New to genealogy – Get started!

A typical genealogist tries to gather as much information as possible about their own ancestors—parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and so on. Some also work backward, searching for living relatives based on a common ancestor or ancestress.

In archival records, you can find information that authorities have documented when your ancestors, for various reasons, were in contact with public institutions and authorities. This could include events such as baptism, confirmation, marriage, burial, divorce, adoption, property purchases, legal cases, education, and conscription.

Since the records in the archives were created by different authorities, there are no archival collections that compile all information about a single individual. You cannot simply look up a name and get an overview of all documents describing that person’s life.

Genealogy requires preparation

You must find the information about your ancestors in the archival records yourself, so it is important to be as well-prepared as possible. Start by interviewing the oldest members of your family, searching through family heirlooms, and gathering as much information as possible about your ancestors. The more details you have about your ancestors, the better your starting point for locating them in the archives.

It is also a good idea to attend one of the many genealogy courses offered nationwide or to read a book on the subject. Several excellent handbooks have been published for beginners in the challenging yet fascinating art of genealogy.

Essential information

To get started with genealogical research, you should gather the following information about as many ancestors as possible:

• Name
• Year and parish of birth
• Year and parish of death

It is usually not crucial to know the exact birth date; knowing the name, approximate year, and – most importantly – the parish is sufficient. Births and deaths were recorded chronologically in the parish registers of each church, and it was only with the introduction of the CPR register in 1968 that Denmark established a unified national registry of individual birthplaces.

The Danish National Archives holds approximately 500 kilometers of paper records and a similar amount of digital data from the last 40–50 years. The collections include records from central and local administrations, businesses, associations, and private individuals.

The National Archives organizes records according to the authorities or entities that created them, collectively referred to as “record creators.” There are records from over 110,000 record creators, and the records are grouped into series under each creator.

We recommend that you always create proper archival references, even for materials found online, such as on Arkivalieronline. This ensures that both you and others can relocate the documents, regardless of how they are presented online in the future.

Read more about archival references on page 15 in the guide The Danish National Archives and Its Research Aids I, Volume I.

Once you have gathered all the information your family can provide, it is time to consult the archival records—first online and possibly later in one of the reading rooms of the Danish National Archives.

New genealogists typically start by finding the most basic information about each individual in the family: name, birth date and place, death date and place, as well as the person’s spouse and parents. This information is usually found by browsing through parish registers and census records, which are available online.

If you are searching for relatives born more than 100 years ago, you can also search for individuals by name in transcribed census records and parish registers.