing the Nyckelharpa.  It is a really cool instrument.

To find out more information about the Festival, you can go to the Facebook page  or you can go directly to the Scandinavian Folk Festival website. This Festival should be fun for everyone.  It would be a great way to introduce your children and yourself to your heritage, as they have crafters, entertainment, food, and you can even dance around the Midsummer pole or visit a Viking village. The Scandinavian Folk Festival has the available schedule of events. Check it out it you are in the area, and post comments as to what you thought about the Festival.

FamilySearch Record Search

If you haven't checked out the FamilySearch Record Search site, you are missing out. The FamilySearch Record Search site is currently in the pilot stage, but they welcome one and all to research the information that is currently available.

I have posted about FamilySearch Indexing and how many indexers are working feverishly on indexing the thousands of microfilm and fiche in the Salt Lake Family History Library. The result of the indexing can be viewed at FamilySearch Record Search. The 1870 United States Census has just begun to show up on the site and the 1900 United Census is almost completely up. Each of the indices that are located on the left side of the page have both the index and the images available to searching. The indices located on the right side of the web page have only the images and not the indexes categorized by specific locality and type of record.

Other records in various stages of completion that are available for searching include US and state census records, The Freedman Bank, Civil War Pension Records, Germany, Norway, and Mexico Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials and Cheshire England, Church of England Baptism, Marriage, and Burial records to name a few.

These records are available for searching for free. If you would like to browse or search these records, check out FamilySearch Record Search. Have fun!

The Association of European Migration

I recently came across a website regarding European Migration Patterns which I found interesting. The website useful links for those researching their ancestry out of the United States. Although this site does not have any active databases to search, it provides one with links to other searchable databases of various countries in Europe including Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Scotland, and Italian to name a few. If you would like to learn more about this site click The Association Of European Migration Links.

Norway Digital Vital Records

The Norwegian Digital Archives or Digitalarkivet is the Norwegian National Archives site on the internet. The archives consist of digitized images, and transcribed texts with the databases origination from digitized original documents or microfilms. The site also provides opportunities for individuals, and external organizations and institutions to contribute to the databases located on this site. The contributions by the individual, or other external institutions are located in "The Digital Inn" located on this site.


The databases included on this site are:

Census records for 1801, 1865, 1875, 1900
Digitized parish registers
User Forums to ask questions
Photo Albums of Norwegian Farms
How to lessons for reading Gothic Writing and tracing your Norwegian ancestry.

Norway's Digital Archives site is a great source for those researching their Norwegian ancestry. It is easily navigated and has some wonderful resources. The site can be viewed in the language of your preference, Norwegian or English. If there are some of the pages that are only in Norwegian, you can always use the GramTrans, translation website that I discussed on this blog. If you would like to investigate the resources on Norwegian Digital Archives click here.

Norway Heritage - Hands Across the SeaNorsk Arv-Hænder Hen over Havet

Børge Solem one of the masterminds behind this wonderful resource for the family historian/genealogist, began this project when he was history student attending the Trondheim University. In recent correspondence with Børge he explained how the website was created. He stated: "During my study I was inspired to write a paper in connection with the business of several my great grandparents, who were emigration agents representing some of the great transatlantic steamship companies like the Allan Line, Cunard Line and others. I guess it was a natural consequence of my interest in genealogy, and as I have also been very interested in maritime history and ships, the link was easy created. I was communicating with other people interested in the same subject on the web, and started to communicate on mailing lists. I soon discovered that the information I gathered while working on my paper was of great use to many genealogists, and soon found my self answering more and more question from people who were struggling in their hunt for their Norwegian ancestors. After some months I realized that it would be a good move to put some of the information out on the web as I used too much time answering mail. Together with some friends the site was born as a simple ship index of Norwegian emigrant ship departures."

The website has grown from it's humble beginnings to a powerful reference site for those genealogists/family historians. He and his friend Trond Austheim continually work on the site upgrading with new features and material. Friends and users of the site will also contribute to the content on the site providing a wide base of information.

The site is available for viewing in Norwegian or English. A few of the main topics covered on this site include but not limited to: Passenger lists, Ships lists, Norway Heritage forum, and an Image gallery. Numerous how-to articles are also available for review to assist you in your research of your Norwegian ancestors.

If you would like to research the free databases on this site click Norway Heritage and you will be directed to the sites main page. Have fun and good luck in your quest!

New Web Language Translator Site

I have finally found a web page translator for the Scandinavian languages to English. I have been on a mission to find the perfect translator for the Scandinavian languages for quite sometime trying various ones such as Google Translate, AltaVista BabelFish, and WorldLingo to name a few. These are great tools, but not one of them have any translation capabilities for the Scandinavian Languages.

This past week, I was blessed to finally come across a translator called GramTrans that is designed through a cooperative effort between two small companies specializing language technology, GrammaSorft ApS (based in Denmark) and Kaldera Språkteknologi AS (based in Norway). The geniuses behind this remarkable site are Eckhard Bick, dr. phil., computational linguist (GrammarSoft ApS), Lars Nygaard, language engineer (Kaldera Språkteknologi AS), Tino Didriksen, free-lance programmer (A Howl on the Wind). Technology is shaping the genealogical world, making the search for our ancestors far more simpler than when our parents were trying to connect with their ancestors just one generation past. We are very fortunate to be able to live in this time when the world is becoming smaller and allowing us to meet and connect with cousins across the globe.

My experience with GramTrans was amazing this past week. I was contacted by someone who was helping me with my Danish Enevoldsen line where I have hit the proverbial brick wall. I found this person on the DIS Danmark Forum but the entire page was in Danish. I utilized the translate URL feature of GramTrans, and in a matter of seconds, the entire page was translated into English. It was miraculous and for me an answer to many prayers on how to proceed in finding my Danish ancestors. This site will help me to read the information in the Danish Archives more efficiently and accurately.

As you can tell, I am very excited and pleased that I found the GramTrans site. The languages available for translation are Danish, English, Norwegian, Swedish limited Esperanto and Portuguese. The site has three different subscription levels including Free (limited use), Personal (unlimited use and browser plug-ins) and Commercial Lite (unlimited use, browser plug-ins, allows indirect commercial usage). You can translate an entire web page or just a few words. Another great feature of this site is that you can also contribute words to the site. You can try out the the translation capabilities by viewing the home page on GramTrans. Have great fun!

Norway - Digital Parish Registers

The National Archives of Norway has a website for digitized parish records. This site was launched on the 8th of November 2005. The goal is to have the project completed by the end of 2007. The parish records are being indexed on a page level meaning "that you can easily find the first page of a register, as well as the start of a list of records, or the start of each year in this list. From this point you can browse through the pages in the register or through a list of records, even though the records are scattered around in the original parish register. Please notice, that you cannot, however, search on single records and names in the digitised material."---The Digital Archives of Norway Parish Registers

Currently the status on the digitization project is as follows:
Indexed: 9701 registers
Indexed: 75683 lists
Indexed: 1898258 pages
Digitized: 2055935 pages

The main pages of the site can be viewed in the native tongue of Norwegian, or in English. A search menu is provided to allow the selection of the county, parish, type of record, time period you wish to search. Records that are available for searching are baptism and confirmations, marriage, death and burials, migration, vaccination and diary records to name a few. The types of records available will vary according to what has been preserved. The images that I viewed are clean and crisp, but I am not sure of the condition of all of the records. You will need to have some knowledge of basic Norwegian terms that would be used in parish records. These can be found at FamilySearch.org. If you click here for the word list is in the standard HTML format. If you have Adobe Reader, and prefer to view the word list in a PDF format click here and you will be redirected to the FamilySearch website where you have the option to download this list and save it to your computer for future reference. The link for the PDF file can be found under Norway - Norwegian Genealogical Word List.

If you would like to research in the Norwegian Parish Registers, please click here to be directed to the English version of this site.
Have fun!